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Studies on transnational families argue that the subjective well-being of migrant parents is negatively affected by living separated from their children. Most studies employ qualitative methods without a control group and hence are not able to distinguish whether the effects found are associated with separation only or with other factors. This paper investigates the association between parental subjective well-being and parent–child separation by comparing migrant parents who have at least one child in their country of origin with those who live with all their children in the Netherlands. The paper further investigates whether the same associations are found between migrant groups from Angola and Nigeria. Results indicate that transnational parents indeed report lower subjective well-being, as measured by happiness, life satisfaction and mental health for both groups and additionally, self-assessed health for Angolans. However, legal status, socio-economic status and the quality of the parent–child relationship are found to be important mediators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The increasing ethnic diversity of the UK has been mirrored by growing public awareness of multicultural issues, alongside developments in academic and government thinking. This paper explores the contested meanings around ethnic identity/ies in community settings, drawing on semi-structured interviews with staff from Children's Centres and allied agencies conducted for a research project that examined the relationship between identity and the participation of parents/carers in services in northeast England. The research found that respondents were unclear about, especially, white ethnic identities, and commonly referred to other social categorizations, such as age, nationality, and circumstances such as mobility, when discussing service users. While in some cases this may have reflected legitimate attempts to resist over-ethnicizing non-ethnic phenomena, such constructions coexisted with assumptions about ethnic difference and how it might translate into service needs. These findings raise important considerations for policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies on Roma migration put much emphasis on either structural factors or networks that become key elements for explaining the growing migration flows of a population lacking economic resources and characterized by poor education. Although very relevant for explaining the perpetuation of migration, these studies posit the limit of downplaying migrants' agency and the role of identity markers mediating the influence of structural conditions in both destination and origin countries. Drawing on quantitative data from the Roma Inclusion Barometer (2006) as well as on in-depth interviews with Roma migrants from Eastern Romania, the paper provides a more comprehensive account of contemporary Romanian Roma migration towards Western European countries. The paper challenges the portrayal of the Roma migrant population, as conveyed by many scholars, as a rather passive one and argues that gender, religion and subgroup identities constitute key elements in explaining Roma migrants' agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on building a theory of collective singularity using the case of anti-racist collectives targeting the marginalized Roma minority in the Czech Republic. The collective singularity concept is one in which the values, norms, and practices that constitute a collective render it impossible for the group to transcend its own axioms in any manner other than by rejecting precisely these constitutive elements. The concept of anti-racism contains the trope of ‘the other’, perceived not only as an object of protection, integration, assistance, and interest, but also as an object under pressure to find its own (anti-)concept. Anti-racism oscillates around four dispositives (hysteria, paternalism, individualism, bionumerics) and finds itself unable to follow a radical pluralism with the potential to undermine the roots of the hegemonic discourse. As a result, the dispositives of anti-racism essentially become a ‘hidden’ form of disciplination, reproducing oppression and the impossibility of self-deconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Western European national policies increasingly portray diversity as negative and migrants as ‘others’ who do not belong to the national community. This article examines how local governments articulate alternative discourses of belonging based on residents' shared membership in the civic life of the city. In a Dutch case study, the ways in which local policymakers diverge from exclusionary national narratives are examined. It is argued that discourses about urban citizenship offer opportunities for the inclusion of migrants by drawing new boundaries between ‘good’ citizens and those who are unwilling to participate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the formulation of policy frames towards new minorities in France by analysing Lyon's membership of the European Commission's and Council of Europe's Intercultural Cities programme (ICP). Here, with culture accounting for 20% of Lyon's budget, emphasis is placed on the adoption of the Charte de Coopération Culturelle to use cultural institutions to implement difference-orientated policies. Critically, important issues emerge with this strategy. The effort to engage new minorities is hampered by significant apathy from cultural institutions in Lyon, and the limited geographical area of Lyon included in the ICP. Finally, institutions who engage with promoting interculturality co-opt existing organizations, with negative implications for the treatment of diversity in the city. This illustrates the problems with a European framework fostering a policy frame based on recognition for minorities in a context that has yet to fully embrace such policies at the national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International migration contributes to increasing cultural diversity in many European cities. Historically, migration studies have focused on the integration of immigrants foregrounding race/ethnicity and identity issues, limiting our understanding of intercultural diversity. A new paradigm focusing on relational patterns among groups is emerging, highlighting the importance of mutual relations, interactions and influences among residents of different origins and backgrounds, including the experience of both immigrants and autochthonous populations. The notions of superdiversity and conviviality have significantly contributed to this debate. This paper discusses how both were methodologically operationalized in multi-sited ethnographies carried out in Lisbon and Granada, during 2009–2012. Superdiversity and conviviality are the main theoretical frameworks used to understand how interculturality is lived and experienced at the local level. We reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, unpacking common assumptions about race, ethnicity and culture, specifically looking at the negotiation of difference in intercultural events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The population complexity associated with superdiversity brings a wide range of challenges for social welfare providers. Commentators have outlined concerns about the ability of service providers to meet the welfare needs of ever diversifying populations and point to potential problems in identifying the nature of need in rapidly changing superdiverse neighbourhoods as conventional approaches to consultation based around ethnicity become practically impossible. Using data collected in the West Midlands, which explored maternity service needs from the perspectives of new migrants and maternity professionals, some key barriers to effective welfare delivery in superdiverse areas are explored. The paper outlines the emergence of two challenges important in shaping new migrant access to maternity care in an era of superdiversity – novelty and newness – and proposes further research to examine the extent to which these challenges are faced in other social welfare services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diverse schools have become the norm throughout much of what is considered the West. Many urban classrooms feature few white European children but are located in nations dominated by Eurocentric epistemologies and discourses that oppress minority students by devaluing their cultures. Most European scholarship fails to analyse cultures of whiteness in educational settings. This paper addresses this gap by documenting cultural discourses of whiteness infusing a diverse primary school classroom in Amsterdam. Discourses reflecting white cultural norms of order, time, cleanliness, and Western and Christian superiority dominated a classroom containing only one white Dutch child. These discourses contribute to diverse students' explicit racialization while promoting the supremacy of white Dutch culture. They are both assimilationist and exclusionary, suggesting that many students, because of their backgrounds, will never be considered fully Dutch. Findings are of relevance to all nations dominated by white cultures with large populations of students of colour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper revisits the contact hypothesis by assessing differences in generalized trust among participants of Turkish non-profit organizations and ethnically mixed organizations in Amsterdam. Most voluntary sector research takes the contact hypothesis at its core and assumes that the concentration of ethnic minorities in non-profit organizations is detrimental to learning generalized trust. These studies assume that diversity within organizations is better for developing generalized norms without examining participation in ethnically homogenous organizations. I address this gap in the literature by analysing the variance of generalized trust among organizations and their participants. I achieve this through the analysis of purposively designed survey data. The findings suggest that a contact mechanism at voluntary organizations is problematic and should not be asserted uncritically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 2015, 1.5 million refugees arrived at Europe's borders. This article examines how and why this humanitarian crisis was transformed into a "racist crisis". It begins by recounting a highly publicized event in the Czech Republic which saw police forcibly removing hundreds of people from trains at midnight in the border town of Břeclav, before inking numbers on their arms and transporting them to detention centres. Thinking with this scene, the article develops the conceptual framework of "racial stigma" to capture some of the multiple practices that characterize border regimes in contemporary Europe. Racism, it argues, is the stigma machine of sovereign power in neoliberal Europe. The article concludes with some reflections on how Europe's current "racist crisis" reanimates both historical spectres of race and spectral geographies of racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses intra-European bordering on the local level through the case of Eastern European Roma in Helsinki. Precarious EU migrants outside the Nordic labour markets have formed a group neither “in” nor completely “out” of national welfare structures. We argue that various level authorities have responded to the loss of direct control over legitimate yet unwanted migrants by mobilizing municipal workers and local police as everyday gatekeepers. Policy towards the Roma migrants in Helsinki is ethnicized (conceptualizing them as a special category requiring targeted measures) and “NGOized” (relegating elementary social provision to the third sector). Their presence of is not formally challenged, yet they are effectively without access to social rights and pathways to permanent residence. Meanwhile, the migrants strive to improve their disadvantaged position through transnational, family-based livelihood strategies, which are actively adapted to the shifting European and Finnish borderscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While Roma are both Europe’s largest minority, there is no “homeland” state that claims to guard their interest. The lack of “an external national homeland” [Brubaker, R. 1996.Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] to watchdog and safeguard their rights has a particular effect on how Roma engage as political actors and subjects. International donors/foundations have assumed the role of “external homeland”. This article explores the effect that donors’ funding priorities have on Romani advocacy – specifically Romani journalism. Drawing upon multi-sited fieldwork in five countries, extensive document analysis, and interviews, Idemonstrate that the change in Romani media content over the past two decades reflects the shift in funders’ priorities, particularly in relation to the European project. “The Roma” become a tool for donors and European institutions to build a “European” identity while Romani-led advocacy becomes increasingly marganilized. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While a considerable body of work examines immigrant networks, inadequate attention has been devoted to understanding how networks regulate the relationship between immigrants and host institutions. A rich immigrant process may reinforce current power structures by providing a convenient buffer between the elite and challengers. Conversely, immigration may challenge the status quo. I employ social network analysis to examine three understudied immigrant groups in Rome, Bangladeshis, Filipinos, and Peruvians. I find that they have developed systems of problem-solving and sense-making that often interrupt their interactions with host institutions. The state tolerates this because it situates immigrants’ concerns outside its sphere of responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To what extent are perceptions of discrimination associated with religious affirmation among Muslim minorities in the Netherlands? Drawing on recent nationally representative surveys among self-identified Muslims from five ethnic groups in the Netherlands, we test boundary conditions of reactive religiosity. Our findings indicate that for Muslims from established immigrant groups, perceptions of discrimination are associated with more frequent religious attendance, but that this is not the case for Muslims from smaller, less established ethnic communities. Findings are interpreted using a boundary framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article we explore the added value of foregrounding temporal dimensions in migration research. Age at the time of migration, length of stay in the country of settlement and individual life-cycle stages matter for migrants' settlement and return considerations. However, these factors are rarely put centre stage in analyses. We draw on data from sixty-seven informants with different country backgrounds, who had either immigrated recently, arrived as children, or were born in Norway. We find that the implications of temporal dimensions cut across national and ethnic backgrounds. Age at the time of migration and the relative proportion of life spent in the origin and in the settlement country play an important role in migrants' considerations about settlement and return; as does being single, a parent with small children, or retired. An approach foregrounding temporal dimensions thus reveals the changeability of considerations over time and highlights similarities and differences beyond ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How migration and mobilizations of difference are accommodated at the local level is a burning question. Concepts adopted by local governments and the capacities of cities to formulate and implement these have received increasing attention, but often without examining the ideas and norms that underlie local concepts and practices. This article assesses the hypothesis of local-level pragmatism, which it rejects, and develops the notion of ‘paradigmatic pragmatism’ to characterize how local-level politics address mobilizations of difference. Based on empirical findings from Amsterdam, Antwerp and Leeds, and comparing the content and the implementation of ‘diversity policies’, I argue against a dichotomy of pragmatic vs ideational politics. Instead, these cities draw on a variety of ideas and pragmatically combine them under the header of diversity. This paradigmatic pragmatism invites further research on the effects of potential incompatibilities of immigrant policy ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘Diversity’ has become a key term in recent years, yet it has been criticized for being a vague concept with different and contradictory meanings. This article demonstrates that there are at least three inherent meanings of the term: (1) discerned difference attributed with positive or negative value; (2) diverting diversity providing pleasure and amusement; and (3) distracting diversity directing attention from something of greater importance. I argue that the concept of diversity can be a fruitful focus in ethnographic research, if its inherent multiplex and duplicitous character is recognized and actively employed. This is shown through an analysis of the ways in which immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean to Denmark have been perceived and received as foreigners since the 1960s as representing different kinds of diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the topic of return migration as it is understood and practised by different actors who engage with this theme, albeit from different perspectives. Return migration is paraded in policy debates as a triple-win scenario, bringing advantages to receiving states, countries of origin and migrants. Yet this article reveals how return migration is understood differently by policymakers in Senegal and Europe and by the migrants targeted by their policies. Interpretations are based on conflicting underlying assumptions of what return is, its benefits and its relation to transnational movement. Inspired by the discursive paradigm in political studies, this article utilizes interpretive tools to examine the structures that support and give meaning to understandings of return among institutional actors and migrants. It concludes that new theorization is needed to grasp the full complexity of return migration as a phenomenon that is marked by different temporalities and aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Norwegians of African descent often find themselves at the centre of debates regarding the ‘problem’ of immigrant integration, the challenge of self-identification and the elusive nature of the multicultural promise. This essay examines how Norwegians of African descent perceive and (re)construct the ideological processes through which they are incorporated into understandings of the nation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2005 and 2011, I analyse two extended interviews that represent key questions raised during discussions with forty interviewees. How does one engage the presumption of solidarity and universal goodness, common to characterizations of the Nordic region, which nevertheless render certain bodies and identities illegible and ‘impossible’? How is race ascribed meaning in the Norwegian context? My interlocutors invoke a particular moral vocabulary of belonging when describing experiences with implicit and explicit forms of racism. These ‘encounter narratives’ reveal national anxieties about race and cultural belonging, situated within historical preoccupations with identity and ‘sameness’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Governments have policies explicitly directed at the integration of migrants. This article addresses how policymakers and politicians privilege certain constructions of the social relationship between migrants and the majority society (expressed through narratives of ‘integration’), while making it seem as if they were presenting facts in their policies. These constructions provide the justifications for adopting a direction in policy-making over other alternatives. This article sets to analyse comparatively how policy actors in two urban contexts construct migrants' integration through policy narratives and how, within this, they evaluate migrants as ‘integrated’ and ‘non-integrated’. Through narrative analysis, the article sheds light on how migrants are positioned by political institutions within the normative order of the society in which they live. Furthermore, it shows that local policy-making is shaped by national citizenship regimes, models of steering, welfare regimes and stories about the nation and its people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2011, al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, was killed in Pakistan and the US president, Barack Obama, concluded a decade of global ‘war against terror’. In light of this, it seems only sensible to explore what implications the post-9/11 international developments have had on a local basis in specific national contexts. With this in mind, this article focuses on Denmark and discusses how the critical event of 9/11 motivated a security/integration response, including various pre-emptive measures that have cast the Muslim population asthe usual suspects. It will discuss how these changes have affected the everyday lives of ordinary Danish Muslims over the last ten years and changed the relationship between majorities and minorities. Finally, it will also examine how and why recent national and international events have created the potential for another shift in majority–minority relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]