Italy: the ‘illegality factory’? Theory and practice of refugees’ reception in Sicily

ABSTRACT

The recent surge of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in search of protection has presented a major challenge for the whole European Union. What has been labelled as a ‘refugee crisis’ is first and foremost a crisis of international politics and the result of inadequate response mechanisms at local level. This paper focuses on the case of Sicily, the second main area of arrival, after Greece, when migration to the Mediterranean reached its peak. With a long history of immigration, since 2015 the Italian island has seen the implementation of a new approach based on ‘hotspots’: designated areas for the separation of those deemed as economic migrants from ‘genuine asylum seekers’. In the view of some, this has made Italy into a model of migration management, as opposed to the chaotic situation of the Greek islands. The hotspot approach, however, has been also criticised for being engrained on practices that many deem unlawful, actively producing discrimination and condemning many migrants to an illegal status on the Italian soil. Informed by findings from an international research project (EVI-MED), this paper examines this complex scenario, exploring the social, legal and human implications of the refugees’ reception system in Italy.     

Multi-level governance and migration politics in the Arab world: the case of Syria’s displacement

ABSTRACT

In the context of Syria’s displacement, supranational ‘migration governors’ in the Arab region have sought – in different forms and capacities – to devise initiatives for responsibility sharing and to reinforce the capacity of Syria’s Arab neighbours to deal with refugee inflows. While the case of Syria’s displacement has witnessed the proliferation of collaborative networks, institutional complexity has yielded low effectiveness for the governance of such large-scale displacement in Syria’s neighbourhood. Supranational bodies have formulated dissonant frameworks and agendas. In the context of securitised responses to displacement, the discourse has not reflected the realities of refugee assistance and protection. Multi-level policy frameworks need to be embedded in the region’s geopolitical field of migration governance and refugee protection. While colliding policy arenas are to be grounded within the region’s historical trajectory of migration politics, an understanding of their effects requires gaining an insight into how they have interacted with the various refugee-hosting Arab states, influenced their refugee discourse, and impacted the issue of refugee assistance and protection on the ground.     

Trading numbers vs. rights? Accounting for liberal and restrictive dynamics in the evolution of asylum and refugee policies

ABSTRACT

The recent evolution of asylum and refugee policies in developed countries has been characterised by two apparently contradictory dynamics. Efforts to limit the number of asylum applicants have coincided with the strengthening of rights for asylum seekers and refugees inside existing protection systems. The ‘numbers vs. rights’ model seeks to explain such counter-veiling trends as a trade-off, as the result of attempts to manage costs within given budget constraints. The model suggests that high numbers of migrants will tend to go hand in hand with attempts to restrict their rights, while low numbers will typically be associated with more rights. This paper provides a critical analysis of the model when applied to asylum and refugee policies and examines its explanatory purchase through the analysis of longitudinal data on visa and asylum statistics. We argue that while the model provides an interesting framework through which to analyse executive decisions in this field, it underestimates the opportunities and constraints provided by the institutional context in which policy choices are made. We argue that ‘over-time’ variation in the influence of non-majoritarian institutions (in Europe, increasingly those operating at the EU level) provide a more compelling account of the dynamics of asylum and refugee policies over time than the political economy predictions of a ‘number vs. rights’ trade-off.     

Patterns of im/mobility,conflict and the re/making of identity narratives*

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the interrelationship between patterns of im/mobility on the one hand and the reconstitution of social collective identities and the related emergence or settlement of conflicts on the other. The main arguments are (1) that the im/mobility of a social or cultural group has major impact on how identity narratives, a sense of belonging and relationships to ‘others’ are shaped, and vice versa, and (2) that these dynamics are closely interlinked with mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion between groups and power structures that involve a broad variety of actors. Mainly looking at patterns of internal mobility such as ‘traditional’ or strategic mobilities and mobilities enforced by crisis, conflict or governmental programmes and regimes, the contribution provides the conceptual background for a special issue that aims to go beyond currently predominant issues of transnational migration. Established or emerging dynamics of (non-)integration and belonging, caused by im/mobility, are analysed on a cultural and political level, which involves questions of representation, indigeneity/autochthony, political rights and access to land and other resources. Conflict situations in contexts of mobility involve changes in the social understanding and renegotiation, reconstruction or reproduction of group identities and narratives with reference to certain socio-political and historical patterns. The legitimation of rights and access to various forms of citizenship and mobility need to be understood against the backdrop of emerging or established mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion between groups, which trigger or settle conflicts and make social identities to be constantly renegotiated.     

In and out from the European margins: reshuffling mobilities and legal statuses of Romani minorities between the Post-Yugoslav space and the European Union

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the mobilities of Romani minorities between the ‘old’ EU Member States and the non-EU Post-Yugoslav space. It unravels how the mobilities of Romani individuals, who are Non-EU Post-Yugoslav citizens, were different from the mobilities of Roma coming from other post-socialist spaces, now EU Member States. Instead of focusing on motivations for mobility of Romani individuals as some previous work has done, this paper investigates the treatment of these mobilities by different states and the legal statuses these states ascribe to those labelled as Romani migrants. By using the combination historical and socio-legal analysis, this paper diachronically examines the precarious migrant statuses of Post-Yugoslav Romani minorities in the old EU, such as Yugoslav labour migrants, Post-Yugoslav forced migrants and subsequently the ‘bogus’ asylum seekers. The paper points to the interconnectedness of these statuses, but also to their interminable liminality: they are constantly on the verge of being rendered ‘illegal’ and are hence subject to deportability. I claim that while their legal statuses are being reshuffled, their liminality and interconnectedness also contribute to circular mobilities between the Post-Yugoslav space and the EU. I investigate how these mobilities are not only socially produced, but are also legally and politically conditioned by the hierarchical relationship between the Post-Yugoslav space and the EU. As a side effect of this relationship, Roma are positioned as a racialized minority, treated only as temporary migrants in their ‘host country’ and without prospects of inclusion in their ‘country of origin’ as minority citizens.     

Multilevel Risk and Protective Factors for Intimate Partner Violence Among African,Asian, and Latina Immigrant and Refugee Women: Perceptions of Effective Safety Planning Interventions

Immigrant and refugee women are at high risk for intimate partner violence (IPV) and intimate partner homicide (IPH). Given the growing number of immigrants and refugees in the US and the concerns about IPV and IPH among immigrant and refugee groups, this paper aims to identify survivors and practitioners’ perceptions of (a) common and culturally specific risk and protective factors for IPV and IPH for immigrant and refugee women and (b) areas of safety planning interventions for survivors who are at risk for severe or lethal violence by an intimate partner. Qualitative data for this multi-site study were collected from women and practitioners residing in seven geographically diverse US locations. Eighty-three in-depth interviews were conducted with adult immigrant and refugee survivors of IPV, who identified as Asian (n?=?30), Latina (n?=?30), and African (n?=?23). Additionally, nine focus groups and five key informant interviews were conducted with practitioners (n?=?62) who serve immigrant and refugee survivors of IPV. Results revealed multilevel risk and protective factors for IPV/IPH found at the societal level (e.g., patriarchal cultural norms), relationship level (e.g., partner abusive behaviors), and individual level (e.g., acculturation in the US). These findings can inform the development of culturally responsive risk assessment and safety planning interventions across legal, social service, and healthcare settings.     

Enabling,structuring and creating elite transnational lifestyles: intermediaries of the super-rich and the elite mobilities industry

ABSTRACT

This article considers how the migration industries lens can be usefully employed in understanding how professional intermediaries enable, structure, and create transnational migration lifestyles of the super-rich. In particular, we examine how intermediaries and their services (1) enable the continued sustenance of transnational migration lifestyles for this group of elites; and (2) structure and create elite transnational lifestyles. This article primarily draws on interviews with professional intermediaries who service the super-rich, and content analysis of their websites and brochures. Inspired by insights from the new mobilities paradigm (and in particular the politics of mobility), we argue for an expanded conceptualisation of the migration industries beyond the literature’s current focus on labour recruitment and migration management. Specifically, we suggest thinking of the migration industries as a collection of actors and services that enable, structure, and create different types of ‘migrants’, their spaces and their highly uneven transnational mobilities – including that of the super-rich and their elite transnational lifestyles. We conclude with suggestions for a research agenda that may help to better understand the role of intermediaries in the creation of differentiated mobilities.     

Gendering international student migration: an Indian case-study

ABSTRACT

Despite the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into migration research, very few attempts have been made to gender international student migration. This paper poses three questions about Indian students who study abroad. Are there gender differences in their motivations? How do they negotiate their gendered everyday lives when abroad? Is the return to India shaped by gender relations? An online survey of Indian study-abroad students (n?=?157), and in-depth interviews with Indian students in Toronto (n?=?22), returned students in New Delhi (n?=?21), and with parents of students abroad (n?=?22) help to provide answers. Conceptually, the paper draws on a ‘gendered geographies of power’ framework and on student migration as an embodied process subject to ‘matrices of (un)intelligibility’. We find minimal gender-related differences in motivations to study abroad, except that male students are drawn from a wider social background. However, whilst abroad, both male and female Indian students face challenges in performing their gendered identities. The Indian patrifocal family puts greater pressure on males to return; females face greater challenges upon return.     

Between play and the quotidian: inscriptions of monstrous characters on the racialised bodies of children

Abstract

Despite critiques pointing out that racism has become normalised in early childhood settings, relatively little attention has been paid in such contexts to the everyday practices in which racial inequities are made. In seeking to interrogate the ways in which racism roosts in the routine, this article interrogates quotidian responses to children’s playful activity, drawing on data generated in an ethnographic study in a London-based nursery. The article argues that the imaginative characters players embody become ‘fixed’ on particular children – when these characters coincide with reified assumptions about the raced, classed, and gendered body – whilst serving as mobile resources for others. Such reification, which is a concentration of complex historic and contemporary social relations in the political economy, is not only harmful and unjust but limits understandings of racialisation and inequity.     

Strengthening migration governance: the UN as ‘wingman’*

ABSTRACT

The plight of desperate migrants crossing the Mediterranean reached an inflection point in 2015 when an estimated 800 migrants drowned in a single day, painfully exposing dysfunctions in how States, regions, and the international community as a whole seek to govern a world with increased mobility of persons. By examining the response to the migration and refugee crises of recent years through the lens of the United Nations (UN), this article describes how States and the UN system are challenged to reconsider traditional hierarchies of power and influence since unilateral State action will not solve the migration problem. Migration solutions, particularly those providing greater protections for migrants in vulnerable situations, will require ‘coalitions of the willing’ between States, inter-governmental organisations, local governments and non-state actors. Still emerging, such coalitions are interdependent; and their objectives will be the result of negotiating and bargaining amongst their members. They reflect multi-level governance in the collective handling of migration, revealing a more complex interaction, one in which local authorities and non-state actors are in some instances bypassing State-led interventions. For its part, the UN – armed with recent institutional changes that provide it with more centralised ‘orchestration’ capacities – is best suited to serve in a ‘wingman’ function, buttressing rather than leading such coalitions.     

Coping with the Libyan migration crisis

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the EU's response to the recent Libyan ‘migration crisis’. The central Mediterranean migration route, via Libya, is now the principal route for mixed flows into the EU – primarily owing to the non-existence of a Libyan state to enforce migration controls in collaboration with the EU. The situation in Libya itself is dire, with extensive human rights violations committed against mostly African migrants. While the EU's efforts to curb migration from Libya through enhanced maritime patrol operations have been largely unsuccessful, the recent Italian–Libyan collaboration seems to have led to a significant reduction in the number of migrants departing from Libya's shores. In addition, the EU has also been enlisting transit countries further south – Niger, in particular – in its migration control efforts, with the provision of financial and other resources for capacity-building in migration management. Overall, the EU persists with buttressing its fortress, continues to push for the external hosting of refugee populations within the region and intensifies its collaboration with countries with a dismal track record in terms of respecting the rights of migrants and refugees.     

Survival and integration: Kachin social networks and refugee management regimes in Kuala Lumpur and Los Angeles

How do refugees establish social networks and mobilise social capital in different contexts throughout a multi-stage migration process? Migrant social network literature explains how migrants accumulate social capital and mobilise resources in and between origin and destination but provides limited answers regarding how these processes unfold during refugee migrations involving protracted stays in intermediate locations and direct interaction with state agents. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with Kachin refugees in Kuala Lumpur and Los Angeles, I address these gaps by comparing refugee social networks in two sites of a migration process. Distinguishing between networks of survival and networks of integration, I argue that differences in their form and functions stem from their interactions with local refugee management regimes, which are shaped by broader state regulatory contexts. In both locations, these networks and regimes feed off each other to manage the refugee migration process, with key roles played by hybrid institutions rooted in grassroots adaptation efforts yet linked to formal resettlement mechanisms. Considering the refugee migration process as a whole, I show that Kachin refugees demonstrate their possession of social capital gained during the informal social process of migration to advance through institutionalised political processes of resettlement in each context.     

Youth sport and community segregation: a study of kids’ participation in Australian rules football and soccer clubs in an Australian community

ABSTRACT

This research addresses the appeal for more empirical-based research on exclusionary practices in local community sport that often go unchallenged within dominant discourses. By examining how organised community sport clubs can uphold systemic segregation of various ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious and socioeconomic groups, this study also draws attention to the importance of research on race, ethnicity, and education in primary school age children; a population group often ignored in both racism studies and studies of sport. Using interview and focus group data from school principals and students (aged 9–12), including students from refugee and asylum seeker migrant backgrounds, collected over 3 years from two schools in the same multicultural community in Melbourne, Australia, this paper challenges the depiction of sport as an uncontested inclusive space in national and educational discourse, and instead demonstrates the continued existence of exclusion through systemically mediated segregation in organised community youth sport.     

Gendering a Language,Liberating a People: Women Writing in Afrikaans and the 'New' South Africa

I discuss contem porary South African women's writing in Afrikaans, particularly as produced by white women. Long overlooked, this body of work has quickly become the new avant garde of South African writing, reflecting (upon) as it presages dramatic transformations in the South African social fabric. Mapping the contributions of this writing in Afrikaans, I contrast them with the absence of engagement in South African writing in English with narrative techniques concerned with the nuances and ironies, the boundary and border transgressions of women's writing in Afrikaans- of traditional styles and themes, standard subjects and narrative technologies, of the gendered formation of language itself.     

Trans-regional institutional cooperation as multilevel governance: ECOWAS migration policy and the EU*

ABSTRACT

Regional economic integration in West Africa establishes the framework for the movement of persons within the highly mobile region. Eighty-four per cent of the migratory movements is directed towards another country within the region. This article analyses the role of trans-regional institutional cooperation on intra-regional migration policymaking, exploring the role of the European Union (EU) in the formulation of regional migration policies in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) specifically in labour migration, refugee protection, and return/readmission. It examines the normative role of the EU in influencing policies of third countries and argues that in the case of ECOWAS, networks are increasingly important in enabling formal and informal diffusion. The article uses multilevel governance as the lens to examine migration governance between the EU and ECOWAS, concluding that power relations equally play a key role in trans-regional institutional cooperation. Included in this mix are bilateral agreements which stand between trans-regional and intra-regional institutional cooperation, exerting a strong influence on inter-institutional EU- ECOWAS relations.     

White Zimbabwean farmers’ unstable mobilities,identity and history in Douglas Rogers’ The last resort: a memoir of Zimbabwe

White displacement as a consequence of Zimbabwe's land reform programme resulted in white economic and social mobilities and the need to reconfigure identities and preserve white Zimbabwean farmers’ history and memory as reflected in Douglas Rogers’ The last resort: A memoir of Zimbabwe (2009). This dislocation provokes a fear of loss of memory and history in the white Zimbabwean community and therefore triggers a desire to preserve history and memory, which are central in identity formation. In addition, the preservation of history and memory acts as an important site for the contestation of the land reform programme, identity and belonging.     

Shaking the bad boys: troubling the criminalization of black boys’ childhood play,hegemonic white masculinity and femininity,and the school playground-to-prison pipeline

ABSTRACT

Few studies have sought to understand the childhood play experiences of Black boys in early childhood education (ECE), and a majority of those that investigate them often socially construct Black boys’ play as criminal, dangerous, and monstrous. Considering the dangers of hegemonic masculinity and femininity or the racial and gendered power and privilege White boys and girls bring to societal spaces including playgrounds, little is known about how such power influences the experiences of Black boys who play with them. In this conceptual paper, I draw on critical race theory (CRT) to trouble the criminalization of Black boys’ childhood play and hegemonic White masculinity and femininity, which can prove violent and dehumanizing to Black boys. As such, I suggest that similar to the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP), Black boys may become victims of what I call the school playground-to-prison pipeline (SPTPP) as a consequence of White children’s accusations, fears, misperceptions, and misreadings of Black boys’ play. Recommendations are provided for teacher and ECE to better support Black boys and the cross-cultural play interactions between them and White children.     

Different narratives,one area without internal frontiers: why EU institutions cannot agree on the refugee crisis

ABSTRACT

This article contextualizes contemporary institutional responses of the European Union (EU) to the refugee crisis within the historical setting in which EU migration and asylum policies emerged – namely during the implementation of the border-free Schengen Area (1984–1995). Using the analytical framework of ‘policy narratives’, it argues that EU institutions have used the creation of the ‘area without internal frontiers’ to build coherent narratives about the nature and scope of EU action and of their own role in it. Such narratives became locked into the institutional discourse and influenced the subsequent evolution of EU politics on the topic.     

Labour and life in the global Asian city: the discrepant mobilities of migrant workers and English teachers in Seoul

ABSTRACT

Transnational mobilities are often conceived as interconnected with cities as ‘magnets’ for migrants, ‘nodes’ in mobility trajectories or ‘destinations’ for settlement. This paper frames the urban as critical to conceptualising the manner that mobility is actively and contingently assembled across the border and in the constitution of migrant lives. This argument builds on understanding the relationship between urban life and migration regimes in South Korea where the state and infrastructures of migration play a strong role in moulding the forms and outcomes of transnational mobilities in the everyday spaces of cities. The paper examines the urban lives of two differently positioned mobile populations in the Seoul Metropolitan Region: migrant workers in the manufacturing industries and English teachers working in schools, private academies and universities. Drawing on Said’s ‘contrapuntal’ analysis, the paper explores the ways in which these migrant lives overlap and diverge: in recent political-economic transformations and the regulation of migration, the urban geographies of labour and life, and the timing of migration. In doing so, the paper offers a window into Seoul’s emerging reliance on and differential incorporation of migrants and demonstrates the critical interlinkages between the governmental technologies of border crossing, everyday life and possibilities for the future.     

‘Hunger has brought us into this jungle’: understanding mobility and immobility of Bengali immigrants in the Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

The recent history of the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh is marked by ongoing conflicts between minority (non-Muslim and non-Bengali) locals and state-sponsored (Bengali Muslim) immigrants. In general, these immigrants are framed as land grabbers who have been receiving protection from a pro-Bengali military force. We propose instead, that the understanding of these Bengalis as a homogenous category of mobile perpetrators fails to take into account their complex histories as mobile landless peasants. Our ethnographic research reveals that the framing of the local minorities and the mobile Bengalis as two antagonistic categories with opposing interests obscures the fact that both categories have fallen victim to very similar regimes of mobilities and immobilities of the state and national and local (political, economic and military) elites. Here, we reject binary thinking that counterpoises mobility and immobility as two antagonistic concepts and argue that mobility and immobility are intrinsically related and their relationship is asymmetrical.