Search

Building on postcolonial, feminist and gendered migration theories and the ‘turn to mobility’ this article aims to explore the agency of so-called low-skilled Moroccan female marriage migrants in Flanders (Belgium). More precisely, it aims to study how religious temporality plays a role and how it shapes their experiences in a specific context of migration and precariousness. It questions how these women invoke a religious temporality in confronting the uncertainties and difficulties of which motherhood and a precarious residency status are the most challenging and stigmatising. Firstly, focussing on two ethnographic vignettes this article empirically analyses their nonlinear, risky and often undocumented trajectories laying bare a politico-discursive temporality in marriage migration, motherhood and belonging. Secondly, it analyses how exactly these women tend to challenge this bureaucratic temporality. The analyses show that through their active engagement with sabr (patience) and tawakkul (reliance on God) these women become agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the empirical optic of 'dead papers', this article highlights the lived complexities of documentary regimes in Global South contexts by exploring strategies and responses to the agency of migration documentation that are past their expiry date. Drawing upon 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork with African migrants and city-based actors such as property brokers conducted in two unplanned settlements of Delhi between 2015 and 2017, it focusses on the intersections between paperwork, im/mobility, and emergent 'migration infrastructures' (Xiang, Biao, and Johan Lindquist. 2014. "Migration Infrastructure." International Migration Review 48 (1): 122–148) mediating the impermanent trajectories of racialised and legally precarious African migrants in Delhi. It argues that colonial era laws that criminalise visa transgressions necessitate flexible strategies of urban navigation for unauthorised migrants and substantially complicate their capacity to return to home contexts. In this way, the article highlights the role played by property brokers as situated intermediaries critical to urban transformations, whose entrepreneurial 'connections' are often instrumental in the facilitation of mobility within the city and beyond. In tracing the ways in which the mediations of such localised migration infrastructures regulate broader processes of transnational migration, the article considers 'new' entanglements between migrants and city actors as integral to a conceptualisation of exit practices for unauthorised migrants, beyond binary oppositions of forced/voluntary movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the name of women's protection, Dutch immigration authorities police cross-border marriages differentiating between acceptable and non-acceptable forms of marriage (e.g. 'forced', 'sham', 'arranged'). The categorisation of marriages between 'sham' and 'genuine' derives from the assumption that interest and love are and should be unconnected. Nevertheless, love and interest are closely entwined and their consideration as separate is not only misleading but affects the exchanges that take place within marriage and, therefore, has particular implications for spouses, especially for women. The ethnographic analysis of marriages between unauthorised African male migrants and (non-Dutch) EU female citizens, often suspected by immigration authorities of being 'sham', demonstrate the complex articulation of love and interest and the consequences of neglecting this entanglement – both for the spouses and scholars. The cases show that romantic love is not a panacea for unequal gender relations and may place women in a disadvantaged position – all the more so because the norms of love are gendered and construe self-sacrifice as more fundamental in women's manifestations of love than that of men's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue Introduction critically reflects on the interdisciplinary working project on ethnicity, inequality and place undertaken by the ESRC Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity. We argue that CoDE is uniquely placed to undertake this interdisciplinary work and discuss the extent to which the project pushed thinking beyond that of our disciplinary homes to provide innovative insights into the significance of place for understanding ethnic inequalities and identities. From the six papers in the Special Issue, this Introduction identifies four cross-cutting themes on ethnicity and place: processes of exclusion, the importance of temporal context and change, tensions of scale in the way ethnicity and place together shape experiences and inequalities, and the conceptualisation of ethnicity as dynamic, multi-faceted and socially constructed. We argue that the project has succeeded in terms of cross fertilisation of ideas, challenging ontological and epistemological divisions, and facilitating interdisciplinary learning, adaptation and appreciation. We also identify difficulties that were experienced. We suggest that interdisciplinary ideas flourish in an environment where they can fail and conflict, but where failure and conflict does not disrupt the underlying momentum of the work. We conclude in favour of interdisciplinary, democratic and co-produced research as a tool for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of the strict migration regimes that prevent permanent settlement and naturalisation, migrants have, for decades, made the UAE their unofficial home, something that has led to the existence of subsequent generations of non-citizens who are born there. However, reaching the age of 65 marks retirement for migrants, who can no longer receive work visas in the UAE. Prolonging residency is possible, yet without social security and pensions, maintaining a decent life requires significant financial investment and reliance on family and social networks. Based on interviews with the adult children of first-generation migrants from the 'Global South', this paper provides insights into a number of strategies their parents develop in order to navigate restrictive immigration regimes upon retirement in the UAE. Most migrants prefer to stay put in the UAE upon retirement, where their children continue to live. Drawing on 'immobility' debates, this paper argues that immobility is an active – and relatively privileged – response to restrictive immigration policies in the UAE that enforce mobility upon retirement. Whilst a preference for 'ageing in the UAE' is often costly and precarious, older migrants' social and emotional attachments often outweigh economic reasons to leave, as this paper shows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Select research has indicated that widespread migration is catalysing the novel reimagining of eldercare and transformative changes in the local eldercare economy in the Global South. Yet research on ageing and migration from the South has largely focused on transnational care practices of providing emotional support and economic remittances. Drawing on ethnographic research among the privileged and affluent community of Syrian Christians of Kerala, India, I argue for a diverse and complex Southern reconfiguration of eldercare at the intersection of migration, which also includes 'market transfer' of proximate care services as reciprocal filial care. Further, the paper illuminates how specificities of migration, ageing and care are locally nuanced and shape diverse transnational care practices. In turn, transnational care strategies employed by the migrants to overcome distances transform the local eldercare economy and (re)produce class-stratified eldercare spaces. Through the study of a privileged community, the paper highlights the increasing marketisation of the eldercare landscape in the sending countries of the South and contributes to furthering diversified understandings of the ageing-migration nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws attention to the current and possible effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the (im)mobility trajectories of international students (IS) and the global higher education landscape. From the perspective of migration infrastructure, this paper specifically focuses on the immobility experiences amongst Chinese international students (CIS) who planned to enrol overseas in 2020 but instead chose to take online courses in China due to the COVID-19. It asks how online courses are both facilitated and constrained by a set of institutional and technological infrastructural forces. Particularly it also explores how some CIS exercise agency to mobilise their infrastructural surroundings and overcome certain infrastructural deficiencies they encounter, with the aim of improving studying/living quality while inhabiting immobilities in a transnational context. As such, this paper challenges the oppositional nature of mobility and immobility, arguing that immobility is not the 'flip side' to mobility or an outcome by default, and that being immobile can be affirming and empowering. Essentially, the paper brings this infrastructurally sensitive theoretical approach into international student mobility (ISM) studies, shifting the focus from examining how infrastructures move people to how they enable people to stay, and to how they are lived and reconstructed at an everyday level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits conventional wisdom on US degree premiums for immigrant workers and shows that, despite the benefits of a US degree, migration policies and substandard labor conditions contribute to international student motivations to return home. Using two original datasets, I find that about a third of Indian-born US graduates leave the US, seeking employment opportunities abroad and a respite from US work visa restrictions. I draw on 105 in-depth interviews and 7,177 employment histories constructed from LinkedIn, and the analysis demonstrates the use of digital data to shed new light on under-studied patterns of return migration in institutional perspective. I find that US work visas are related to the underemployment of immigrant workers, and gaps in visa availability are associated with US labor market departure for Indian international students. At the same time, foreign employers reward skills and credentials developed in the US, and the results suggest that US degrees carry a higher premium in foreign labor markets. The paper emphasizes the role of institutions in the skilled migration system and identifies disjunctures in US migration policy. I identify opportunities for policy reform to improve immigrant labor conditions and increase the retention of US-educated migrants in the US labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pandemics refract sociopolitical tensions within societies and highlight how national belonging hinges on informal performances as much as legal status. While return migration has become a common practice and institutionalized strategy of state development, little scholarly work has probed how domestic populations view returnees and their claims to national membership. Using a large-scale, pre-registered online survey experiment deploying a give-or-take Dictator Game, this paper leverages the dynamics of COVID-19 to explore how Chinese nationals envision and treat returnees. First, our results illustrate that the Chinese population imagines returnees as a group of elites with substantial social and financial capital, even though returnees are a socio-economically diverse population. Next, by applying information priming, we demonstrate that Chinese nationals discriminated against overseas returnees during the pandemic and that this behavior was not primarily driven by fears of viral contagion. Finally, using mediation analysis, we show that participants' differential behavior towards returnees can largely be explained by participants' perceptions of returnees' class status and adherence to key markers of national membership. Ultimately, this paper broadens our understanding of the informal dynamics of national membership and intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores and compares the formation of choice-based citizenship between locally-born Hong Kong natives and Chinese immigrants. Unlike the conventional ‘duty-bound’ concept of citizenship, choice-based citizenship emphasises the autonomy of citizens to practice the civic virtues they consider important, rather than merely fulfilling conventional civic duties. It is considered a more progressive norm of citizenship. With results from a population survey (N = 1,066), this paper argues that while the formation of choice-based citizenship among Hong Kong natives is primarily driven by generational change, similar to what most Western societies have experienced, Hong Kong’s domestic factors play a significant role in the formation of choice-based citizenship among Chinese immigrants. Among these immigrants, choice-based citizenship is associated with their attitudes towards mass protests and news consumption through online media. Furthermore, the moderation effect presented in this paper reveals indications of the cultivation of choice-based citizenship through exposure to television news. By examining the formation of choice-based citizenship, this paper contributes to the exploration of how political socialisation occurs among migrants moving from a relatively authoritarian country to a host country with a relatively liberal environment and established democratic norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on research conducted with platform delivery workers in Washington D.C., this paper builds on the work of scholars committed to both describing and challenging the degrading conditions that so often define the gig economy. Acknowledging the importance of both employee classification and citizenship status to understanding the plight of platform-based migrant workers, this paper directs attention to the distinction that platform companies draw between what counts as work and what counts as waiting. This distinction is not only central to understanding the degrading nature of gig work, but to understanding the logic of what we describe as the fulfilment city – a city organized around the promise and potential of one-click, same day, or even same hour, delivery services. We end by arguing that questions of waiting and fulfillment are important for migration scholars concerned with the formation of 'immigrant counterpublics'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration towards the EU has passed for many decades via Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, using Ukraine and Belarus as transit states, yet it adopted new forms under Russia’s intensified ‘hybrid’ warfare, and its 2022 military invasion of Ukraine. This paper seeks to uncover: (1) how formal policies and informal practices were interconnected in the governing of the migration ‘crisis’ on the EU’s eastern border with Belarus (2021–2023); and (2) what different modes of power were used to govern it. The paper advances a polycentric governance perspective. It demonstrates that crisis governance was not simply pursued by the Belarussian government and the EU as direct parties to the conflict. It involved a plethora of other stakeholders including Middle Eastern states, Russia, and travel agencies as non-state actors, all entangled in specific relationships with one another. This paper’s contribution is to show how relational dynamics among these stakeholders governed the crisis via a mixture of formal and informal practices that entailed different levels of coersion. The polycentric perspective advanced here is more useful when studying crisis governance than statist, multilevel governance, or EU-centric approaches emphasising institutional logics, as it emphasises relations among actors, and the power that shapes these relations and the governance system as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a qualitative research project examining the dating narratives of single migrant men residing in Sweden and Italy. The study, analyzing 48 interviews with individuals from Syrian, Polish, Bangladeshi and Romanian backgrounds, along with ethnographic observations, employs a theoretical framework rooted in sexual capital theory and critical studies on men and masculinities. The analysis sheds light on the challenges faced by heterosexual single migrant men in their pursuit of intimate partners, attributing these difficulties to lower levels of social, economic and cultural capital, as well as the influence of their specific masculinities, which may be perceived as less attractive within the host societies. The paper argues that the migrant experience can be viewed as a distinctive sexual field wherein individuals encounter unique dynamics and obstacles in the realm of intimate relationships. The implications of these findings extend beyond the personal experiences of migrant men, offering insights into the broader socio-cultural landscape of host societies and the complex interplay between migration, masculinity and intimate relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on in-depth biographical interviews with foreign scholars in China (hereafter 'FSC'), this paper examines the impact of various infrastructural interruptions on the transnational lives of mobile individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores how the labour of maintenance and resourceful quick-fixes employed by FSC constitute infrastructuring strategies in times of isolation and uncertainty. Specifically, the paper first asks how specific COVID-19-induced infrastructural barriers, such as tightened visa policies, mandatory PCR testing for border crossing, and suspended flights, intersect with the (im)mobility experiences and trajectories of FSC. Second, the paper investigates how these individuals navigate and cope with infrastructural glitches by fashioning a set of infrastructuring strategies to maintain transnational lives within the pandemic context. In doing so, this paper develops a deeper understanding of not only the generative but also destructive capacities of infrastructural processes in terms of their transformative effects on migrant identities, aspirations and lived experiences, further revealing the fragility, incompleteness and situationality embedded in migration infrastructures. More critically, this paper theorises how infrastructural interruptions constitute the necessary social-temporal conditions in which individuals' infrastructuring strategies emerge through acts of waiting, adaptation and maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs data from the 2021 UK census to initially explore sub-state (English, Welsh) national identities among minority ethnic groups. This shows that these identities remain much more exclusive of people in minority groups than is a British identity, and that this exclusion is particularly marked with respect to English identity. The analysis then builds on this observation using similar data to examine English identification among the White British ‘majority’ in a ‘superdiverse’ city – London. Attributes which are typically shared by London boroughs in which identification as English deviates most from the national average, and multi-variable analysis which considers the ethnic structure of the borough in which an individual lives alongside other key factors (age, education, social class) suggest differences in identification between people living in boroughs that are characterised by more established and extensive ethnic diversity and those in boroughs transitioning from a previously more homogeneous (white) ethnic structure. In exploring how the articulation of a specific national identity might relate to ethnically-diverse or ‘superdiverse’ contexts, the paper uniquely contributes to recent research which calls for a stronger focus on how people who do not belong to migrant-minority groups might respond to living in such contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how research on gendered violence among Brazilian migrant women in London has been translated through a range of creative engagements. It argues that these can challenge traditional forms of knowledge production, and advance intersectional feminist struggles through a logic of translocation. Yet it also challenges homogenous artistic encounters through developing 'creative translation pathways' which delineate different configurations of how researchers, artists, and participants using varied art forms. The paper focuses on two 'creative translation pathways' that capture different interpretative framings around the same research project. The first reflects a curatorial perspective through Gaël Le Cornec's verbatim theatre play, Efêmera, which foregrounds her interpretation of Brazilian women's stories adding a metatheatrical dimension to strengthen the narrative and connection with the audience. The second is a co-produced collaborative engagement, We Still Fight in the Dark, with community drama group, Migrants in Action, based around experimental workshops to produce an audio-visual film and installation where survivors' perspectives and well-being are paramount. While both creative translation pathways reflected translocational feminist goals in raising awareness around gendered violence with a view to transform them, each had tensions around the individual, collective, artistic and therapeutic logics in the process of knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017 an exhibition of over 100 craft pieces created by Chilean political prisoners held in concentration camps during the military dictatorship, was launched in the UK along with an accompanying short film, 'Crafting Resistance: the Art of Chilean Political Prisoners'. Drawing on these arts-based interventions, the paper reflects on the use of craft objects both as a symbol of political resistance and a means of initiating difficult conversations around forced political exile, trauma and mental health while creating space for people to 'tell their stories'. Indeed, the paper contends that projects such as Crafting Resistance can 'care for knowledge' through the curation of craftwork while simultaneously creating space for counter memories. The analysis also highlights the changing relationship between the craft makers and the craftwork, argueing that placing the craft objects within the exhibition assigns a new role to the objects as they became part of a display of collective memories and potentially contribute towards collective healing. Finally, the paper advocates for greater recognition of the historical use of craft as a political expression, which to date has been relatively neglected in debates around the use of arts-based research and methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the process of co-producing an animated film about the migration journeys of Colombian women resident in Antofagasta, Chile. It first establishes the relationship between feminist epistemologies and arts-based methodologies, which hinges on embodiment. It then turns to a detailed discussion of using film co-production as a research method for accessing and expressing embodied experiences of migration. This discussion highlights how moments of discomfort (Gokariksel, Hawkins, Neubert, and Smith, 2021) experienced by the researcher motivated the search for a more collaborative methodological approach that was better attuned to lived experience. This included striving towards more inclusive practices with respect to recruitment, anonymity, and confidentiality. Moments of discomfort also revealed how care and caring responsibilities are entangled with research, and how they gender possibilities of participation and production for community co-producers and artists, as well as for researchers. Finally, through discomfort, lessons were learned about the politics of representing experiences of migration, violence, and endurance, as well as joy. The paper concludes that, whilst by no means a panacea, collaborative arts-based research methods can offer an innovative toolset for exploring embodied experience and for navigating the relational and representational complexities attendant to research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the issues of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS), and its predecessor, New Community, published during the period 1991–2010. Its main focus is on the changing geographical distribution of content, both for the ‘host’ countries of immigrants and the ‘sending’ countries of emigrants. Evidence is presented to show a shift away from a focus on the UK and Europe, with more material on other host-country contexts (North America, Australia); nevertheless, even at the end of the two-decade period, Europe still accounted for three-quarters of the host-country papers. A broadly similar pattern is evident when authors’ countries of institutional affiliation are tabulated. Concerning the geography of sending countries, we find a decline in articles on ‘traditional’ sending regions such as the Caribbean and South Asia, and a rise in the number of articles on the ‘newer’ sending regions—Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. We also note a progressive feminisation of the authorship of JEMS articles: from two-thirds’ male authorship during the 1990s to parity by the end of the 2000s. The final part of the paper makes selective comparison, based on authors’ geographical affiliation, between published and rejected papers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This editorial introduction briefly sets the context for the special issue and its constituent papers. It notes the origins of the debate in discourses of 'parallel lives' and 'sleepwalking into segregation' and highlights the inherently problematic nature both of the terminology and of attempts to measure segregation and integration. Key issues which arise from the papers which follow are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the engagement of non-state actors (NSAs) in regional migration policy processes in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). It identifies four categories of NSAs – non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society organisations (CSOs), academia and the media – as the key actors engaged in regional migration governance processes in West Africa. The paper adopts a social constructivist approach and a multilevel perspective, drawing on interviews, surveys and an extensive analysis of ECOWAS policy documents. The paper argues that invented, invited and instrumentalised spaces for engagement between state and non-state actors in ECOWAS manifest in a complex web of regional and national interests contributing to regional migration governance from 'below'. Regional migration governance from below consists of transnational societal networks characterised by the interactions of NSAs across borders to influence policies and practices at the regional level. The analysis reveals that NSA engagement results in reinforcing regional policies, policy diffusion through regional processes and circumventing restrictive national agendas through adopting innovative regional approaches. These results contribute to strengthening the institutional framework for regional migration governance in West Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between citizenship and belonging through empirical analysis of citizens' narratives. Specifically, through analysis of interview narratives produced with twenty-six white British citizens, the paper explores whether/how citizenship is recognised as a basis for national membership by those for whom citizenship and national belonging are largely taken for granted. In doing so, the paper sheds new light on the meaning and significance of citizenship within informal economies of national belonging and draws critical attention to the role of discursive recognition in sustaining hierarchies of belonging. The paper finds that formal status has limited significance as a practical marker of belonging and that, even where citizenship is constructed as significant, its significance is often undermined. It concludes that citizenship on its own is insufficient to guarantee substantive national belonging in the sense of being recognised and included as belonging to a national community and does not necessarily legitimise more ambiguous claims to national belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses race, racialisation and whiteness in relation to Eastern European migrants living in Western Europe. Focusing on Poles in the UK, it examines both Polish migrants' experiences of racism as well as their own investment into racial exclusions of other racialised groups. The paper interrogates how migrants navigate their peripheral whiteness in broader racial hierarchies of Eastern European in-betweenness that are both historically rooted and constantly negotiated. Benefitting from relatively easy access to the UK, Polish migrants occupy at once a racially privileged and racially marginal position that echoes historical tensions around the place of Eastern Europe in wider racial hierarchies of Europeanness. While being white enough to engage in racial exclusions Eastern Europeans are at the same time not white enough to escape racialisation. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Poles in the UK conducted between 2019–2020 the paper offers insight into complex racialising practices of Polish migrants when they are both racialised and able to benefit from their position as 'paler migrants' to distance themselves from other migrants as well as 'darker citizens'. It contributes to scholarship on racialisation of East–West movers within Europe, in-betweenness and whiteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processes of acculturation occur when there is a need to reconcile minority identity with the hegemonic majority culture. What acculturation strategies do minority students adopt in social contexts that are not dominated by either the minority or majority cultures? In order to address this question, this paper offers an ethnographic account of three classes of Arab-Palestinian minority high school students aged 15–17 over the course of 21 months in Israel before, during and after participation in a programme designed to increase understanding of and exposure to the innovation sector. I argue that this curricular programming, which exposes students to internationalisation, globalisation and multinationalism, constitutes a 'third space' that is distinct from both the Arab-Palestinian home/family context and the hegemony of Jewish-majority society in Israel. Within this third space, some Arab-Palestinian students adopt strategies of acculturation that are distinct from their strategies in mainstream Israeli society. The opportunity to partially circumvent or leave the context of Israeli society within third spaces facilitates this distinction. The paper accordingly develops a schema that links theories of acculturation to third space theory, and provides empirical examples of how third spaces can facilitate unique strategies of acculturation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools in migrant-sending contexts often educate many children whose parents live abroad and decide to 'leave' or 'send' their children to be raised 'back home'. Yet there has been little attention to how transnational child-raising is enacted by non-kin actors within educational institutions. This paper addresses this absence, exploring Lagos private schools as crucial sites of care for children with parents in the diaspora. Examining educators' perspectives on schooling children 'sent back' to Nigeria from the UK and USA, the paper argues that they undertake intensive and strategic projects of transnational child-raising. They act as defacto guardians and position their educational offerings as highly moral in ways that draw on endogenous notions of 'training' good character, but are not driven by reproducing tradition. Rather, they play intermediary roles in transnational families: they aim to realise parents' desires for respectful, disciplined children who excel academically, yet are also attuned to young people's struggles. They are conscious of diaspora realities and understand their schools' roles as portals facing both ways in the transnational social field, preparing young people for multiple possible futures. The paper demonstrates that exploring education as a site of social reproduction can be richly revealing of the dynamics of transnationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature on older refugees has primarily focused on the experiences of those living in more developed countries in the global North. This paper examines later-life experiences in displacement settings and the global South by discussing the East Timorese case in West Timor, Indonesia. In considering how the ageing and forced migation nexus manifests in a Southern context, the paper argues that global, regional and local histories matter and profoundly shape older people's ageing and displacement processes. Specifically, they produce multiple gendered marginalities and possibilities relating to older persons' perceived (im)mobility to travel to their places of origin and the meanings they attach to place. Although East Timorese people's experiences of displacement and resettlement are diverse, the male perspective often takes precedence in scholarly and public discourse. This article thus zooms into older East Timorese women's experiences and how after over two decades of living in Indonesia, the conditions shaping their everyday lives remain deeply entangled and are negotiated within the gendered narratives of displacement and citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waiting is often perceived as an inactive or static period and is mostly linked to a hope for a better future among youth. This paper pays special attention to older internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Cameroon and how they use their experiences, knowledge, and capabilities to create new livelihoods as they 'wait' to return to their original homes. Specifically, the paper elucidates how 'aged' care for family members, create new jobs, do old jobs in a new manner, or 'do nothing' at all. Special attention is paid to the reconfiguration of family life and relationships, as well as to gender roles and shifting (in)dependencies. This paper goes beyond the notion of older people as vulnerable, inactive or frail, and highlights that work and activity at an older age generate new forms of mobility, resources and new ideas about the future. Drawing on ethnographic research among internally displaced families in Bafoussam, the Francophone capital of the West region of Cameroon, this paper illustrates that the condition of 'waiting' is productively and actively shaped by Anglophone IDPs who dynamically combine practices of the past with their present status, as well as notions about their still-uncertain future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences of opinion between family members are familiar narratives for many people. When family tensions involve racist talk, how do family members navigate this? This paper asks: (1) What strategies do family members use to challenge racist talk within their own family? and (2) What effects do these strategies have on (a) on-going racist talk, (b) family practices and (c) broader social change around racism? In Australia, where this project was based, anti-racism campaigns often advocate for individual contestations of racism, but their effects on the structures of racism are not well known. This paper identifies four strategies used to challenge racist talk in families including (1) undertaking safe critique, (2) humour, (3) direct confrontation or violence and (4) reference to personal / familial experiences of racism. I found that individual contestations of racist talk within families may, at times, shift family practices (Morgan 2011) away from expressions of racism, or further the development of race literacy amongst some family members. However, this was very much a minority response to individual contestations of racist talk. To create social change, this paper highlights the critical need for activity that much more broadly seeks to dismantle racist structures and institutionalized racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little attention has been focused on how the differing features of 'superdiverse' neighbourhoods shape the demographic process of 'staying'. Through drawing on research conducted in two different superdiverse neighbourhoods in the city of Birmingham, UK, the paper highlights how 'staying' is an inherent feature of superdiverse neighbourhoods and which is actively practised by migrants and non-migrants alike. Empirically, the paper identifies how staying is informed by a number of features associated with superdiverse neighbourhoods, such as local infrastructure and visible population diversity, as well as relational proximity to other areas (of the city), including the significance of city centre spaces and their role as multicultural spaces of adaptation. Conceptually, the paper informs recent work on 'arrival infrastructures' and 'differentiated embedding' for migrant (and non-migrant) settlement and provides new insights into the territorial, relational and temporal aspects of staying. This includes the importance of neighbourhood histories in staying processes, and which hitherto have been relatively neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aspiration-capability framework introduces four (im)mobility categories – mobility, voluntary immobility, involuntary immobility and acquiescent immobility – which have received considerable attention. However, few studies have examined how people move across such categories. Drawing on the migration experiences of 17 self-identified Latin American gay individuals, this paper shows how prospective migrants can be pushed into a state of involuntary immobility by their families, and how they can adapt to overcome immobility and fulfill their migration aspirations. The article finds, firstly, that heteronormative values and familial expectations regarding sexuality shape the possibility of mobilizing the family's economic, informative and emotional resources. Secondly, I discuss the adaptation strategies that individuals use to surpass involuntary immobility. To understand movement across (im)mobility categories, as well as the role of social boundaries for migration, this paper differentiates between individual and collective migration aspirations and capabilities. In doing so, the article introduces an approach to explore how interactions between social groups and their individual group members shape the (im)mobility projects of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been exponential growth in research about the impact of Brexit on the plans and projects of EU migrants in the UK. Much research focuses on highly visible migrants, such as the Poles. By focusing on French highly skilled migrants in London, our paper offers the perspectives of those who, prior to the referendum, were relatively invisible and largely absent from anti-immigration discourses. In so doing, we consider how the shock of Brexit exposed but also threatened the previously taken for granted privileges enjoyed by this capital-rich migrant population. Moreover, our longitudinal data, gathered through repeated interviews over seven years (2011–2018), enables analysis of how participants' experiences and evaluations of life and work in the UK changed, over time, in response to Brexit. In analysing these longitudinal qualitative data from an under-researched migrant group, this paper also aims to advance our concept of embedding, in its differentiation across political, economic and relational domains, to understand change over time. Specifically, this paper advances understanding of how processes of embedding, both in their reflexive and tacit forms, frame the complex and nuanced ways in which our French highly skilled participants have experienced, made sense of, and responded to, Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the historical antecedents, character and implications of Assam’s National Register of Citizens as a socio-legal instrument. It seeks to understand how dominant nationalisms and the state produce volatile paper citizenship regimes, and use law – as a reified transcendental performance of social will – to construct the ‘minority citizen’ through categories of ‘belonging’ and ‘citizenship’. The paper does this by analysing three typologies of the law-society interaction. First, it examines what/who is a citizen from within law. Second, it critiques the mythology of law by giving an account of belonging and suffering of minority citizens without law. Third, it foregrounds peripheral subjectivities by offering an account of minority citizenship beyond law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyse forms of belonging and un-belonging created in a situation of permanent liminal legality in one’s place of residence. The concept of liminal legality zooms in on spaces of social existence in everyday lives in a context of legal ambiguity. The focus of the paper is Eritrean and Ethiopian migrant communities who resided in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in 2021. The majority had lived in Khartoum for decades, or were even born there, but remain without any hope for full legal status or citizenship in Khartoum. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants, I analyse the complex and ambiguous forms of belonging and un-belonging this liminal legality produces, and how aspirations are created and shaped by it. I argue that in certain aspects of everyday life, liminal legality does not hinder a social existence as quasi-citizens of Khartoum. At the same time, important aspirations are being curtailed by liminal legality. This creates forms of un-belonging that undermine social existence. I conclude that migrants are subject to the enduring power of the nation-state in defining who belongs and who is excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before COVID-19, visitors from China, were a prime target for the European tourism industries. Yet, their mobility was constrained by the Schengen visa requirement for any trip to a European Union (EU)’s Member States. While the literature on Schengen visa policy has highlighted the repressive practices of street-level bureaucrats processing visa applications abroad, this article seeks to understand how Schengen visa policy is implemented when the objective is to attract potential visitors rather than drive them away. The paper argues that the economic imperative to attract Chinese tourists to Europe is turning local consular cooperation from Schengen into local consular competition. To support this claim and using ethnographic methods as well as a relational approach to implementation, the paper develops the concept of visa marketing to analyse the race to attractiveness between French and Italian consulates based in Beijing, the capital of China. Visa marketing refers to the use of visa procedures (receipt conditions, reliability, processing speed, etc.) by consulates as sales arguments to advertise the destination they represent. In essence, the article presents a case of domestic actors appropriating common visa regimes, engaging in competition to entice foreign consumers to their territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article raises two questions: (1) how do formal policies and informal practices intersect in coercing returns of migrants without legal immigration status, refused asylum seekers and those unlikely to get asylum? (2) how do migrants at risk of return navigate the coercion they are exposed to? Focusing on the entanglement of formal and informal practices, we develop a typology of involuntary returns, distinguishing among pushing, imposing, and incentivising policies and practices. This typology invites us to see nuances in the forced and voluntary return dichotomy because coercive practices of implementation are embedded in all these types, but the level of coercion varies in different situations. The paper also investigates how migrants exercise agency by contesting/resisting or complying with the return procedures. The article contributes to the scholarship on returns by unpacking formal and informal policy and practice dynamics and migrant agency. Empirically, the paper is based on observations and documentation of practices derived from field research and 97 interviews conducted with returnees from EU countries and Turkey to Albania, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan between 2018 and 2023. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the issue of institutional discrimination in relation to the welfare access of migrant minorities in Italy, with a specific focus on the subnational level. Adopting a socio-legal approach that is based on a series of lawsuits, it discusses the role of pro bono legal advocacy in identifying and removing bans introduced by territorial administrations against migrant minorities. First, the paper examines what kind of explicit and implicit criteria of exclusion were introduced. Second, it explores the reasons behind, highlighting why and how «Italians first» has become a widespread welfare politics at subnational level as well as to what extent such sentiment has led to an obstinate resistance for the application of anti-discriminatory principles. Third, the paper brings to the attention the series of obstacles that pro bono lawyers encounter in their activity, showing which problems influence their mission against institutional discrimination in Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to the other papers in this special issue, this paper reflects a specific case of co-agency between states and individual migrants, particularly students and alumni networks. Based on a qualitative case study with 29 Georgian students and 14 institutions and organizations, this paper explores the impact of Georgian alumni on polity building in Georgia. Here we can observe two phases: Firstly, the states of Georgia and of Germany act as co-agents by facilitating migration to young Georgian students by financing their studies in Germany (student scholarships) with the objective that the students return and transfer their knowledge to the country of origin. Subsequently, the Georgian alumni who studied law in Germany act as co-agents between different institutions in both countries. In doing so, they transform state institutions by themselves and contribute to the development of the legal and political system in Georgia. They do that particularly in such important legal fields like constitutional law, civic law, and criminal law, but also in the creation of parliamentarism based on a bicameral system or the promotion of separation of church and state in Georgia. That takes place after return migration as well as from Germany through transnational networks and mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potentiality of converting capitals in new national fields following migration has been the focus of a number of studies. Another, much smaller, literature examines experiences of return migration. In this paper, we follow 15 Israeli families (where both mothers and children have been interviewed) who have been globally mobile for professional reasons. We examine cultural capital accumulation strategies for the children and how these facilitate the occupation of advantageous social positions while abroad. Having returned to Israel, partly due to the COVID pandemic, the national cultural capital the families have so actively cultivated in their children is evaluated as not authentic enough. Meanwhile, the cosmopolitan cultural capital that has been so valorised abroad, is not recognised as something the children can draw on to position themselves either. The paper contributes to the study of return migration, with a unique focus on globally mobile families returning ‘home’. We also examine how national cultural capital is conceived and differentially assessed as families move from a more transnational space to that of their home country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the extraterritorial processes of migration governance has developed a strong focus on immigration states’ externalisation management and the diaspora strategies of emigration states. In labour migration, the scholarship on migrant-sending states has largely focused on the systematic processes of recruitment and employment of migrant workers; in contrast, the question of how migrant workers are extraterritorially governed in return has received less attention, despite its importance for understanding migration governance beyond sending country jurisdiction. This paper contributes to this area of research by investigating how migrant workers are repatriated from host countries during disruptions. Using assemblage thinking as analytical lens, I consider repatriation as an extraterritorial, emergent process, shaped by the relations among state and non-state actors, material and technological resources, and the role of street-level actors. Focusing on the case of the Philippines, I draw from over 30 key informant interviews with repatriation actors to examine how the exit stage of the repatriation process is constructed, mobilised and negotiated for Filipino migrant workers, in ways that reveal the possibilities and challenges of migrant protection in host countries. The paper shows how assemblage and street level analysis can illuminate the different ways migration processes emerge amid disturbances in extraterritorial space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number of asylum seekers grew, and flight stories became more complex, many Western governments deployed national research units, tasked with producing reliable Country of Origin Information (COI) to assist officials, judges and policy-makers in decision-making. Building on ethnographic research at Staatendokumentation, the COI unit at the Austrian Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum, the paper argues that country research practices can best be understood as 'tinkering' – e.g. making use of know-how, equipment, material sources at disposal to produce workable COI in conditions of uncertainty. The concept of tinkering is derived from science and technology studies (STS) and brings into view how the research professionals cobble together a workable version of reality with the methodologies and materials at hand. Moreover, it highlights how country research involves continuous modification and adjustments to satisfy the needs of the unwitting case officer as the end-user of COI reports. Finally, using insights from feminist science and technology studies, the paper shows how country experts foster care for some things – i.e. the workload of case officers – at the expense of others – i.e. the experience of the asylum seeker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of migrants and the creation of data identities lies at the core of datafied forms of migration and border control. In recent years, Frontex has made identification to one of its key tasks and conducted so-called screenings in many EU member states. Yet only little is known about the screening materials in use. Based on an ethnographic inquiry of Frontex' data practices, this paper analyses Frontex booklets, dossiers, questionnaires, images, and forms and studies how they structure the situation of identification. Making use of research in science and technology studies and recent research on suspicion and credibility assessment, it argues that those materials not only compile information but work as socio-material devices of suspicion that render migrants into fraudsters and translate peoples' actions, stories, and performances into accounts of truthfulness or deceit. As devices, they frame cases, script interactions, code statements, create stigmata of belonging, and produce purified accounts, and thus enact multiple forms of suspicion. The paper concludes with a critical reflection about the credibility of those materials and speculates about how devices could be designed otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the legal rhythms and temporalities of migration on the specific temporalities of family life, under conditions of enforced temporariness. It apprehends enforced temporariness as a mode of governance infused with chronopolitics, which – by producing specific experiences of time – deprives migrants of the right/capacity to lead their family lives according to their plans and aspirations. Through a focus on highly qualified third-country nationals holding temporary visas in Belgium, it shows that these experiences of time result from the friction between the institutional timescale of administrative procedures and policies, and migrants' everyday and biographic timescales. Starting from the administrative timescales of highly-skilled migrants, the paper describes the existing Belgian migration legislation, with a focus on administrative procedures. It then explores the specific experiences of time those procedures generate, by highlighting different kinds of friction migrants experience as well as their effects. It presents some of the ways these migrants cope with them, and concludes by highlighting the fruitfulness of applying a friction lens to the study of intersecting timescales. [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]

Amid the normalisation of xenophobic narratives surrounding migration, and an overarching 'hostile environment' regulating asylum in Britain, this paper explores music-making as a unique lens to highlight the negotiation of belonging, uncertainty and marginality amongst a group of fifty forced migrants in Bristol. Through a focus addressing the nexus between power, affect and the everyday, this paper discusses how the dehumanising processes that characterise the British asylum regime operate in and through the spaces, bodies and objects constituting its 'ordinary' materiality. Concurrently, this paper addresses how the entanglement of bodies, 'things' and sounds emerging from the co-creation of weekly music groups enabled the group participants to negotiate pleasure, expression and sociality in a context of enforced marginality and uncertainty. Consequently, this paper discusses the music-making sessions as affective practices of diasporic belonging: relationalities arising from multiple forms of displacement that enabled momentary, but productive domains of sociability, co-presence and solidarity beyond ethnic, national, gendered and religious lines. The conclusions consider the contributions of theoretical approaches enabling researchers (and potentially advocates and community organisers) to recognise the stakes and significance of forced migrants' (in)visible forms of sociality that take place beside the discursive and institutional frames of State and humanitarian interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The kafala system of migrant sponsorship prevalent in the Middle East has long been the subject of scholarly and public scrutiny, due to the high level of reported abuse of migrant workers. Prevalent analyses of the kafalaview it as a rentier system that offers economic opportunities for both non-national migrant workers and citizen sponsor-employers, despite the inherent structural asymmetries that bias the overall economic benefits towards the latter. However, the racialised incorporation of African and Asian migrant workers within the kafala is rarely considered in such analyses. Drawing on intersectional, critical race perspectives, this paper 'de-centres the white gaze' in the scholarship on race and migration by first, shifting the geographic locus outside Europe/America to analyse racialisation of migrant workers in the Middle East, and second, by drawing on scholars from the global South who theorise systematic humiliation as a manifestation of deeply unequal societies. The paper illuminates the operation of the kafala as a racially stratified occupational hierarchy of migrant workers that is legitimated by an hegemonic ideology and practices of degradation, diffused coercion and state enforcement. The paper also 'de-exceptionalises the Middle East' to argue that while these racialised hierarchies of difference in the kafala sustain and expand the possibilities of capitalist accumulation through the expropriation of migrant labour, they are not unique to the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy makers and practitioners usually focus on three durable solutions for IDPs to overcome protracted displacement; return, resettlement and local integration. Based on empirical realities, this paper asks to what extent translocality can be seen as another solution. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from the city of Bukavu in eastern DRC, we explore how translocality is shaped in practice and how it helps people to overcome protracted displacement. Translocality of Bukavu's IDPs is mostly oriented towards the community of origin. We argue that this translocality requires mobility or connectivity, or a combination thereof. Mobilisation of resources in the community of origin can then contribute to the livelihoods of urban IDPs, but restraining forces beyond the control of IDPs can make this a risky and costly strategy that is not necessarily sustainable. Although translocality can address the livelihoods challenges related to protracted displacement, it cannot solve all challenges related to displacement. The paper concludes that translocality should – at most – be seen as a semi-durable and partial solution to move out of protractedness rather than as a durable solution to displacement in itself; however, addressing some of the restraining forces could make it a more durable solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Syrian crisis began in 2011 in Daràa, near the southern-Syrian border, with the first refugees coming into Jordan thereafter. Over the course of the following years, nearly one million Syrian refugees migrated to Jordan and still reside there, some in the same areas in which they first settled. These settlement patterns are often portrayed in simplistic narratives of Syrian migration that emphasise mobility in a straightforward trajectory. This paper aims to unsettle such narratives by examining the role of Syrian family networks in mobility in Jordan's northern region, particularly in and between the cities of Mafraq and Irbid, as well as the Zaatari refugee camp. Based on mixed methods, this paper examines the network factors that made Jordan the country of preference and possibility for settlement, the family networks involved in domestic mobility within Jordan, and their influences on aspirations and worries about future movements. Ultimately, the paper finds that pre-crisis economic, social, and familial networks were often employed at key decision-making moments throughout Jordan in mobility trajectories. As time has progressed, however, Syrians in Jordan reported challenges to social capital in the form of mobility assistance from their long-standing family networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late-2000s, Canada has admitted an increasing number of foreign workers with various temporary work permits to meet local labour shortages and growing labour market demands. The rise of temporary migrants has accompanied with a policy shift, from one-step to two-step immigration, to facilitate the retention of former temporary foreign workers and international graduates who had obtained Canadian work experience and credentials. Imposing specific regulations, the policies have created a relatively privileged class of high-skilled workers who have more labour rights and transition pathways than their low-skilled counterparts. Using the analytical framework of regulated and flexible temporariness, this paper examines how unequal regulations are applied to govern the labour market participation and transition of these two groups of migrant workers. Based on secondary sources, the analysis assesses how different notions of temporariness are produced within the Canadian temporary migration programme and the two-step immigration model. This paper also contributes to shedding light on how the pandemic crisis has influenced the emerging debates on temporariness and the recent policy responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]