Working together in a deficit logic: home–school partnerships with Somali diaspora parents

Drawing on discursive psychology this article examines the understandings teachers and principals in Danish Public Schools have regarding Somali diaspora parenting practices. Furthermore, the article investigates what these understandings mean in interaction with children in the classrooms and with parents in home–school communication. It is argued that in a society with increased focus on parental responsibility the teachers and principals draw on a deficit logic when dealing with Somali diaspora parents and children which consequently leads to teachers either transmitting their expertise by educating parents or compensating for perceived deficiencies in parental practices. Both these strategies result in significant marginalizing consequences where ‘difference’ is understood as ‘wrong’ or ‘inadequate’.     

Migrants’ class and parenting: the role of cultural capital in Migrants’ inequalities in education

Although scholars consistently show that class-specific parenting, influenced by the resources parents have due to their socio-economic position, is one of the most important factors for children’s different life chances and outcomes as adults, migrants’ parenting is usually analysed with a focus on their ethnicity or country of origin. Building on cultural perspectives on class, this study demonstrates that migrant parents are differently endowed with institutionalised and embodied cultural capital, which shapes their parenting and therewith their children’s educational opportunities. Specifically, parents differ in their trust in school authorities, the way they define their own role in shaping their children’s education, and their self-esteem and confidence in assessing their children’s abilities and performance. This study is based on the accounts of parents who migrated from Poland to Germany and shows that due to their class position, middle-class parents possess robust forms of cultural capital that they can transfer to their children in the context of migration. This finding makes a case for the relevance of class in the context of migration and thereby adds an important perspective to the study of migrants’ inequalities in education, which tends to focus on ‘ethnic’ differences between migrants and ‘natives’.     

Impossible children: illegality and excluded belonging among children of migrants in Sabah,East Malaysia

This article makes a case for attending to the specificities of child illegality in migrant contexts. This is not simply because children have been left out of previous accounts, but also because their status as minors makes both their citizenship and their illegality different to that of adults. The analysis is based on research with children born to migrants in the state of Sabah, East Malaysia. I argue that such children are configured as Sabah’s impossible children, and that this configuration influences their experiences of illegality and exclusion in distinctive ways. From a young age, children are aware of document ‘checking’ raids and, as ‘foreigners’, are unable to attend Malaysian schools. However, informal documents from learning centres, as well as age and contingent circumstances, may give them a temporary, ‘liminal’ legality. Finally, given that irregular migrants experience both exclusion and inclusion in a host nation, the article describes children’s urban forms of belonging. These forms of inclusion demonstrate children’s engagement with Sabah as a home, as against their political construction as an impossible problem.     

Syrian refugees in Turkey: pathways to precarity,differential inclusion,and negotiated citizenship rights

This article addresses the question of how to understand the relation among precarity, differential inclusion, and citizenship status with regard to Syrian refugees in Turkey. Turkey has become host to over 2.7 million Syrian refugees who live in government-run refugee camps and urban centres. Drawing on critical citizenship and migration studies literature, the paper emphasises the Turkish government’s central legal and policy frameworks that provide Syrians with some citizenship rights while simultaneously regulating their status and situating them in a position of limbo. Syrians are not only making claims to citizenship rights but they are also negotiating their access to social services, humanitarian assistance, and employment in different ways. The analysis stresses that Syrian refugees in Turkey continue to be part of the multiple pathways to precarity, differential inclusion, and negotiated citizenship rights.     

西南边境跨国婚姻子女的国家认同——以广西大新县隘江村为例

西南边境地区跨国婚姻子女的国家认同具有一定的特殊性.在国家归属方面,他们认同自己是中国人,但也为自己的母亲难以加入中国籍而遗憾;在政治认同方面,他们比同龄人冷漠;在法律认同方面,他们也面临一些迷茫.对于西南边境跨国婚姻所生子女在国家认同过程中遇到的特殊情况,需要给予更多的关注和研究.     

Educational performance of children of migrant parents in Ghana,Nigeria and Angola

There is no empirical research on the school performance of children who live separated from their parents in sub-Saharan Africa—a major migrant sending region in the world. This study uses survey data from junior and secondary school children and youths in Ghana (N?=?2760), Angola (N?=?2243) and Nigeria (N?=?2168) to examine how different transnational family formations such as internal or international parental absence accompanied by migration or divorce, who is the migrant parent and who is the caregiver, the stability of the caregiving arrangement and remittances relate with the school performance of children who stay behind. School performance is measured through an index of grades in language, mathematics and science. The results show that international parental migration (Ghana), the internal parental migration accompanied by divorce/separation (Nigeria) and migration of both parents (Ghana and Nigeria) are likely predictors for decreased school performance. No effects are observed when parents are abroad and divorced/separated, when only one parent migrates, when children are in a stable care arrangement or when children receive remittances or not. The analyses show that the overall relationship between parental absence and education varies by the transnational dimension being analysed and by context.     

But do they speak it? The intergenerational transmission of home-country language in migrant families in France

To what extent can immigrant parents transmit their home-country language to their children? Drawing on a recent national sample of children of immigrants in France, this paper examines the effects of parental language socialisation and exposure to the parental home country on language ability and language practices of their adult children. The data show that parental efforts at transmitting the language are necessary, but ultimately insufficient especially when it comes to language practices. Almost none of those who grew up without or with only minimal exposure to the parental home-country language use it. But even among those who had extensive exposure only a minority end up using it in their daily lives. The only domain where the second-generation uses the parental home-country language to a non-trivial degree is in the family context. In addition parental resources can have contradictory effects. While successful transmission of home-country language in the immigrant context requires significant resources, those parents who have these resources are less likely to try to pass on their language.     

Will to love,will to fear: the emotional politics of illegality and citizenship in the campaign against birthright citizenship in the US

Anti-immigration activists argue that the broad inclusivity of the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment is a national security concern that enables criminalized migrant mothers to give birth to citizens who can later harm the US through violence and resource consumption. Seeing this argument as representative of the problem of inclusivity inherent to citizenship in a liberal democracy, this essay asks how the children of undocumented and temporary migrants are constructed as what Mae Ngai calls ‘alien citizens.’ Drawing from Sara Ahmed's affective economy of emotion, I find that affect and emotion figure prominently in how citizens are made ‘alien.’ Specifically love and fear function as pivot points in the anti-birthright citizenship argument, wherein the ‘real citizen’ is ‘willed’ to love and be loved by the nation and to fear the nation's Others. Moreover, the emphasis on national feelings does not evacuate white supremacy or heteronormativity from its imagination of citizenship, but instead displaces these loci of power into feeling and affect. Thus, this essay claims that the birthright citizenship argument illustrates how national love and fear work in tandem to uphold, naturalize, and expand the racial and sexual exclusions inherent to citizenship in a nation-state.     

Theorising the power of citizenship as claims-making

I advance a conceptual approach to citizenship as membership through claims-making. In this approach, citizenship is a relational process of making membership claims on polities, people and institutions, claims recognized or rejected within particular normative understandings of citizenship. Such a conceptual shift moves scholarship beyond typologizing—enumerating how citizenship is (or is not) about status, rights, participation and identity—to identifying the mechanisms through which claims on citizenship have power. This framework requires a relational approach and attention to dynamics of recognition within contexts of structured agency. Immigrants and their children can make claims to modify the normative content of citizenship, affect recognition evaluations and change the allocation of status and rights. But they are also constrained by legal structures, a society's institutional practices, and prevailing public perceptions. Citizenship as claims-making may require a reassessment of boundary approaches and a turn to metaphors of positionality, as well as more serious commitment to mixed-methods research. The stakes of understanding citizenship's power, as practice and status, are especially high right now. Yet based on existing scholarship, it is not entirely clear how much citizenship matters, in what ways, for whom, or why. This is the challenge for future scholarship.     

Ukrainian and American identities as predictors of marital and parenting attitudes within the acculturating Ukrainian-American community

The Ukrainian-American community represents a unique acculturating community with respect to sociohistorical context, as well as specific demographic and cultural characteristics. The Ukrainian immigrant experience reflects the identity formed in relation to its challenges faced during the twentieth century and its complex relationship with the former Soviet Union. The purpose of this study was to examine the process of acculturation within the Ukrainian community in the United States and to examine how acculturation processes are related to attitudes on childrearing and traditional family formation. The participants for this sample included 188 participants drawn from the Ukrainian diaspora in Central New York. Analyses demonstrated the unique influence of religious beliefs and the simultaneous unique influence of both American identity and Ukrainian identity on attitudes towards traditional marriage formation and parenting. American identity was associated with more liberal attitudes towards divorce while both Ukrainian and American identity were associated with childrearing beliefs. Higher Ukrainian identity predicted more traditional parenting beliefs, while higher American identity predicted more progressive (less traditional) parenting beliefs. These results describe the distinctive features of the Ukrainian-American community in the United States that contribute to attitudes regarding marital behaviour as well as parenting beliefs.     

Genderacing immigrant subjects: ‘anchor babies’ and the politics of birthright citizenship

Birthright citizenship is often a subject of important national debates on immigration. From a historical perspective, the influx of Mexican and Chinese immigrants to the United Stated has elicited politically charged efforts to deny the right of US citizenship to their children. Based on a review of popular discursive frames concerning the politics of birthright citizenship, this essay identifies and critiques the arguments from both ends of the political spectrum. We conclude that, by and large, the substance of their legal and philosophical arguments is old, hackneyed responses from decades ago. However, on many symbolic levels, the current rhetoric is quite uncharacteristically caustic, with a focus on racialized and gendered discourses among nationalist groups. We seek to explain why this is the case. Framed as ‘genderacing immigrant subjects’, this essay examines the politics of naming (or nomenclature) through the construction of the racially gendered referent in public discourse, thereby ascribing socially resonant meanings that naturalize a call for draconian policy measures in order to socially engineer the national body.     

Religiosity,Citizenship and Belonging: The Everyday Experiences of Young Australian Muslims

Abstract

Since 11 September 2001 Muslim Diasporas have emerged as objects of anxiety in Western societies. Underlying this (in)security-driven problematisation is the question of whether Muslims living in the West have the capacity to become fully active citizens while maintaining their religious beliefs, rituals and practices. This apprehension has prompted reactionary government programmes, particularly targeting young Muslims. Such responses fail to recognise the societal capacities that practising Muslims possess, including those informed by the ethical precepts of Islamic faith. This paper argues that it is timely to explore expressions of Islamic religiosity as they are grounded in everyday multicultural environments. The paper draws on survey data and interviews conducted with Muslims living in Melbourne, Australia. We take into consideration key variables of age and generation to highlight how young, practising Muslims enact citizenship through Islamic rituals and faith-based practices and traditions. The paper will draw from key findings to argue that these performances provide a foundation for exploring ways of ‘living’ together in a manner that privileges ethics central to Islamic faith traditions.     

Nonresident Fathers’ Parenting,Maternal Mastery and Child Development in Poor African American Single-Mother Families

This study examines the relationships between and among economic hardship, mothers’ depressive symptoms, nonresident fathers’ parenting, mothers’ parenting and mastery, and their children’s behavioral and cognitive development in poor African American single-mother families. Informed by stress-coping and family process theoretical perspectives, this study estimates the effects of nonresident fathers’ parenting and maternal mastery on child developmental outcomes. Analyses use the first three waves of longitudinal data from a subsample of single, African American and noncohabiting mothers with low income in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Results suggest that nonresident fathers’ parenting is indirectly associated with children’s behavior problems and cognitive development transmitted through mothers’ parenting and mastery. Maternal mastery is also found to be one of the most influential predictors of both developmental outcomes of children. Policy and practice implications of these findings are discussed.     

Internal migration and citizenship in India

Immigrants and the process of incorporation can elucidate what it means to be a member of a national citizenry and sociopolitical community. However, relatively little scholarship has focused on the potential of internal migration to highlight citizenship outcomes. This article presents fieldwork from Mumbai and Kolkata to show that citizenship status, rights, and belonging are more restrictive for Indian citizens who are internal migrants than for those who are not. It argues that development factors alone are insufficient explanations for citizenship outcomes in India, and shows that internal migrants experience a lesser citizenship status and curtailed citizenship rights because they are migrants rather than because of their impoverishment or because of the limited capacity of the state.     

Single Parenting and Child Behavior Problems in Kindergarten

Two waves of data from a sample of 89 poor and near-poor single black mothers and their preschool children were used to study the influences of parenting stress, physical discipline practices, and nonresident fathers’ relations with their children on behavior problems in kindergarten. The results indicate that higher levels of parent stress, more frequent spanking, and less frequent father–child contact at time 1 were associated with increased teacher-reported behavior problems at time 2. In addition, more frequent contact between nonresident biological fathers and their children moderated the negative effect of harsh discipline by mothers on subsequent child behavior problems. Specifically, when contact with the father was low, maternal spanking resulted in elevated levels of behavior problems; with average contact, this negative effect of spanking was muted; and with high contact, spanking was not associated with increased behavior problems in kindergarten. The implications of these findings for future research and policy are discussed.     

Navigating Israeli citizenship: how do Arab-Palestinian teachers civicize their pupils?

This study examines citizenship education in Israel from the point of view of Arab teachers, as they rework and negotiate the content and boundaries of their Israeli citizenship. Specifically, the paper studies how teachers of citizenship education in Arab high schools in Israel perceive their sociopolitical reality, how they respond to it in their classrooms, and how they conceptualize Israeli citizenship for their pupils. In doing so, the paper ponders the pedagogical strategies and emphases of these teachers, as they mediate the citizenship education curriculum, with its heavy emphasis on the ethno-national character of Israel, to their Arab pupils.     

Pools,Piety, and Participation: A Muslim Women's Sports Club and Urban Citizenship in Germany

Abstract

This paper introduces the Muslim Women's Sports Club (MWSC) in Stuttgart, Germany and analyzes this club's role and contribution in the construction of urban citizenship. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I illustrate that this club is a vibrant space of civic participation. I argue that associations like this sports club are crucial sites of Muslim civic engagement where individuals configure forms of religiously circumscribed citizenship. The club plays a vital, but largely overlooked, role in the urban civic sphere, as it articulates and strengthens the bonding and civic participation of pious Muslim women and creates cross-ethnic relationships and networks. Some members are initiated into the landscape of civic associations, as they learn about their rights, duties, and potentials, through cooperation with other associations or institutions. I argue that an association such as the MWSC, regardless of its rather invisible activities, is a full-fledged part of the urban public sphere in Germany. Theoretically I engage questions of urban citizenship and civic participation in the context of a faith and/or identity-based association.     

Racial and Structural Discrimination Toward the Children of Indigenous Mexican Immigrants

My research examines the role of patron saint celebrations in how the children of indigenous Oaxacan immigrants living in Los Angeles, California form ethnic, community, and national identities. Religious practices among immigrants have been characterized as a reterritorialization of religious practices (McAlister in Gatherings in diaspora: Religious communities and the new immigration, 1998). Importantly, legal status may influence transborder movement for undocumented immigrants thereby affecting the extent and character of immigrants’ transnational activities, including their religious practices (Menjívar in J Ethn Migr Stud 28:531–552, 2002). In cases when immigrants may be unable to return their country of origin, rituals figuratively transport immigrants between the sending and receiving community (Tweed in J Am Acad Religion 70:253–277, 2002). Thus, religious identities and practices also enable immigrants to sustain membership in multiple locations, allowing them to affirm continued attachments to a particular sending community or nation even if they are unable to return to their home country (Levitt in Int Migr Rev 37:847–873, 2003). Playing in village-based bands, performing traditional dances, or attending patron saint festivities facilitate indigenous youths’ social integration into the U.S. by fostering a strong sense of ethnic pride in the face of anti-indigenous discrimination from within the Latino population or anti-immigrant hostility from mainstream society. This article explores the racism at structural and individuals levels the children of indigenous immigrants contend with, as well as the effects of these on patterns of identity formation for the children of undocumented indigenous immigrants and on their children’s transnational practices.     

Practising transnational citizenship: dual nationality and simultaneous political involvement among emigrants

Acceptance of dual citizenship allows migrants to naturalise in the country of residence (CoR) without giving up their former citizenship. For migrant sending countries the question emerges whether emigrants who acquire another citizenship are less attached to and politically active in the country of origin than those who do not. This would be the assumption of traditional perspectives on migration and citizenship. However, according to the transnational perspective neither multiple nationalities, nor participation in and identification with the CoR, preclude ongoing ties and participation back home. We test these perspectives with survey data on Swiss citizens residing in France, Germany, Italy and the US. Our results suggest that Swiss dual citizens abroad are not significantly less attached to and active in Switzerland than their mono national counterparts. Our data further supports the transnational perspective by showing not only simultaneity, but a mutually reinforcing relationship when transnational citizenship is practised. Identification with, and political participation in, the CoR positively relates to equivalent feelings and activities in the country of origin. Since dual citizenship sets the legal foundation for simultaneous involvement in two countries, it correctly assumes a central place in the study of transnational citizenship.