Search

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article considers how distanciation, understood as the active production of different forms of distance as a method of control, is used to manage people racialised and criminalised as migrants within the UK's hostile environment. Analysing different policies introduced under the hostile environment agenda, as well as the more recent New Plan for Immigration, we argue distanciation is a key tactic that shapes these policies and their implementation as well as offers us insight into changing forms of governing migration. Drawing on the analysis of a wide range of policy documents, the paper attends to different forms of distanciation used as a method of control within the UK's wider hostile environment and then presents the results of a case-study of how distanciation is mobilised within the English National Health Service, under the Migrant and Visitor Cost Recovery Programme in particular, which was introduced in 2014 to ensure the NHS receives 'a fair contribution' from people racialised as migrants. Addressing different forms of distanciation such as – spatial, legal and emotional – we argue that the lens of distance can offer insights into how detachment – increasing distance between different agents in immigration law and border enforcement is an intentional design to control empathy, solidarity and resistance. Tracing ways these forms of distanciation are designed into legislative and administrative measures helps us better understand how hostile environment policies work as well as locating agencies and possibilities of resistance within different spaces, agents and subjects of bordering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the dramatic evacuation from Kabul airport in August 2021, the UK government proclaimed its commitment to a 'warm welcome' for Afghans. In this paper we draw on original qualitative research to explore the emerging experiences of evacuees, and other recent arrivals, during their first year in London. Using the narratives of our Afghans participants, as well as insights from key stakeholders, we show how they navigated slow, opaque bureaucratic processes and lack of communication with official agencies. As a result of these lengthy processes, many thousands of evacuees remained in temporary hotel accommodation for protracted periods. Drawing on the concept of 'everyday bordering', we explore the extent to which Afghan resettlement policies are achieving their objectives. We consider how such policies are birthed within a punitive immigration system, which is designed to 'wear down' migrants in the UK, regardless of their reason for migration. Moreover, we argue that the ad hoc response of the Home Office and the Foreign Office has created 'false distinctions' between categories of Afghan refugees, reinforcing notions of 'deserving' versus 'underserving' migrants. This distinction allows the government to present itself as humanitarian, 'rescuing' people from Afghanistan, while simultaneously maintaining its commitment to the 'hostile immigration environment'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper has two complementary objectives. First, it sustains an analysis of the concept of 'coloniality' that accounts for the epistemic imbalance in the modern world, demonstrating precisely how Africa is adversely affected, having been caught up in the throes of coloniality and its epistemic implications. Second – and complementarily – the paper attempts to bring this very concept of 'coloniality' into the discourse on Africa's emigration crisis, arguing that Africa's emigration crisis is traceable, inter alia, to the epistemic imbalance in the very structure of modernity. This imbalance results from the stifling of Africa's epistemic resources under Western epistemic hegemony. Epistemic coloniality, of course interacting with some material factors, creates a sufficient condition for emigration. It is further theorized that the apparent lack of epistemic will on the part of Africans to mobilize some surviving epistemic resources to address some problems on their own is also a function of coloniality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The transnational circulation of intimate care is increasingly mediated by digital communications. Research conceptualizing long-distance emotional intimacy in terms of 'care chains' has been influential in understanding international care economies. Yet, this framework has limitations for theorizing the role of media in communications of care. With a focus on the 'left-behind' family members of Romanian economic migrants, this paper investigates how the use of social media apps and mobile devices within the context of a major intra-EU labor migration phenomenon helps people stay in touch with their transnationally mobile loved ones. It draws on interview material elicited among the close family members of Romanian labor migrants living in Bucharest and surrounding areas. The analysis focuses on the sensory role of social media platforms and the materiality of smartphones in shaping relations of long-distance emotional care. Showing how video calling and photo sharing practices produce emotional experiences that are specific to contemporary combinations of platform-device technicity and social sensitization, the paper argues for conceptualizing transnational care as a mediated emotional experience. By theorizing the role of media in how care is not merely transferred but felt through mediation, the paper demonstrates how media practices produce a techno-emotional mediation of transnational care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, images of boats crossing or sinking in the Mediterranean have become extremely familiar to European publics. What is less familiar is the processes through which those boats are re-purposed, becoming artistic or even commodified goods once they reach a port of landing. Caught between being considered waste and valuable objects, these debris have been moved and re-purposed with scarce acknowledgement of the political work that these practices perform. This paper argues that practices of translation transform objects into waste or valuables and reveal crucial fault lines in the politics of migration – such as the limits of a politics of posthumous commemoration and the de-politicisation of border deaths. Translation works through a wide variety of professional practices and the assembling of value, which informs the staging of materials as waste or as valuables. By analysing the case of the art installation Barca Nostra, this article rethinks the role of migratory debris and the multiplicity of meaning attributed to them by highlighting how they must be read simultaneously as waste and objects of value to fully understand how practices of translation contribute to the de-politicisation of border deaths, leaving state violence in the Mediterranean unchallenged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does political representation of radical right parties (RRP) affect the relationship between immigration and right-wing terrorism targeting out-group members? Drawing on right-wing terrorism data of 31 OECD member states between 1970 and 2017, this paper explored the threefold relationship. Causal mediation analysis revealed that while growing immigration increases right-wing terrorism, RRPs have a mediation effect of decreasing attacks. Sensitivity analysis and robustness checks lend support to the findings. The article provides novel implications for the political consequences of RRP success and the effect of political representation on extremist violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Mining settlements are typically portrayed as either consisting of purpose-built housing constructed by mining companies to house their workers, or as temporary makeshift shelters built by miners working informally and inhabited by male migrants who live dangerously and develop little attachment to these places. This paper contributes to these debates on the social and material dynamics occurring in mining settlements, focusing on those with urban rather than rural characteristics, by highlighting how misconceived these archetypal portrayals are in the Ghanaian context. Drawing on qualitative data collected in three mining settlements, we explore who is moving to and living in the mining towns, who is building houses, and how attachments to place develop socio-temporally. Through doing so, the paper provides original insights on the heterogeneous nature of mining settlements, which are found to be home to a wide range of people engaged in diverse activities. Mining settlements and their attendant social dynamics are shown to evolve in differing ways, depending on the type of mining taking place and the length of time the mines have been in operation. Significantly, we illustrate how, contrary to popular understandings of incomers to mining settlements as nomadic opportunists, migrants often aspire to build their own houses and establish a family, which promotes their attachment to these settlements and their desire to remain. These insights further scholarship on the social and material configuration of mining settlements and feed into the revival of interest in small and intermediate urban settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of solidarity and related policies and practices are central to many urban initiatives throughout the global north that support vulnerable migrants and refugees. In this paper, I unpack various meanings of the concept of solidarity within urban migrant- and refugee-supporting initiatives and campaigns. Drawing on expert interviews with activists, community leaders, and municipal administrators and politicians in Berlin and Freiburg, Germany, and Zurich, Switzerland, I show the complexity and contradictory manner in which urban solidarity is understood and practiced. While urban solidarity may appeal to a wide political spectrum and incorporate top–down policies and bottom–up practices and approaches, urban actors also embrace various terminologies, such as Solidarity City and urban citizenship, in response to local circumstances and political strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global migration is expected to continue to increase as climate change, conflict and economic disparities continue to challenge peoples' lives. The political response to migration is a social determinant of mental health. Despite the potential benefits of migration, many migrants and refugees face significant challenges after they resettle. The papers collected in this thematic issue of Transcultural Psychiatry explore the experience of migration and highlight some of the challenges that governments and healthcare services need to address to facilitate the social integration and mental health of migrants. Clinicians need training and resources to work effectively with migrants, focusing on their resilience and on long-term adaptive processes. Efforts to counter the systemic discrimination and structural violence that migrants often face need to be broad-based, unified, and persistent to make meaningful change. When migrants are free to realize their talents and aspirations, they can help build local communities and societies that value diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes ways in which political speakers define and legitimize future policies by construing different policy options in terms of 'privileged' and 'oppositional' futures. Privileged and oppositional futures are conceptual projections of alternative policy visions occurring in quasi-dialogic chunks of speech, revealing specific evidential, mood, and modality patterns. Privileged future involves speaker's preferred vision and is articulated through absolute modality and evidential markers which derive from factual evidence, history, and reason. Oppositional future involves antagonistic and plainly threatening vision, expressed by probabilistic modality and interrogative mood. For psychological reasons, oppositional future is normally communicated first, allowing a swift response from the privileged future expressed in the speaker-preferred vision. The paper demonstrates that privileged and oppositional futures blur traditional distinctions between dialog and monolog and thus invite heterogeneous methods and instruments of analysis. It discusses the most productive interdisciplinary tools (critical, SFL and rhetorical tools, socio-psychological models), and their implementation in analysis of lexical manifestations of alternative futures in political discourse, such as immigration and anti-terrorist discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary outbreak of right-wing populism in combination with increasing migratory flows toward Europe raises concerns about the social construction of migrations and migrants and the policy orientations toward them. Research indicated worrying tendencies to perceive migrations negatively and criminalize migrants. However, this paper focuses on a different tactic adopted by a number of populist forces: the criminalization of sea-rescue NGOs. In particular, it presents the case-study of Sea-Watch 3, an NGO sea-rescue vessel which docked in Italy with several migrants on board in June 2019, after a long struggle with Minister of Internal Affairs Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League (a right-wing, anti-migrants populist party). By means of content analysis, the paper discusses Salvini's Facebook communication strategy about the event. The aim of this study is to cast new light on how the criminalization of NGOs can be exploited to reinforce other aspects of right-wing populism, such as anti-elitism, nationalism, exclusionary politics, personalization, and polarization. In this respect, the implications of criminalizing sea-rescue NGOs for policy orientations and policymaking are also highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While social policy falls predominantly under national rather than European Union (EU) jurisdiction, there are nonetheless multiple ways in which social policy and social outcomes in EU member states have been affected by EU membership. This paper draws on existing evidence and analysis to review the consequences for UK social policy of the decision to leave the EU. We focus predominantly on the implications of the British government's pledge to 'take back control' of money, borders and laws. Our conclusion is that Brexit is likely to have negative effects on the quality of public services and, for some groups in particular, social rights, and that these effects are likely to be greater the more distant are the future trading and wider relationships between the UK and the EU27. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial concentration of recently arrived immigrants in gateway cities and suburbs is usually seen as undesirable by urban academics and policy makers. This paper presents a counter-argument that the concentration of disadvantaged new immigrants in the form of humanitarian refugees and their families can, and does, result in positive outcomes for those groups. In part, our argument is based on making a distinction between people-based disadvantage and place-based disadvantage. The paper examines the changing nature of place-based ‘advantage’ for immigrants in Australian gateway cities through a focus on two metropolitan locations, Auburn (Sydney) and Springvale (Melbourne), known as popular destination suburbs for recent immigrants. While these two cases validate the benefits of such gateway suburbs, they also demonstrate that the capacity of recent migrants to emulate concentrated settlement patterns is now significantly undermined by changes in the labour market and affordability problems in the housing market. The paper concludes with a discussion on the possible future of gateway suburbs and the implications of this shift for the wellbeing of particular groups of disadvantaged residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork in and around a Malaysian apartment building, this paper explores discourses on and practices of friendship among young Iranian residents. The paper argues that for Iranians in Malaysia, most of them students, forming close social ties always holds the risk not only of personal betrayal but also of political infiltration, and thus making friends is informed by suspicion, anxiety and ambivalence. In the context of both formal state surveillance and informal moral policing in the high-rise, Iranian students often choose to ‘keep their distance’ from other Iranians. By analysing quotidian mutual observation and questioning, mistrust, but also forms of sociality that develop in the dense, cosmopolitan urban contact zone of an apartment building, this paper teases out conflicted narratives about intimacy and distance, and argues that these must be understood in the context of the local, material urban landscape of the high-rise, the uncertainty of life in transit as well as the political context of Post-Revolution Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Chela Sandoval’s (2000) concept of meta-ideologizing to examine how definitions of ‘access’ are reframed to further the goals of social justice activists. Meta-ideologizing refers to re-operationalizing liberal, widely-accepted terms to fit the needs of a community. The paper draws from 14 semi-structured interviews with individuals pivotal to the passing and implementation of Toronto’s ‘Students Without Legal Immigration Status Policy’, also known as a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy. It also employs data from literature developed by stakeholders as well as the author’s experiential knowledge. It examines how organizers have reframed the concept of ‘access’ by extending its focus beyond entry into schools and including the need for undocumented migrants to be safe and have access to other social services. It also analyzes the ways bureaucratic logic can invisibilize the gains made by developing procedures that reify illegalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Evidence suggests that as public opinion towards immigration becomes more negative, so the descriptive representation of ethnic minority groups is increasingly restricted. Recently, some initial research into the causal mechanism hinted that this effect is driven by patterns of candidacy. This suggests that political parties are creating an 'ethnic penalty' of their own in the selection stage. This paper investigates the relationship between patterns of candidacy, party strategy, and public opinion in Great Britain from 1997 to 2019, and proposes that 'punitive parties' are strongly responsible for shaping the representational outcomes of minority groups. I find support for earlier suggestions that parties are increasingly likely to place ethnic minority candidates away from 'winnable' contests as anti-immigrant hostility rises. These findings are important for our conceptions of ethnic penalties, of party behaviour in selection processes, and for the study and cause of improving political representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic and lay discourses around disadvantaged urban areas often draw on the language of ‘dumping grounds’ to encapsulate the poverty, marginalisation and social problems often found there. Yet the concept of a dumping ground remains insufficiently theorised. This paper addresses this issue by identifying five constituent features of the dumping ground: the perception of people as waste whose fate is to be discarded; the need to accommodate this human ‘waste’ and the logic by which places are selected for this purpose; the mechanisms through which this spatial sorting occurs as problem populations are moved to their ‘rightful’ place; the relations of power which enforce or encourage this mobility; and finally, the reactions of incumbent residents in neighbourhoods that are compelled to host unwanted social groups. In the second part of this paper, these themes are illustrated via a case study of the Australian city of Logan where residents complain that their city has been treated as a dumping ground in order to explain its poor reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the contested relationship between migration and income inequality, using labour migration to Norway as a case. The enlargements of the European Union starting in 2004 were followed by an unprecedented increase in labour migration to Norway. In particular, many rural regions, previously unfamiliar with immigration, have experienced a large influx of labour migrants. In the same period, income inequality has increased. This paper uses register data on the municipality level from 2005–2016 to discuss (a) the direction of the relationship between labour migration and income inequality; (b) the degree to which labour migration affects inequality (in general and within the native population) compared to other immigrant groups; and (c) whether the effects are different in rural and urban municipalities. Findings show that labour migration from the 'new' European Union countries is followed by higher income inequality in Norway. No support is found for the reversed causal relationship that increasing inequality causes higher numbers of labour migrants. The effect of labour migration on overall inequality is considerable, but not as strong as the effect of refugees. However, as opposed to refugees, labour migration also affects income inequality within the native population, but this effect is only significant in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to cast light on contemporary migration rhetoric by integrating historical discourse analysis. I focus on continuity and change in conventionalised metaphorical framings of emigration and immigration in the UK-based Times newspaper from 1800 to 2018. The findings show that some metaphors persist throughout the 200-year time period (liquid, object), some are more recent in conventionalised form (animals, invader, weight) while others dropped out of conventionalised use before returning (commodity, guest). Furthermore, we see that the spread of metaphor use goes beyond correlation with migrant naming choices with both emigrants and immigrants occupying similar metaphorical frames historically. However, the analysis also shows that continuity in metaphor use cannot be assumed to correspond to stasis in framing and evaluation as the liquid metaphor is shown to have been more favourable in the past. A dominant frame throughout the period is migrants as an economic resource and the evaluation is determined by the speaker's perception of control of this resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnicity is playing an increasingly important role in the ways in which informality is governed and regulated across cities in the global south. This raises concerns regarding the ensuing exclusion experienced by some groups of people living in informal settlements. In this paper I use the example of Buenos Aires, Argentina, to explore the extent to which ethnicity plays a role in the informal settlement. There is significant evidence that Argentina has gone through a process of de-ethnicisation, particularly at the national level. However, it is unclear whether this process is also evident at the level of the informal settlement. Drawing on a range of interviews, the paper finds that while grassroots organisations are de-ethnicising, the formal leadership of the informal settlement and to some extent also migrants reproduce ethnic divisions. The de-ethnicisation led by the state has therefore unequally percolated to the micro level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper inquires the moral and political ambivalences of migrant support located between contentious politics and humanitarian aid. Comparing Save Me and Seebrücke, two cases of pro-migrant activism in Germany claiming the safe passage of migrants to Europe, we develop the notion of 'strategic humanitarianism', a hybrid form of migrant support, in which actors combine the strategic employment of predominantly depoliticizing, narrow and humanitarian framing with a contentious repertoire of action. It entails deliberately sacrificing a 'deep' politicization of fundamental critique against contemporary migration regimes in order to achieve a 'wide' politicization and broad consensus for progressive social change. Furthermore, we carve out how distinct political contexts, in this case the issue salience and polarization of migration, influence the dynamics of mobilization and the configuration of humanitarianism and contentious politics. Despite a similar focus, thus, the 'strategic humanitarianism' of Save Me has developed a less contentious and disobedient character than Seebrücke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, governments have made labour markets sites of immigration enforcement through employer sanctions and other measures. In some countries, unions and employers' associations facilitate implementation of these initiatives, while in others they openly or tacitly resist cooperation. This paper explores these patterns of cooperation and resistance through analysis of six countries. The method used is qualitative comparative analysis, using primary and secondary sources that include newspaper coverage, government reports, union documents and scholarly accounts. The explanation centres on the degree of social partner embeddedness in government decision-making and economic management. In countries with institutionalized, coordinated relationships between the social partners and the state, this coordination extends to implementation of employers' sanctions. In systems with less institutionalized cooperation, employers and unions are less likely to assist the immigration control objectives of state officials. These practices also affect migrants' ability to live within a society, making them not only a form of immigration control, but also important for migrant wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores trade union strategies to protect wages in the face of EU migration after the enlargement of the European Union. We argue that unions have three instruments at their disposal to deal with the risks linked to downward wage pressure: closure through immigration control, equalisation through collective bargaining and minimum wages, and the organisation of migrant workers. Using comparative case studies of Sweden, Germany and the UK, we show how different types of power resources shape union strategies: unions with substantial organisational resources (in Sweden) relied on a large membership to pursue an equalisation strategy and expected to be able to 'afford' openness. German unions with low membership but access to the political system pushed for a mix of closure and equality drawing on political intervention (e.g. minimum wages). British unions, unable to pursue either, focused their efforts on organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present paper deals with Chinese transnational sex labour migration in the city of Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon and the country’s major city. Based on ethnographic research conducted in the prostitution milieu of Douala between 2008 and 2012, and on information collected from both scholarly and popular literature, this contribution shows how the development in this African city of what can be called Chinese sexoscapes has induced the reconfiguration of the local geography of commercialised sex work, which for so long was dominated by native sex workers. The paper also demonstrates how many disgruntled Duala sex workers dealt with the so-called Chinese sex invasion of their city by relocating their business to popular entertainment areas commonly characterised in Cameroon as rue de la joie (street of enjoyment). The research argues that this local geography of sexualities has become a site for asserting ethnic, racial or national identity, and especially a space of both inclusion of people profiled as autochthon populations and the exclusion of those branded foreigners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many, search engines are crucial gateways to (political) information. While extant research is concerned with algorithmic bias, user choices had been largely neglected. Yet, search queries are the key way in which searchers explicate their information need. Building on framing theory and selective exposure, we argue that queries are ingrained with (political) predispositions: issue frames in mind of searchers manifest themselves in search terms and queries. Using Dutch survey data (N = 1994), and manual coding and latent class analysis, we explore how types of people formulate search queries about immigration and climate change (RQ1). A regression analysis shows how these searcher types relate to political attitudes and socio-demographic characteristics (RQ2). Notably, searchers formulate queries in ways that are related to their political positions, but this differs for different issues. These findings imply systematic differences in user choices which future research needs to consider when auditing search engines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the peri-urban is conceptualised as a territory to analyse the tensions associated with governments pursuing various agendas in isolation from those inhabiting these spaces. Two peri-urban vignettes are drawn together and Taylor’s conception of a ‘social imaginary’ is used to recognise the conundrum for government planners, as well as to support the narratives about the social and ecological meaning of what local in-migrants are doing in the landscape. A resilience framework assists in clarifying system boundaries and the concept of social-ecological memory is used to interrogate how practices emerge within the various social imaginaries. The findings emphasise that this combination of tropes assists in acknowledging the rich, social imaginaries of local people ‘making’ the new landscapes. It is argued that acknowledging and incorporating their interests requires engaging with local networks and, more strategically, conceding that the social imaginaries of the peri-urban can be co-constructed for other strategic landscape outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the precolonial and colonial history of race in Korea, which has been overlooked in the study of race, empire, and Korean history. While the study of race claims to be global, it implicitly assumes that racism becomes possible through physical contact with ‘different races’. Rather than examining the emergent racial politics after the recent global migration, I suggest that racism could emerge regardless of collective racial migration and contact. Further, recent colonial studies have overlooked the colonized, the Japanese Empire and its colonized. Accordingly, I question the absence of race in Korean historiography and the assumption of Korean racial naïveté based on the supposed racial homogeneity. Further, I demonstrate how the notions of race and blackness are fundamentally embedded in Koreans’ understanding of the Age of Empire. Thus, this paper calls for a new ‘global’ approach to the study of race and empire that questions these overlooked assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What is possible if Dayton became a city that intentionally welcomed immigrants? This question was the starting point for a community conversation about the wellbeing of and outreach toward immigrants in a midsize city in southwest Ohio – the City of Dayton. This paper examines the processes employed to support the emergence of an immigrant-welcoming initiative now called ‘Welcome Dayton’. Early conversations resulted in a formal plan, written by the community and endorsed by city commissioners, which realigned and crystallised local priorities, sparking a wide spectrum of efforts aimed at becoming a welcoming city. Using qualitative methods, primarily participant observation, we identified practices of creating spaces where both long-time residents and recent immigrants come together in a way that recognises and reveals the value of each participant’s perspectives and ideas. Herein we examine the practices of creating and sustaining Welcome Dayton, paying particular attention to the role of recognition in generating ‘resourcefulness’ in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyse how news images of the 2015 Syrian refugee 'crisis' visualise refugees and how, in so doing, they mobilise various forms of moral responsibility in 'our' mediated public life - various practical dispositions of action towards the misfortunes of migrants and refugees at Europe's border. On the basis of empirical material from European news (June-December 2015), we construct a typology of visibilities of the 'crisis', each of which situates refugees within a different regime of visibility and claim to action: i) visibility as biological life, associated with monitorial action; ii) visibility as empathy associated with charitable action; iii) visibility as threat, associated with state security; iv) visibility as hospitality, associated with political activism; and v) visibility as self-reflexivity, associated with a post-humanitarian engagement with people like 'us'. In conclusion, we argue that, important as these five categories of visibility are in introducing public dispositions to action towards the vulnerable, they nonetheless ultimately fail to humanise migrants and refugees. This failure to portray them as human beings with lives that are worth sharing should compel us, we urge, to radically re-think how we understand the media's responsibility towards vulnerable others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how teenage refugees in Europe develop digital skills in and through conditions of vulnerability. We argue that recognising vulnerability as a productive force, rather than merely as context, is crucial if we are to fully understand the emergence, limits and lack of skills among young people experiencing perpetual marginality. Drawing on 96 interviews and five creative workshops with teenage refugees in the cities of Athens, Brussels and London, we discuss three ways in which vulnerability and digital skills become entangled: (i) (dis-)connection, especially in conditions of scarce, interrupted and unsafe digital connectivity; (ii) learning, especially in contexts where digital and transnational literacies co-exist, compete or compensate for educational inequalities; and (iii) digital bordering, especially as this relates to restrictive regimes of mobility control that prolong risks for young refugees' wellbeing and even life itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration to Israel by Jews from western countries has been growing over recent years. Jerusalem attracts more of these mainly religious immigrants than any other city in Israel. They are a desired population by the State of Israel, and for many reasons can be considered privileged immigrants. The way Diaspora Jews imagine Israel and Jerusalem plays a crucial role in their decision to move there. Many of these lifestyle/homecoming immigrants find their way to Baka, where they can live near other expatriates and enjoy the comforts of the ethnic enclave. The paper deals with the spatial and cultural implications that privileged lifestyle migration has on the space in which it settles. It focuses particularly on the case-study of English- and French-speaking Jewish immigrants who live in Baka and on their effects on the neighbourhood’s gentrification process, its real estate market and issues of consumerism and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholarship around urban fear has brought forward important insights around the relationship between fear, mobility and social exclusion, questions relating to legal exclusion have largely been left outside the scope of inquiry. In cities around the world there are, however, a growing number of people who are not only de facto excluded from rights to/within the city (based on their gender, class, age etc.) – but de jure excluded based on their non-citizen or ‘illegal’ status in the host country. Drawing upon field work conducted in the Malaysian city George Town this study examines how both regular and irregular Burmese migrants perceive safety and danger in the city and how this, in turn, influences how they navigate urban space. The results of the study reveal how the migrants in George Town navigate the city as a ‘borderscape’ – producing a(nother) geography of fear which does not primarily reflect a fear of crime but rather a fear of state institutional practices, such as police controls, road blocks and raids. This shows, the paper argues, the need to pay attention towards both social and legal exclusions when examining how people in cities around the world are able to access and take possession of urban space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration to Sweden is dominated by women and men of childbearing age, and many arrive with children. The labour-market integration of newly arrived mothers is of concern, and well directed social policy is crucial. Parental leave is based on residence, and until recently it was granted to all parents of foreign-born children of preschool age. This study uses population and social insurance registers to investigate whether newly arrived immigrant mothers use parental leave upon arrival, and whether use is an obstacle to future labour-market activity. Our results indicate that the majority of the newly arrived mothers do not take any parental leave, but also that there are great differences in uptake in relation to country of birth and reason for residence permit. However, there seem to be only marginal associations between parental leave use and subsequent labour-market attachment. Nevertheless, moderate use is associated with labour-market activity rather than being an obstacle to it. Our results contribute to the debate on the unintended effects of social policy on the integration of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to cultural and systemic factors, Chinese-Canadians tend to use mental health services less or when mental health problems are more severe. Services need to be more culturally responsive in their treatment of mental illness. Around important life events, when there may be heightened vulnerability to mental illness, this is especially important. In this study, postpartum cultural practices were examined among recent immigrant, longer-term immigrant, and Canadian-born Chinese women. We conducted a longitudinal cohort study of 493 women in Toronto, Ontario, with livebirths in 2011–2014. Participants completed a demographic survey and Postpartum Rituals Questionnaire. Most women (82.2%) practiced at least one postpartum ritual. Younger age (OR 0.93; 95% CI 0.87–0.99) and greater participation in the heritage culture (OR 1.28; 95% CI 1.02–1.61) were associated with ritual practice. From among five types of postpartum rituals identified (i.e., avoidance of homeostatic disturbances, dietary practices, wind avoidance, organized support, and cold avoidance), dietary practices were most commonly undertaken and cold avoidance was least commonly undertaken. There were differences in postpartum ritual patterns by immigration status, with immigrant women being more likely to undertake a greater number of rituals, to attribute these rituals to Chinese culture, and to ascribe health benefits to these rituals and being less likely to feel forced into performing these rituals. Our findings underscore the importance of clinicians becoming more aware of Chinese postpartum rituals to provide women with culturally competent and patient-centered care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most studies investigating the educational outcomes of linguistically diverse students, variables that identify this population have been considered as static. In reality, owing to the dynamic nature of students and their families, students' home language environments change over time. This study aims to understand how elementary school students' home language environments change over time, and how longitudinal patterns of English literacy achievement across grades 3, 6, and 10 differ among students with various home language shift patterns in Ontario, Canada. The longitudinal cohort data of 89,609 students between grades 3 and 10 from the provincial assessments were analyzed for changes in their home language environment. A subsample of 18,000 students was used to examine different patterns of relative literacy performance over time and their associations with immigration background and early intervention programming using multi-group latent growth curve modeling. Our findings suggest a strong movement toward an English-dominant home language environment among multilingual students; yet, students whose homes remained as multilingual demonstrated the highest literacy achievement in the early grade as well as the highest improvement in relative performance over time. The paper draws implications for promoting students' home language, instilling a positive view of multilingual competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses reports published within the issue which includes different communication campaigns aiming at struggling against the inflows of forced migrants, how the Italian government in 2016 resorted an information campaign and consequences of irregular migration flows to Europe.

Security is more than ever a central theme in the study of international migration. For the past twenty years, research on the securitization of migration has burgeoned. While these initiatives are to be applauded, we believe they may also have misdiagnosed the problem. For example, it may not be that the concept of 'security' needs to be 'humanized' in order to be more in tune with migrants' concerns. Rather, the problem may lie in the use of the 'migrant' as an analytical category. The 'migrant' remains an inherently statist construct. The starting premise for the collection of articles in this special issue is that it is the tendency of academic research to mistake the statist category of the 'migrant' as an analytical category that has prevented the literature on the migration–security nexus from meaningfully reflecting the lived experience and aspirations of its human respondents, particularly as regards their encounters with forms of institutional authority, practices, resistance and resilience. We use the rubric of deportability to open up a variety of ways of thinking and talking about migration and security that do not fall back upon statist tropes. The authors in this collection take up this challenge by framing and employing concepts such as statelessness, sedentariness and expulsion to redefine our understanding of the relationship between movement and order. They take inspiration from multiple brands of social and political theorizing where conditions of violence and forced removal qualitatively differentiate the experiences and encounters of a particular group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of nativist parties in Europe has been accompanied by an increase in religious rhetoric. There is no reason to suggest that voters for nativist parties are motivated by religion; to the contrary, more Christian voters tend to vote for Christian Democratic parties. This article argues that religious rhetoric allows nativist parties to pursue ethno-centric agendas in an acceptable way and differently from Christian Democratic parties. Through the compilation of an original dataset of religious appeals from Austrian, German, and Swiss nativist and Christian Democratic party platforms between 1990–2021, this article demonstrates that changes in the distribution of the religious demographics of Muslims rather than Christians provide a catalyst for religious rhetoric but not an explanation for type of appeal. Instead, the historical role religious identities played in the development of nationalities explains how nativist parties deploy religious rhetoric in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical right parties and their nativist ideas have gained considerable momentum, compelling non-radical parties to "engage" with this nativist "Zeitgeist." Yet, aside from general trends such as tougher stances on migration, we know little about the strategic choices of parties when balancing their commitment to core policy goals and the need to be "timely," that is, to respond to changing environments. Theoretically, parties may either adapt their ideological "core" to signal commitment or merely attribute nativist ideas to secondary issue areas to signal general responsiveness. Drawing on Austrian, German, and Swiss manifestos for over two decades and establishing a novel dictionary to assess parties' use of nativism, we find that while previous studies showing right-wing parties compete with RRPs using nativism in the same domains are correct, the strategic choices around this competition are more complex. How much commitment to nativist ideas parties show depends on whether radical right parties use the same domains to construct their nativist claims. For research on party competition, this means that more attention should be paid to how rather than if parties "engage" with their rivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

To respond to the consequences felt by the COVID-19 pandemic, a community-led intervention was developed by the Portuguese national Movement of Sex Workers. With this exploratory study, we aimed to document their work and analyze their perceptions of this impact. To do so, we interviewed them individually, between May and August of 2020. Additionally, we analysed an Excel Sheet that contained the needs assessment and the support provided by the Movement. The content analysis of both suggests that the impact of the pandemic might have been exacerbated by the social inequalities caused by the prostitution stigma and characteristics such as gender, migration status, race, and socioeconomic status. This study calls for the inclusion of sex workers' voices in the design of policies and responses related to the commerce of sex. The consolidation of a Portuguese Movement of Sex Workers is also noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]