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This study looks at how ordinary Kurdish refugees and asylum seekers set up self-governing formations to organise their life in border cities on the periphery of European societies. The Kurdish immigrants organise themselves into social communities that serve as autonomous social spaces in which they form and exercise self-governance, navigate through bureaucratic and structural obstacles, and regulate their cultural and social affairs. In this paper, I argue that contextual Kurdish identities and the immigrants' capacity to respond are the fundamental components of four different models of immigrant self-governing establishments. Ideological agendas, kinship relationships, and shared spatial origins are significant contextual elements of collective identities that they use to construct three models of self-governance, whereas their responses to common concerns drive them to form a fate-based model of self-governance. Based on ethnographic field research and 76 in-depth interviews with Kurdish refugees and asylum seekers in bordering cities in Northern, Southern, and Western Europe, the article illuminates four self-governing models of ordinary Kurdish immigrants, their various patterns and identities, as well as internal dynamics. It sheds light on how these self-governing models of the marginalised Kurdish immigrants arise from below to produce and regulate social life without interference from state authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accompanied by public demands to reduce migration by creating perspectives 'at home', employability projects have become an important component of migration and development policies. While research has revealed the sedentarism underlying these policies and questioned the effectiveness thereof, more recent work has found that stakeholders are, in fact, aware of the potential increase of migration. However, contrary to analyses that hold that such interventions are carried out because they meet the different interests of both migration and development actors, this paper argues that migration and development interventions are mutually implicated. Examining European employability projects in Tunisia and drawing on interviews with representatives of donors and implementing organisations as well as policy documents, this paper argues that employability activities operate through twofold depoliticised logics. Whereas the focus on employability enables isolating migration from politicised debates across Europe, these interventions promote depoliticised logics of neoliberal selectivity. In centring skills in these interventions, some subjects are rendered employable for the Tunisian and, potentially, European labour market. Others, in turn, are excluded from the participation in migration and development due to a lack of sought-after skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognition rates measure how far states afford rights to refugees. Recent developments of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) have supplemented this measure with factors such as population and wealth. Concurrently, laws have developed nationally and Europe-wide regulating 'complementary protection' for those not qualifying as 'refugees' under the 1951 Convention. These two parallel developments in migration governmentality, I argue, are part of a process that increasingly complicates the field of knowledge around refugeehood, raising the level of expertise needed to access protection. This article focuses on the use of complementary protection in Europe since 1999 to explore (i) the legal process of proliferation of protection categories and (ii) the political process of calculating rates. The paper employs a methodological mix of ethnographic observation and critical readings of law and statistics to map various ways of counting recognition rates. This highlights the importance of statistics in feeding a narrative of liberal, Western, European society that protects refugees. Yet it is evident that both protection and its denial are constitutive of a CEAS governmentality that is best described as 'ordered fragmentation'. One of its basic assumptions is the denial of refugee agency, rendering states the subjects of the protection regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The waves of migration that hit Europe during 2015 are often labelled as the 'refugee crisis', however the term 'crisis' is doubly understood as that of refugees and that of European politics. Taking the latter view, the present article claims that if one wants to understand the differences between national responses, the concept of social memory is an analytically useful one. We take the case of the Hungarian response to the crisis and explain how the concept of the migrant has been a floating signifier in Hungarian discourse. This is not due to lack of actual migratory movements but because of mnemonic processes typical of Eastern Europe. In the second part of the paper we explain how the floating signifier of the migrant has been manipulated by the Hungarian government and especially Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. We argue that this was made possible by three features: the autocratic transformation of the structure of the public sphere; Orbán's ability to switch history on/off as he pleases; and four deeply rooted historical repertoires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of the categories ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ to differentiate between those on the move and the legitimacy, or otherwise, of their claims to international protection has featured strongly during Europe’s ‘migration crisis’ and has been used to justify policies of exclusion and containment. Drawing on interviews with 215 people who crossed the Mediterranean to Greece in 2015, our paper challenges this ‘categorical fetishism’, arguing that the dominant categories fail to capture adequately the complex relationship between political, social and economic drivers of migration or their shifting significance for individuals over time and space. As such it builds upon a substantial body of academic literature demonstrating a disjuncture between conceptual and policy categories and the lived experiences of those on the move. However, the paper is also critical of efforts to foreground or privilege ‘refugees’ over ‘migrants’ arguing that this reinforces rather than challenges the dichotomy’s faulty foundations. Rather those concerned about the use of categories to marginalise and exclude should explicitly engage with the politics of bounding, that is to say, the process by which categories are constructed, the purpose they serve and their consequences, in order to denaturalise their use as a mechanism to distinguish, divide and discriminate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the concept of symbolic boundaries and ethnic boundary-making is well established in social research, the direct consequences of these boundaries for the integration of migrants have not received much attention. This paper thus analyses whether religious and secular boundaries of national belonging among the majority population have an impact on perceived discrimination among Muslim minorities in Western Europe. To analyse this linkage, data from the International Social Survey Programme measuring the importance of religion as a symbolic boundary of national belonging among the majority have been aggregated as a regional context condition and combined with a Muslim minority subsample from the European Social Survey. The results of the multilevel models reveal that the salience of religious boundaries is associated with less perceived discrimination among Muslim minorities, while secular orientations among the majority seem to be more decisive for subjective perceptions of feeling discriminated against. Overall, the results thus challenge the role of religion as an ethno-religious demarcation and point to the relevance of secular boundaries of belonging for immigrant integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-arrival integration tests used by European countries suggest discriminatory measures subtly persist in immigration laws. This paper draws on a comparison across the Americas and Europe to identify and explain historical continuities and discontinuities in ‘assimilability’ admissions requirements. We attribute legal shifts at the turn of the twenty-first century to the institutionalised delegitimisation of biological racism and the rise of permanent settlement immigration to Europe. Efforts to reduce Muslim immigration largely motivate contemporary European policies, but these policies test putative individual capacity to integrate rather than inferring it from a racial group categorisation, as did historical precedents in the Americas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gendered Mobilities and Work in Europe is an interdisciplinary collection of papers that, together, analyse the gendered aspects of migration and the labour market in Europe. The empirical research presented in this special issue of JEMS incorporates labour market sectors designated as both high- and low-skilled and points to shifting gendered employment opportunities and working conditions for contemporary labour migrants. The papers demonstrate how both national and regional policy frameworks intersect with specific employment sectors and different typologies of migration to produce varied outcomes for male and female labour migrants even when employed in the same sector. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What are the contemporary 'limits of the liberal state' with respect to immigration, citizenship and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in contemporary Europe? The papers in this special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies examine how recent developments in Europe raise new questions regarding the relationship between liberalism, migration, identity and belonging. In this introduction, we identify three major themes that run through the papers in the issue-the use of liberal norms by states for exclusionary purposes; the possibility of the emergence of 'illiberal liberalism'; and the extent to which identity politics and policy-making may be increasingly transcending and transforming the limits of the liberal democratic state in Europe. After briefly presenting these three themes, we summarise the arguments of the individual authors and suggest possible directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to contextualise the papers in this special issue, this paper presents an overview and framework for understanding the importance of East-West migration in Europe associated with the EU enlargement process. The new patterns and forms of migration seen among East European migrants in the West—in terms of circular and temporary free movement, informal labour market incorporation, cultures of migration, transnational networks, and other phenomena documented in the following papers—illustrate the emergence of a new migration system in Europe. Textbook narratives, in terms of standard accounts of immigration, integration and citizenship based on models of post-colonial, guestworker and asylum migration, will need to be rethought. One particularly fertile source for this is the large body of theory and research developed in the study of Mexican-US migration, itself a part of a regional integration process of comparative relevance to the new European context. While the benefits of open migration from the East will likely triumph over populist political hostility, it is a system that may encourage an exploitative dual labour market for Eastern movers working in the West, as well as encouraging a more effective racial or ethnically-based closure to immigrants from South of the Mediterranean and further afield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory paper to the special issue of JEMS on the second generation in Europe reviews some of the key themes underpinning the growing interest in the second generation, and asks what 'integration' actually means in contemporary debates about immigration and settlement. The authors attempt to place these debates within their specific national contexts, in particular by applying US-developed theories of second-generation integration to Europe. In this way, we build on the embryonic transatlantic dialogue about which factors potentially account for different patterns of second-generation integration in different countries. Integration, in this sense, refers both to structural aspects such as educational and labour-market status as well as to a broader and at times fuzzier concept that includes ideas of culture, ethnic or religious identity and citizenship. The paper also sets the scene for the various articles in this special issue which together illustrate the thematic breadth of European-based research on the children of immigrants. We conclude by offering two theoretical avenues for future research on ethnic minority groups and their settlement patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies focuses on the role of the media in an increasingly multicultural Europe. It investigates the significance of a diversity of media through an analysis of a diversity of cultures and cultural practices. It links often-small-scale specific empirical studies of particular media or minorities with big questions that go to the heart of current intellectual debates on the present and future character of fluid societies and conflicting identities. In so doing it takes media seriously. Without presuming their centrality, contributors nevertheless take as their starting-point the reasonableness of inquiring into the ways in which engagement with media—with print, broadcast, internet media—may be seen as key resources in the struggles for visibility, presence, community, influence and symbolic power which many, if not all, minority groups seek. This introductory paper identifies key questions and issues for debate, and presents an integrated summary of the papers that follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The background to this paper is the need to reconcile at theoretical and political levels the quest for recognition of Muslims in the West with skepticism towards essentialist and uncritical understandings of Islam. Whereas in Europe there is a growing tendency to celebrate the challenges that the presence of transnational Muslim identities pose to the presumed universal nature of the liberal nation-state, Middle Eastern feminists are denouncing relativistic approaches towards Islam as the expression of an emergent alliance between multiculturalism, neo-orientalism and fundamentalism. My contribution to the unfastening of this theoretical and political deadlock is to demonstrate the multiple meanings and practices of being Muslim in Europe, and reveal the contradictions and contestations embedded within them. The paper sheds light on the unease that some young Muslims feel about the dichotomous constructions which mark the debate on Muslim identities in both the academic and political arena, and shows that Muslims' experience in the West is inscribed in, and cross-cuts, diverse socio-political identities, challenging the presumed dichotomy which opposes universalism to difference. Yet, far from simple acts of bricolage , these processes of identity renegotiation are deeply painful and conflictual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper forms the introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on 'Islam, Transnationalism, and the Public Sphere in Western Europe'. Taking as its starting point the seminal volume edited by Gerholm and Lithman-- The New Islamic Presence in Western Europe (1988)--the paper reviews continuities and changes in European Muslim communities and their relationship with others. Drawing extensively on case studies based on anthropological research in four European countries (Britain, France, Germany and Italy), the paper first examines the problematic character of the category 'Muslim', and identifies ways in which Islam in a European context can be considered transnational. It then explores how the question of living as a Muslim in Europe is being addressed in the context of transnationalism, considers whether there is an emergent 'European Islam' or 'European Muslim' identity, and ends with consideration of the problems and prospects for Islam in European public spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between care and mobility. It does so within the specific context of intra-EU migration and the development of European citizenship. Citizenship of the Union bestows valuable social rights on mobile community nationals. Entitlement under the provisions is not, however, universal but conditional and privileges those in paid work. The paper considers the implications of this emphasis on paid work in two related respects:firstly, the impact on those people who move as part of the `male breadwinning family' but are not engaged in paid work (the partners and families of workers); and secondly those community citizens whose migration decisions are shaped by the need to provide unpaid care to family members. Drawing on empirical research with migrant families, the paper concludes that the concept of work in Community law places those people who are not engaged in paid work (and family carers in particular) in a highly vulnerable and dependent position. Furthermore, the assumption of fixed and predictable dependency relationships within migrant families that underpins the law (and to some degree migration theory) fails to take account of the fluid and complex nature of dependency and caring relationships over the life-course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses differences in rural and urban origin in visits from natives and the occurrence of interethnic marriages of Turkish immigrants in six European countries. We argue that values and human capital explain the relationship between rural-urban origin and contact with natives. The value-based hypothesis stipulates that differences in contact with natives are due to values and predispositions that correlate with people's rural and urban origin. The human capital hypothesis predicts that variation between rural and urban origin can be ascribed to differences in human capital accumulation. Using the Six Country Immigrant Incorporation Comparative Survey (SCIICS), the results show that Turkish immigrants with a rural origin have fewer visits from natives and are less likely to intermarry. Furthermore, educational attainment, destination country language proficiency, religious identification and identification with the origin culture explain a substantial part of the rural origin effect. However, also when accounting for values and human capital, we find a significant direct effect of rural origin, suggesting that rural and urban immigrants build social relations differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper measures the impact of immigration on migrants' involvement in associations across Europe. Using multilevel analysis on European Social Survey (ESS) data, we address three questions: Are immigrants likely to become members in voluntary associations? Does this likelihood change with the length of stay in the host country? Does the type of the association make a difference? The findings show that the likelihood of migrants participating in associations increases with the length of stay, while second-generation migrant participation is similar to that of the host society. The relation is stronger for expressive associations and weaker for instrumental-utilitarian ones, while religious organisations are more likely to attract new immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two demographic challenges confront Europe today: population ageing and population decline. These challenges are two sides of the same demographic coin. While low fertility and increasing longevity cause populations to rapidly grow older, low fertility also leads to population decline. This paper describes recent and expected changes in the size and composition of the European population and the underlying demographic trends in fertility, mortality and migration. Although international migration is now the major cause of European population growth, it is questionable whether migration can prevent population decline. International migration spurs population diversity in different ways across Europe and is the most volatile demographic phenomenon as it depends on both push and pull factors that are difficult to manage. From a demographic perspective the challenges of international migration for citizenship, both from intra-European migration and more particularly from migration from outside Europe, are likely to increase in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue of JEMS deals with the challenges of migration for citizenship attribution in Western Europe. In this introductory paper we analyse recent developments in citizenship attribution across Western Europe over the past 25 years. Despite the contradictory impact of the instrumentalisation and politicisation of citizenship policies, and the fact that countries have different citizenship traditions and migration experiences, we observe six broad trends. These relate to the descent-based transmission of citizenship by women, men and emigrants; ius soli provisions for second- and third-generation immigrants; the acceptance of multiple citizenship; the introduction of language and integration requirements for naturalisation; the avoidance of statelessness; and the increasing relevance of EU membership. We describe the background and core features of each of these six trends and provide empirical examples from citizenship policies in 18 West European countries since the early 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore similarities and differences between the first major scheme to rely on migrants from Central and Eastern Europe to fill vacancies in key sectors of the British economy—the so-called European Volunteer Worker (EVW) schemes introduced in 1946—and current economic migration from the same countries of origin, following the expansion of the EU in 2004. The first scheme was in part a response to postwar dislocation in Europe and the huge problem of displaced peoples. However, the recruits were admitted to the UK as economic migrants rather than as refugees and had to accept allocation to particular sectors of employment as a condition of entry. In the period since 2004, large numbers of migrants from similar parts of Europe have been recruited to work in the UK, largely in low-wage sectors, and in the most recent version of New Labour's managed migration policy are seen as replacements for low-skilled migrants from other regions of the world. Both the early and later groups are white, raising interesting questions about the social construction and meaning of 'whiteness' and its status as a marker of privilege in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue entitled ‘Africa<>Europe: Transnational Linkages, Multi-Sited Lives’ outlines the history of the African migrant presence in Europe, gives an account of the contexts which shape contemporary migration, and surveys the approaches to international migration from Africa which have influenced researchers since the 1960s. Linking the contributions to the special issue is the theme of migrants’ transnational ‘double engagement’ with both Africa and Europe. The paper examines this theme across three domains of the lived experience of African migrants and refugees in Europe: ‘Livelihoods’, ‘Families’, and ‘Identities’. We conclude with an assessment of what can be learned (theoretically and methodologically) from the study of African transmigration, and suggest future lines of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being the dominant mode of legal entry for the past two decades in European Union states, the study of family migration has been marginalised theoretically, methodologically and empirically. In settler societies, family migration has been interpreted more loosely and has been encouraged. The definition of who constitutes the family is determined by the state and is generally interpreted in highly restrictive terms in EU states. Family-related migration has been neglected because of the emphasis in migration studies on the individual, a heavily economic focus, and an association with female migration based on the dichotomy of male producer and female reproducer. In policy terms it is treated as a secondary form of migration subordinate to and divorced from labour markets. However since the late 1980s family-related migrations have become the subject of scholarly research, especially North American and Asian-Pacific, using network analysis and, more recently, concepts of transnationalism. In this paper I firstly explore the reasons for the relative neglect of family-linked migration in European research which has focused on the integration of migrant families in receiving societies and the legal and policy conditions of family reunification. Secondly, I examine some of the implications of changing family-led migration, especially at key moments and stages of the lifecourse, and the increasing restrictions imposed on this form of migration, highlighting the continuing role of the nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although skilled migration now represents the only `acceptable' form of migration into the UK there has so far been little analysis of the ways in which the shift in the skills of the primary migrant reconfigures family migration. In this paper I outline some reasons for this neglect, highlighting the ways in which two related sets of debates, that on gender and international migration into Europe and that on tied migration, have not yet adequately addressed the changing role of migrant women in contemporary labour markets. Both offer a critique of patriarchy within the household but neither have examined the ways in which immigration regulations intersect with labour market conditions in influencing family strategies around labour market participation of men and women in migrant households. Through the example of medical labour markets I argue that such an analysis is necessary for understanding family migration amongst the skilled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines new migration to Europe in the context of EU enlargement and debates about fortress Europe, framing the general agenda for the papers that follow in this special issue. We argue that the (normatively informed) image of fortress Europe is an inadequate account of migration and migration policy in Europe in three respects: the movement of family members, asylum-seekers and labour migrants has been substantially positive; enlargement itself generates dynamics of inclusion as much as exclusion; and there exists a significant component of intra-European circulatory migration. Against the fortress account, the article offers a market-driven analysis of new migration to Europe. In developing this account, we stress how existing theoretical accounts of immigration policy - dominated by a state-centred institutionalist and political focus - offer at best only partial explanations of the new European migration scenario. Both neo-liberal and older Marxian theories of the international immigration labour market need to be re-introduced to explain the selective, expansive and reconfiguring effect of market forces on European immigration policies. Our aim is to underline how new tendencies in East-West migration in Europe challenge and transform the traditional migrant trajectory from migrant to citizen that lies at the heart of state-centred accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed enlargement of the European Union has focused attention on the implications for both those who do and those who do not become members in the 'first wave'. While discussions have largely centred on labour migration there are complex forms of mobility across different boundaries. This is illustrated through a case study of trans-border mobility between Slovakia and neighbouring countries in the EU, Central Eastern Europe, and the CIS. The paper stresses the complex geography of mobility, which is determined by the porosity of borders, the institutional context and regional economic complementarities. It also explores both the changing forms of labour migration and of shopping and petty-trading mobility. While highlighting the significance of EU enlargement for these deeply embedded patterns of mobility, it also emphasises the need to consider some of the broader influences such as international capital flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an examination of mental health services for migrant groups in a number of European countries. It draws on a range of recent studies to highlight some of the key and emerging issues in relation to the provision of mental health services within an increasingly multi-ethnic and multicultural Europe. The results of a preliminary mapping exercise of mental health services for migrant groups are presented and their broader implications are considered. The aim of the mapping exercise was to collect and examine information on mental health services for migrant groups against a backdrop of broad policy developments in the mental health field and the emergence of multicultural approaches in public policy. The results of a questionnaire survey of service providers in 16 European countries are summarised, with special attention to three of the participating countries, Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain. The information from it is placed in a context of current research in the field of race, culture and mental health. In examining the results of the preliminary mapping exercise, key areas for policy development and service provision are identified and an agenda for future research in this area is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]