Political Institutions,Elites, and Territorial Identity Formation in Belgium

Territorial identities in Belgium require a political rather than a cultural or structural explanation. The forces behind the development of identities in Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels and the German-speaking area are similar to the ones that produced the Belgian identity they are challenging. Political institutions and elites are at the heart of the process of territorial identity formation in Belgium. The emergence of Walloon and Flemish identities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the by-product of a struggle between the dominant French-speaking bourgeoisie and the traditional Flemish lower bourgeoisie within the institutional context of the early Belgian state. Transformations in the party system and reforms to political-territorial institutions in the last 40 years have strengthened these identities and created entirely new ones.     

Super-diversity vs. assimilation: how complex diversity in majority–minority cities challenges the assumptions of assimilation

International migration changed large West European cities dramatically. In only two generations’ time, their ethnic make-up is turned upside down. Cities like Amsterdam and Brussels now are majority–minority cities: the old majority group became a minority. This new reality asks for an up-to-date perspective on assimilation and integration. In this article, I will show why grand theories like segmented and new assimilation theory no longer suffice in tackling that new reality of large cities, and I will question critically whether using the perspective of super-diversity is more pertinent for our analyses. Children of immigrants nowadays no longer integrate into the majority group, but into a large amalgam of ethnic groups. Next to the diversification of ethnic groups, we see diversification within ethnic groups in the second and third generations. I will focus on intergenerational social mobility patterns given that they are key to existing grand theories of assimilation. I will argue that super-diversity theory can only partially show us the way. To further build an alternative theoretical perspective, we also need to borrow from the intersectional approach and the integration context theory.     

Un/Free mobility: Roma migrants in the European Union

ABSTRACT

This special issue showcases work that theorises and critiques the political, economic, legal, and socio-historical (‘ethnic’ or ‘cultural’) subordination of the European Roma (so-called ‘Gypsies’), from the specific critical vantage point of Roma migrants living and working within and across the space of the European Union (EU). Enabled primarily through ethnographic research with diverse Roma communities across the heterogeneous geography of ‘Europe’, the contributions to this collection are likewise concerned with the larger politics of mobility as a constitutive feature of the sociopolitical formation of the EU. Foregrounding the experiences and perspectives of Roma living and working outside of their nation-states of ‘origin’ or ostensible citizenship, we seek to elucidate wider inequalities and hierarchies at stake in the ongoing (re-)racialisation of Roma migrants, in particular, and imposed upon migrants, generally. Thus, this special issue situates Roma mobility as a critical vantage point for migration studies in Europe. Furthermore, this volume shifts the focus conventionally directed at the academic objectification of ‘the Roma’ as such, and instead seeks to foreground and underscore questions about ‘Europe’, ‘European’-ness, and EU-ropean citizenship that come into sharper focus through the critical lens of Roma racialisation, marginalisation, securitisation, and criminalisation, and the dynamics of Roma mobility within and across the space of ‘Europe’. In this way, this collection contributes new research and expands critical interdisciplinary dialogue at the intersections of Romani studies, ethnic and racial studies, migration studies, political and urban geography, social anthropology, development studies, postcolonial studies, and European studies.     

The EC hotspot approach in Greece: creating liminal EU territory

ABSTRACT

This article makes a theoretical argument stemming from our study of the European Commission’s hotspot approach to the management of migrant populations. It draws on empirical research findings from field research which took place on the island of Lesbos and in the city of Athens over the course of 20 months and links these to emerging critical studies of the new EU border regime. No clear definition exists of what comprises a hotspot: instead, the European Commission describes this as an integrated ‘approach’ for the enhancement of the capacity of member states to deal with crises resulting from pressures at the Union’s external borders. Effective in its ambiguity, the ‘hotspot approach’ therefore constitutes, as we argue, an integral part of the Europeanisation and institutionalisation of border management: a powerfully ambiguous dispositif in the EU’s emerging border regime. The article unpacks the notion of the hotspot from a historical perspective and explores the ways in which the hotspot contributes toward the culmination of European integration, paving the way for the flexible governance of mobility and asylum. We situate the hotspot within the historical shift of migration and mobility control from the border to the territory as a whole and conclude by arguing that the hotspot plays the role of a territorial incubator for the liminal EU territory: a paradigmatic space for a new form of governance that further disentangles territory from rights.     

The rise and fall of the ‘inner city’: race,space and urban policy in postwar England

ABSTRACT

In postwar England, the ‘inner city’ has loomed large in urban discourse and policy, serving as an important site through which ‘race’ has been rendered socially and spatially meaningful. Drawing on insights from history, geography and sociology, this paper traces the material and symbolic processes through which the ‘inner city’ has been the subject and object of socio-political knowledge and action. The article examines what shifting understandings of the ‘inner city’ and related policy responses reveal about the racialisation of space and bodies, and the role of the state in rationalising and enacting specific urban imaginings and interventions. In historicising dominant conceptions of the ‘inner city’, we identify three periods revealing key transformations within this formation: firstly, we consider how the idea operated as a spectre, in which the American ‘ghetto’ was seen as a predictor of ‘race relations’; secondly, we contend that during the 1970s and 1980s, the ‘inner city’ came to be ‘territorialised’ as a pathological, racialised space subject to particular modes of institutional regulation; finally, we examine the relative fragmentation of the ‘inner city’ in recent decades, through urban regeneration and changes in the spatialisation of ‘race’ and ethnicity.     

Promoting majority culture and excluding external ethnic influences: China’s strategy for the UNESCO ‘intangible’ cultural heritage list

ABSTRACT

China’s enthusiasm for having many World Heritage–listed sites is well-known as a national strategy of cultural soft power, economic development, and incorporating minority groups into the Han-dominated Chinese state. Relatively understudied are China’s efforts related to UNESCO’s lists of ‘intangible’ cultural heritage, which inscribe people’s living culture – such as dances, costumes, and songs – as world heritage. This study focuses on how some ethnic groups’ intangible culture has been objectified for the World Heritage Lists by the Chinese state. This study argues that by enlisting ethnic minorities’ culture under the name of Chinese state, the state can reinforce state borders that often run across ethnic and cultural boundaries, reducing external influences on minorities from their trans-border ethnic or cultural kin. Concomitantly, the majority’s cultural prominence is further entrenched in this process by the emphasis placed on minorities’ folklore in contrast to the Han’s culture of civilization.     

Immigrant integration beyond national policies? Italian cities’ participation in European city networks

ABSTRACT

In the literature on the local dimension of migration policy-making, one can see an emerging interest in transnational cities networks (TCNs). Networks such as Eurocities can represent policy venues that go beyond the limits of vertical relations between national governments and local authorities to directly lobby European Union (EU) institutions. Futhermore, TCNs can offer opportunities for policy exchange and learning, leading to the diffusion of policy innovations and best practices. However, evidence on the concrete functions played by TCNs is still scarce. By focusing on two highly internationalised Italian cities, Milan and Turin, and by taking an actor-centred perspective, this paper highlights how different categories of policy-makers within the municipal administration think about ‘going Europe’. According to our analysis, TCNs, rather than accomplishing their official instrumental goals, play primarily symbolic functions, such as legitimising local integration policy, building a new city identity and positioning the city vis-à-vis other European cities and EU institutions. Yet, this does not mean that TCNs are ‘useless’, since the symbolic resources they convey can be crucial in creating consensus among stakeholders at the local level or lobbying national authorities.     

Eating cultures: Incorporation,identity and Indian food

Abstract

Linking the colonial British ‘fabrication’ of curry powder to the colonial fabrication of India, this paper explores the connections between colonial attitudes to India and to Indian food. The paper then looks at the links between food norms, and religious and political animosities in contemporary India. It then proceeds to use food to think about the place of the Indian community in contemporary England, and about the problematic roles assigned to women in immigrant Indian communities. The paper goes on to reflect on the notions of ‘food colonialism’ and ‘culinary imperialism’, arguing that the social meanings of ‘ethnic food’ in western contexts must also be considered from the point of view of immigrants to western contexts. The paper ends by arguing that concerns about multi‐culturalism and respect for other cultures must focus not only on relationships between ‘mainstream citizens’ and ‘ethnic Others’, but on the relationships between various ‘ethnic’ groups.     

Ethnic diversity,ethnic threat,and social cohesion: (re)-evaluating the role of perceived out-group threat and prejudice in the relationship between community ethnic diversity and intra-community cohesion

Research frequently demonstrates diverse communities exhibit lower intra-community cohesion. Recent studies suggest there is little evidence perceived ethnic threat plays a role in this relationship. This paper re-examines the roles of ethnic threat and prejudice in the diversity/cohesion relationship. First, we test threat/prejudice as conceptualised in the literature: as mediators of diversity’s effect. Second, we test a reformulation of the roles of threat/prejudice: as moderators of diversity’s effect. Applying multi-level models to cross-sectional and longitudinal data of White British individuals across England and Oldham (a unique English town case-study) we find neighbour-trust lower in diverse communities. However, perceived-threat/prejudice does not mediate this relationship. Instead, we find perceived-threat/prejudice moderate diversity’s impact on neighbour-trust. The result is diversity only reduces neighbour-trust among individuals who already viewed out-groups as threatening. Longitudinal analysis confirms the importance of out-group attitudes in the diversity/neighbour-trust relationship. In diverse communities, residents whose out-group attitudes improve, or worsen, become more, or less, trusting of their neighbours. However, in homogeneous communities, changes in out-group attitudes are not linked to changes in neighbour-trust. We therefore argue and demonstrate that perceived-threat emerges from other societal processes (such as socio-economic precariousness) and it is when individuals who already view out-groups as threatening experience diverse neighbourhoods that local cohesion declines.     

Strangers within? Russian-speakers’ migration from Latvia to London: a study in power geometry and intersectionality

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to contribute to debates on ethnic identification and migration through a focus on a specific group – Russian-speakers from the Baltic state of Latvia who have migrated to the UK. Twenty-six interviews with members of this group were gathered in London and the wider metropolitan area during 2012 and 2014. Russian-speakers represent uniquely combined configurations of ‘the other within’: in most cases, they are EU citizens with full rights; yet, some still hold non-citizens’ passports of Latvia. While in Latvian politics Russian-speakers are framed as ‘others’ whose identities are shaped by the influence of Russia, interview findings confirm that they do not display belonging to contemporary Russia. However, London is the ‘third space’ – a multicultural European metropolis – which provides new opportunities for negotiating ethnic identification. Against the background of triple ‘alienation’ (from Latvia, from Russia and from the UK), we analyse how ethnicity is narrated intersectionally with other categories such as age and class. The findings show that Russian-speaking migrants from Latvia mobilise their Europeanness and Russianness beyond alienating notions of (ethno)national identity. The paper also demonstrates that being open to ethnicity as a category of practice helps us towards a progressive conceptualisation of often overlooked dimensions of integration of intra-EU linguistic ‘others’.     

The Global Forum on Migration and Development as a venue of state socialisation: a stepping stone for multi-level migration governance?

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) which has become one of the major global spaces for deliberations on migration but remains informal and non-binding. Drawing from literature on norm diffusion and state socialisation, it debates the role of the GFMD as a stepping stone for a more robust, multi-level and networked global migration governance by bringing together governments, global institutions, civil society and to a lesser degree the private sector. It is argued that the GFMD has the potential to socialise states in two ways that are conducive to establishing a multi-level global migration governance: First, states are exposed to discourses on migration as a truly global issue. The second way in which the GFMD process can socialise states is in the interaction with migrant civil society, thus potentially ‘blurring’ previously distant if not openly antagonistic relations. Since most states regard migration as one of their last ‘bastions of sovereignty’, the GFMD could provide a necessary first step as a trust-building measure. Providing participatory spaces and allowing agency for migrants and their organisations is not a mere optional feature but a crucial component for a truly multi-level and thus multi-stakeholder global migration governance.     

Hybridity,ethnicity and nationhood: legacies of interethnic war,wartime rape and the potential for bridging the ethnic divide in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT

Relying on the biographical narrative Leila, a girl from Bosnia and the recorded narratives by adolescents born of wartime rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina we illustrate the difficulties and symbolic implications associated with negotiating hybrid identities in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina against the dominant post-conflict discourse based on ‘pure’ ethnicities. We argue that in today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina, hybrid identities are marginalized by official politics and societal structures as a legacy of the war. However, they simultaneously embody the symbolic tools through which ethnic divisions could be overcome, envisioning and recalling a multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina as a supra-national designation.     

Labour migrants in post-Soviet Moscow: patterns of settlement*

This article explores the impact of the social and the spatial structures of Moscow on the patterns of settlement of labour migrants. It emphasizes the ways in which the structure of post-Soviet urban environment differs from the European and U.S. one, and uses interviews with guest workers from Central Asia to map out the strategies they employ in their search for accommodation in Moscow, as well as the barriers they encounter. Special attention is paid to the role played by ethnic networks in the lives of migrant workers, and the ways in which these networks are configured by the urban space. This article demonstrates how the absence of spatial segregation in the post-Soviet city, inherited from the Soviet period, affects the trajectories of social and economic integration of migrants and explains the absence of ‘ethnic areas’ in today’s Moscow.     

Detecting social changes in times of superdiversity: an ethnographic linguistic landscape analysis of Ostend in Belgium

Superdiversity, on the one hand, calls for new frames, concepts, and methodologies to deal with a fluid reality characterised by rapid (social) changes. On the other hand, we also have a need to broaden our scope beyond the heavy focus on the urban metropolis as the locus of superdiversity. With this paper I want to contribute to the research addressing these challenges by infusing existing research within Linguistic Landscape Studies with a semiotic and ethnographic perspective and add to our existing knowledge of superdiversity by focusing on a ‘small’ Belgian city called Ostend instead of a cosmopolitan world city with millions of inhabitants. I argue that ethnographic linguistic landscape analysis (ELLA) enables us to describe, quite accurately, rapid social changes in complex superdiverse neighbourhoods. Moreover, ELLA enables us to move beyond a mere synchronic picture of superdiverse neighbourhoods and sketch a ‘stratigraphy’ and a historical perspective on them.     

Flexible ethnic identity,adaptation, survival,resistance: The Garifuna in the world-system

In this paper we examine flexible ethnic identity formation as a mechanism of accommodation and resistance deployed by a particular social group with origins in the periphery as they respond to changing political and economic forces in the world-system. This paper addresses criticisms that world-system analyses are ‘too macro’ or ‘structurally deterministic’ by examining on the ground action and responses by a local oppositional movement within its broad political and economic context. Its focus is an historical case study of a particular group of people whose origins lie in European colonial expansion into the Caribbean in the seventeenth century. The paper begins by recounting ethnographic reports of Garifuna origin myths, then sketches this group's forced incorporation in a colonial world-system (and their responses), discusses their assignment to ‘minority group’ status within newly independent Belize at about the same time they are establishing transnational communities via migration to the United States, and concludes with some thoughts on the emerging ‘virtual communities’ of Garifuna and indigenous peoples around the world that are emerging on the worldwide web today. We explore what the notion of ethnic identity means in this particular case, and how and why it changes over time. We also try to understand if this flexible identity, and the social movements that arise as it is redefined, can be understood as a form of ‘resistance’. Finally, we ask if diasporic identity movements of indigenous people, like the Garifuna, actually or potentially can contribute to rising challenges against the forces of contemporary ‘globalization’.     

Post-racial pedagogy – challenges and possibilities

Against the backdrop of ongoing discussions about how best to conceptualise, confront and ultimately eradicate racism, this paper seeks to critically examine the relevance of ‘post-racial’ thinking, both in a general sense, but also in relation to education. The argument is framed around a concern that multi-cultural, and to a lesser extent, anti-racist approaches have become hostage to the very same essentialising practices around ‘race’ thinking that they seek to challenge. This is best illustrated in the plethora of racial, ethnic, geographic, national and religious categories that are currently deployed my many educational institutions in the furtherance of ‘equality and diversity’ policy objectives. In setting out some of the underpinning ideas and controversies linked with the idea of ‘post-racial’, the paper offers some tentative suggestions as to how a ‘post-racial pedagogy’ could be manifested in pedagogical practices.     

Perceptions of diversity and attitudes of tolerance in the ‘fragmented’ U.K.

ABSTRACT

Relying on a quantitative survey (n = 1497) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30) conducted in the U.K., we explore British nationals’, Romanian and Turkish migrants’ attitudes of tolerance and the factors influencing them in the current socio-political context in the U.K. The quantitative data reveal the role of younger age, diverse networks, higher education, attachment to city/region and supranational identifications in more open attitudes towards diversity. The qualitative findings illustrate how diverse these three groups’ attitudes of tolerance can be and how they are affected by their position and status in the U.K. The British’ attitudes show their tolerance can reflect diverse forms of acceptance of ethnic and cultural differences but can also draw lines in terms of civic values opposing ‘those who contribute to society’ versus those who ‘live as parasites’. The Turks are in favour of diversity with the expectation of receiving more civic rights and facing less prejudice. The Romanians tend to have a more ambiguous relation to diversity given their position of stigmatised migrants in the U.K. Our analysis reveal how inclusive or exclusive people’s (sub- and supra-)national identities can be and how these frame their attitudes of tolerance.     

论"族格"——试探民族平等与民族自治、民族自决的哲学基础

文章提出"族格"的概念,认为族格是自然赋予的,即天赋的每个民族无论大小强弱都具有平等的权利和尊严."人格"是"族格"的哲学基础,族格是人的群体的抽象人格,在多民族国家里,少数民族完整的"人格"的实现离不开"族格"的保障."族格"包括民族政治权利的平等和文化上的多元.文章以从自然法权推导出的族格理论揭示了民族平等、民族自治、民族自决理论等的哲学渊源,阐释了正确的民族理论和民族政策. "族格"理论对于正确认识和处理民族问题提供了新的视角,对于构建国家、民族之间和国家内部各民族之间的和谐关系具有一定的理论价值.     

One narrative or several? Politics,cultural elites,and citizens in constructing a ‘New Narrative for Europe’

ABSTRACT

European Union (EU) institutions have cultivated narratives of European integration for a long time. For its 2013–2014 ‘A New Narrative for Europe’ project, however, the European Commission for the first time explicitly used the ‘narrative’ label. Drawing on non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews and qualitative discourse analysis, this article contrasts the drafting process and the resulting declaration’s narrative structure and content with its discussion by citizens in a web-based consultation. The analysis shows that participating citizens forcefully demanded a bottom-up debate and advocated pluralistic perspectives. In these circumstances, elite-driven attempts at strengthening European identity and EU legitimacy are likely to be ineffective.