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Research on the links of the second generation to their parental homeland, and return visits in particular, is largely lacking. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 75 Albanian teenagers in London, Thessaloniki and Florence, this paper brings a multi-sited perspective on attitudes towards and experiences of homeland visits. Contrasts are drawn between positive themes emerging from the narratives, which are about belonging, family and nature in Albania, and negative impressions which relate to poverty and traditionalism, and a developing sense of boredom as teenagers get older. We then relate some of these contrasting experiences to differences in social integration in the three different host-society contexts. The conclusion elaborates the uniqueness and significance of this case, both in terms of this being the first exploration of the transnational orientations of one of Europe’s newest second generations, and in relation to the home-country context of a liberalising ex-communist country still in a state of economic backwardness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses mobility and migration, focusing mainly on the cases of Afro-Cuban jineteras who seek relationships with Europeans. Healthy (educated) hookers or decadent women? While Cuban government officials condemn the actions of Cuban jineteras, society and the Cuban family often refer to them as luchadoras (fighters). The paper introduces the voices of Cuban jineteras in debates of jineterismo and migration in order to develop a broader understanding of the concept. Drawing on ethnographic research in Havana and the UK, I argue that what makes jineterismo a complex concept is that it encompasses a wide range of actions, including the desire to love the (idealised) European man, and in many cases, the aspiration to migrate to Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the mobility patterns and livelihood strategies of young men migrating to, and selling sex in, the EU. Most of the testimonies come from Albanians and Romanians. The analysis focuses on the experiences of 'street' sex workers, rather than on the whole spectrum of jobs available to young men in the sex industry. I draw on French psychological literature on the topic of errance (wandering) and on original ethnographic material gathered over a long period of multi-sited fieldwork in different European cities. Migration is considered as a symbolic and liminal act through which young men negotiate their psychological and economic autonomy away from 'home'. Within this wider context, the article concentrates on specific psychological and migration dynamics characterising the life experiences of young men selling sex in the street. This enables me to analyse the ways the outcome of the negotiation of their transition to adulthood and their migration patterns are influenced by their ability to express their sexual and gendered identities away from home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores ways in which we can fruitfully analyse and theorize ‘New Europe’ through migration, in so far as migration is an integral part of the way the world is imagined, and as such impacts on how individuals, communities, nations or multi/international formations such as the European Union imagine themselves and their (co)inhabitants. The article discusses three theoretical strands that relate to the forces of spatiality (scaling), temporality (timing and histories) and corporeality (embodying and ‘the European people’). These must be read as interwoven and impacting on each other in varying ways that are not linear, coherent or permanent. By bridging critical migration studies with mobilities studies, this essay calls for a reconsideration of the fluidity, accessibility and desirability of the assumed mobile world, while it also thinks about migration in relation to the ways in which ‘mobility’ has been variously established as a universal ‘right’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many would-be tourists were dissuaded from vacationing on Greece’s Aegean islands in 2016, in the aftermath of 2015’s ‘migrant crisis’. However, the islands witnessed an increased arrival of atypical ‘tourists’, among them volunteers intent on helping. This study is based on research undertaken on the islands of Lesvos and Chios in Greece as a volunteer myself. I focus on the figure of the volunteer, as an emergent humanitarian actor in border regions, to highlight issues with the way hospitality is currently being extended by one group of guests to another, at Europe’s frontiers. I investigate the way in which interactions between migrants and volunteers often end up reinforcing, rather than challenging, the distinction between them, and thus contribute to the legitimization of the current European border regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]