Parental Transmission of Religion and Citizenship among Migrant Muslim Families in Mozambique,Portugal, United Kingdom and Angola

This article discusses the impact of parental religious transmission upon the religious and citizen identities and performances of their offspring, using an ethnographic study on the parenting practices of Sunni and Ismaili migrant families conducted in Portugal, United Kingdom and Angola. The analysis highlights the role of parental religious upbringing in the strengthening of children’s faith and practice but also towards ensuring certain kinds of citizenship that foster pride of affiliation to a given group identity, while simultaneously promoting intergroup identifications and bridging attachments to fellow citizens. In addition, the comparison between migratory contexts shows how parental religious caregiving may help their children reconcile or resist alternative aspects of religiosity and citizenship in different nation-states. These findings represent a stark contrast with official political discourse, which tends to view immigrant religious parenting as simply based on intergenerational continuity.     

Institutionalising a cross-sectional policy area? Ministerial competences for migrant integration in EU member states

Migrant integration is a cross-sectional policy issue and its governance involves a network of actors operating on different regional and government levels. Its emergence as a distinct policy area in many European democracies has reinvigorated the role of state actors, particularly at the national level. National governments face a growing need to coordinate formerly disparate domestic integration measures, yet they are also encouraged by increasing activities and resources that have evolved at the EU level. From an institutional perspective, this spread of both norms and resources is likely to result in the emergence of new governmental actors assigned with these tasks. Yet, little scholarly attention has so far been dedicated to the comparison of ministerial competences for migrant integration across Europe and their relation to integration policies. The paper addresses this gap in a comparative study, presenting data on the ministerial competences in 27 EU member states and Switzerland between 2010 and 2014 and linking them to data on migrant integration policies using the MIPEX dataset. The findings show no general European trend towards top-level institutionalisation and instead reveal substantial differences between Western and Eastern European democracies associated with the respective patterns of integration policies.     

‘I think I'm more free with them'—Conflict,Negotiation and Change in Intergenerational Relations in African Families Living in Britain

ABSTRACT

While the family is increasingly being recognised as pivotal to migration, there remain too few studies examining how migration impacts on intergenerational relationships. Although traditional intergenerational gaps are intensified by migration, arguably there has been an over-emphasis on the divisions between ‘traditional’ parents and ‘modern’ children at the expense of examining the ways in which both generations adapt. As Foner and Dreby [2011. “Relations Between the Generations in Immigrant Families.” Annual Review of Sociology 37: 545–564] stress, the reality of post-migration intergenerational relations is inevitably more complex, requiring the examination of both conflict and cooperation. This article contributes to this growing literature by discussing British data from comparative projects on intergenerational relations in African families (in Britain, France and South Africa). It argues that particular understandings can be gained from examining the adaptation of parents and parenting strategies post-migration and how the reconfiguration of family relations can contribute to settlement. By focusing on how both parent and child generations engage in conflict and negotiation to redefine their relationships and expectations, it offers insight into how families navigate and integrate the values of two cultures. In doing so, it argues that the reconfiguration of gender roles as a result of migration offers families the space to renegotiate their relationships and make choices about what they transmit to the next generation.     

Migration,masculinity, and family

Previous studies of migration, family, and gender have shown that migration is not only an event that changes family life, the change itself is a gendered process. How migrant women develop strategies to cope with challenges posed by either their own migration or their husbands’ migration has been widely studied. However, how migrant men adjust and change their care practices and domestic roles to accommodate challenges brought about by migration to their family lives has not been as extensively explored. Using interview data gathered from male rural-to-urban migrant workers in South China, this paper fills this gap by studying male migrants’ agency and masculinity through the concept of masculine compromise. Masculine compromise delineates how migrant men strive to respond to changing family circumstances triggered by migration while maintaining the gender boundaries that underpin their dominance within the family. As a concept, masculine compromise underscores the material impact of migration on gender practices and family life; and the limited effect it has on gender attitudes and identity. Masculine compromise provides a feminist lens to analyse the complex effect of migration on changing masculinity and gender relationships within the family.     

Ethnic,gender and class identities of Polish migrant mothers: intersecting maternal narratives with transnationalism and integration

ABSTRACT

Based on a doctoral study of Polish migrant mothers living in Germany and the United Kingdom, this paper examines women's narratives pertinent to ethnicity, gender and social class, as well as the mutual entanglements of these dimensions. While the ethnic identity matrix often evokes dimensions of transnationalism and integration, the addition of the femininity component illustrates the diversity among contemporary Polish migrant women in Western Europe with regard to their identity practices. The analyses of transnational, translocal and cosmopolitan orientations highlight their binding to a contextualized understanding of femininity – its various markers and corollary epitome of motherhood, particularly in the Polish context. The main findings comprise an ideal-type based typology of migrant mothering, which sheds light on how mobility and gender intersect. The discussions adopt the social class lens in an attempt to focus on the implications of certain maternal and migrant identities among Polish women. By underscoring the value of both integration and transnationalism perspectives, the paper calls for additional aspects of translocality and hybridization, seeing them as noticeable social markers of the Polish female migrants’ biographies.     

Teacher-Based Racial Discrimination: The Role of Racial Pride and Religiosity Among African American and Caribbean Black Adolescents

This study explored the extent to which private regard and religiosity beliefs serve as protective factors for school bonding among African American and Caribbean black adolescents who experience racial discrimination in school. Findings are drawn from a nationally representative sample of (n = 810) African American and (n = 360) Caribbean black adolescents (52% girls) aged 13–17 (M_age = 15, SD = 1.42) years. Results suggest that perceiving racial discrimination from teachers was associated with lower levels of school bonding for African American and Caribbean black adolescents. For African American adolescents, perceiving more racial discrimination from teachers and reporting lower private regard beliefs was associated with less school bonding. The findings for Caribbean black adolescents revealed that endorsing moderate levels of religiosity and perceiving higher rates of teacher discrimination was associated with less school bonding. The developmental significance and implications for future research are discussed.     

Beyond breadwinning: Ghanaian transnational fathering in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

This article probes how gender norms and male migrants’ legal and socio-economic position shape transnational fathering amongst Ghanaian-born fathers, residing in the Netherlands, who have one or more children living in Ghana. Drawing on ethnographic research with Ghanaian transnational fathers, this article compares fathers’ attitudes and actual practices. In conformity with cultural expectations of fatherhood in Ghana, the men in this study primarily addressed their paternal role in terms of financial support for their families as ‘breadwinners’. Alongside breadwinning responsibilities, however, over three-quarters of the Ghanaian fathers espoused more ‘engaged’ parenting ideals, challenging stereotypes of the uncaring and distant migrant father who neglects his ‘stay-behind’ children’s emotional needs. Our analysis shows that fathers’ legal and socio-economic status largely determines men’s possibilities to perform their material and ‘emotionally engaged’ paternal ideals across borders. The emotional distance was particularly pronounced for undocumented and low-income migrants who were legally or financially incapable of bridging the emotional gulf arising from physical distance.     

Local deprivation and the labour market integration of new migrants to England

ABSTRACT

Using data on new migrants to England from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, we show how a key component of migrant integration - labour market progress in terms of wages and unemployment rates – is broadly positive in the early years after arrival across a range of migrant groups and across gender. However, the precise level of labour market success achieved varies considerably across groups reflecting both the initial entry-level and labour market trajectories after migration. Migrants from Western Europe and the Old Commonwealth countries have unemployment rates (wages) which are generally lower (higher) than other groups, particularly non-white groups, while migrants from the Accession countries experience relatively low unemployment but also low wages. Groups which have better outcomes on entry also tend to experience higher rates of progress over time in England. However, the extent of multiple deprivation in the local authority where migrants reside interacts with years since migration to dampen wage trajectories for some groups and accounting for deprivation highlights the importance of internal migration for access to employment. The results emphasise structural explanations for patterns of labour market integration of new migrants to England.     

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.     

Ethnic composition of the school class and interethnic attitudes: a multi-group perspective

This study investigates the relationship between the ethnic classroom composition and interethnic attitudes of adolescents of the native majority and several ethnic minorities in the Netherlands, Germany, England and Sweden. It contributes to prior research by examining the underlying theoretical features of contact opportunities and levels of threat across multiple ethnic groups more accurately, using group-specific measures. Based on Intergroup Contact Theory and Ethnic Group Conflict Theory, contrasting hypotheses on how the ethnic classroom composition affects out-group and in-group attitudes of adolescents are tested with multilevel regression analyses. Across ethnic groups and countries, we consistently find a moderate to substantial relation between ethnic classroom composition and interethnic attitudes in line with Intergroup Contact Theory: a relatively larger out-group size, compared to the in-group, relates positively to out-group attitudes. At the same time, in several cases, a relatively larger in-group size relates to more positive in-group attitudes. The findings point to the significance of balanced ethnic classroom compositions for promoting favourable attitudes between multiple ethnic groups – benefitting especially those who face high levels of prejudice from others and those who are prejudiced towards others – without compromising positive in-group attitudes.     

民族院校毕业生的就业对阻断贫困代际传递作用

提高农村人口的平均受教育的年限能够有效改善农村贫困现象,高等教育有助于贫困代际阶层向上流动以阻断贫困代际传递。在高等院校中,民族院校吸纳了更多的农村毕业生。民族院校毕业生就业后的月均收入明显高于全国农民工的平均水平,毕业生就业于教育行业的比例较高,多数毕业生乐意就职于就读院校所在地的民营企业,反哺地方经济建设。民族院校毕业生通过接受高等教育,提升了个人价值,增加了个人与家庭的经济收入,促进了地区经济的发展,不仅使自己也带动更多的人有机会告别贫困代际传递。本研究从理论上拓展了阻断贫困代际传递的研究范围,并从民族院校毕业生及其家庭、民族院校以及扶贫政策制定者三个角度提出了相应对策,以促进民族院校毕业生及更多的贫困地区人口尽早告别贫困代际传递,实现个人脱贫与地区脱贫的双丰收。     

Much more than airtime: radio strategies to foster an inclusive Latino identity in the Basque country

New opportunities for launching media projects targeting minority migrant audiences have emerged in the wake of international migration [Georgiou, Myria. 2001. “Mapping Diasporic Minorities and their Media in Europe. Studying the Media.” A working paper for the EMTEL project “Diasporic Minorities and Their Media: A Mapping.” http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EMTEL/minorities/papers/]. However, most start-up enterprises in this category fail to develop effective strategies for establishing a dialogue between the minority audiences they serve and the native-born local populations. This paper, which examines the role radio plays in the integration of newcomers to the Basque Country, analyses the successful programming and outreach initiatives of Candela Radio in Bilbao, Spain, as well as the barriers to multiculturalism that must be overcome in complex societies like the Basque Country, in which deeply rooted traditions and values [Shafir, Gershon. 1995. Immigrants and Nationalists: Ethnic Conflict and Accommodation in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Latvia and Estonia. New York: State University of New York Press] are inextricably bound to language. The results of this qualitative study indicate that publically funded Radio Candela has not only managed to construct an audience that bridges the traditional gap between local migrant and native communities but is also actively fostering the development of a hybrid Latino-Basque identity.     

The unseen protagonists. Ecuadorians’ daughters between Ecuador and Southern Europe

Scholars consider Latin American migration toward Europe to be a case study in the feminization of international migration. However, these studies have not focused on second-generation girls. Beginning from a gender and intergenerational approach, this paper stresses the agency role played by the reunified teenage daughters of Ecuadorian migrants both in Ecuador as well as in Southern Europe. The discussion is based on two transnational ethnographic studies conducted with Ecuadorian children aged 13–18 and their families in two medium-sized Southern European cities, Genoa and Seville, and in Ecuador between 2008 and 2011. First, the paper shows that girls carry out an essential task as caretakers in the transnational household, both in the point of origin and destination. Despite these responsibilities, they show a higher commitment to school, both in terms of time spent in school and their results. Secondly, it analyses how girls negotiate their role both inside and outside of the family, challenging the parents’ moral and sexual control strategies. The results disclose an identity struggle in the everyday lives of these girls: they participate in the migration project of the transnational family, but simultaneously they implement practices of resistance and renegotiation addressing the traditional division of gender roles.     

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.     

Low Social Status Markers: Do They Predict Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence?

Some markers of social disadvantage are associated robustly with depressive symptoms among adolescents: female gender and lower socioeconomic status (SES), respectively. Others are associated equivocally, notably black v. white race/ethnicity. Few studies examine whether markers of social disadvantage by gender, SES, and race/ethnicity jointly predict self-reported depressive symptoms during adolescence; this was our goal. Secondary analyses were conducted on data from a socioeconomically diverse community-based cohort study of non-Hispanic black and white adolescents (N = 1,263, 50.4% female). Multivariable general linear models tested whether female gender, black race/ethnicity, and lower SES (assessed by parent education and household income) and their interactions predicted greater depressive symptoms reported on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Models adjusted for age and pubertal status. Univariate analyses revealed more depressive symptoms in females, blacks, and participants with lower SES. Multivariable models showed females across both racial/ethnic groups reported greater depressive symptoms; blacks demonstrated more depressive symptoms than did whites, but when SES was included this association disappeared. Exploratory analyses suggested blacks gained less mental health benefit from increased SES. However, there were no statistically significant interactions among gender, race/ethnicity, or SES. Taken together, we conclude that complex patterning among low social status domains within gender, race/ethnicity, and SES predicts depressive symptoms among adolescents.     

School-Based Racial and Gender Discrimination among African American Adolescents: Exploring Gender Variation in Frequency and Implications for Adjustment

The present study examined school-based racial and gender discrimination experiences among African American adolescents in Grade 8 (n = 204 girls; n = 209 boys). A primary goal was exploring gender variation in frequency of both types of discrimination and associations of discrimination with academic and psychological functioning among girls and boys. Girls and boys did not vary in reported racial discrimination frequency, but boys reported more gender discrimination experiences. Multiple regression analyses within gender groups indicated that among girls and boys, racial discrimination and gender discrimination predicted higher depressive symptoms and school importance and racial discrimination predicted self-esteem. Racial and gender discrimination were also negatively associated with grade point average among boys but were not significantly associated in girls’ analyses. Significant gender discrimination X racial discrimination interactions resulted in the girls’ models predicting psychological outcomes and in boys’ models predicting academic achievement. Taken together, findings suggest the importance of considering gender- and race-related experiences in understanding academic and psychological adjustment among African American adolescents.     

Shehri (city) brides between Indian Punjab and the UK: transnational hypergamy,Sikh women's agency and gendered geographies of power

This paper explores Sikh transnational marriages contracted between the UK and Indian Punjab. Ethnographic and statistical studies have found that transnational marriage is less popular among UK-born Indian Sikhs than Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims. Those who marry transnationally tend to be less educated than those who marry in the UK, and there is an apparent pattern in transnational marriages wherein UK-born men are likely to marry women from India who are more educated than themselves, or shehri (city) women as they are called in Punjabi. The paper explores two shehri brides’ lived experience of marriage and explores the constraints on their agency and the forms that it takes at a number of ‘geographies’ or scales: in their relationships with their natal families, with their in-laws, husbands, the labour market and the state. The paper argues that state discourses problematising marriage migration in socio-economic and integration terms must be critiqued, not only because the shehri brides go against classed policy framings of the migrant wife but also because such framings deny the agency of all migrant women as they struggle to move on with their lives over time.     

Immigrant life satisfaction in Europe: the role of social and symbolic boundaries

The cross-national investigation of immigrant subjective well-being remains an understudied field, especially with regard to the link between institutional settings and individual outcomes. We approach this gap by investigating the role of policies regulating immigrant integration for life satisfaction. Immigrants’ status and life chances depend on the inclusiveness of integration policies in forms of rights given to immigrants in the receiving country. These policies differentiate immigrants from natives: exclusionary integration policies understood as social boundaries should result in lower levels of well-being. We also consider an alternative policy type (i.e. multicultural policies) as well as symbolic boundaries (i.e. natives’ attitudes towards immigrants). We distinguish between national citizens, EU citizens and third-country nationals (TCNs). Results based on up to five rounds of data from the European Social Survey indicate that in terms of life satisfaction only TCNs profit from inclusive integration policies. Furthermore, while political multiculturalism does not play a role, we find that EU migrants appear more susceptible to the negative impact of natives’ anti-immigrant attitudes. Policy-making is more important for TCNs, while a migrant-friendly opinion climate is more important for EU migrants. These findings are robust to controlling for unobserved time-constant country heterogeneity via country fixed effects.     

Precarious intimacies – Europeanised border regime and migrant sex work

This article examines the meaning of borders – the spaces where immigration policies and restrictions are materially condensed – in the lives of migrant sex workers. I provide a theoretical and conceptual framework to discuss the role of borders in creating living and working conditions for sex workers within the European border regime. This regime both restricts and enables a structural background for migrant sex work. I argue that sex work scholars should pay closer attention to the heterogeneity of non-citizenship and the effects of different immigration statuses on the working conditions and forms of intimacies migrants create. Borders need to be viewed as institutions that produce social relations. I categorise these relations as precarious intimacies to describe the ways in which intimacy, commerce and borders often intertwine in the lives of migrants engaged in commercial sex work. The article draws upon 18-month ethnographic fieldwork among and interviews with migrant sex workers in Finland.     

Everyday space,mobile subjects and place-based belonging in suburban Sydney

ABSTRACT

In the contemporary age of international migration, the mobilities of people into and out of cities are increasingly diverse. Correspondingly, it has been claimed that forms of belonging are becoming increasingly flexible, strategic and characterised by multiple place attachments. This paper examines these claims in empirical detail by investigating how different scales of belonging and mobility come together in the context of migrant incorporation processes in a hyperdiverse, transitional suburban locality in Sydney, Australia. Drawing on several migrant biographies, I flesh out the lived dimensions of mobility and emplacement and the various routes and roots that characterise cities of diversity. This article uses grounded portrayals of individual experiences of place and everyday mobility across a range of migration statuses and ethnic backgrounds to examine the spatial practices of belonging for mobile (and relatively immobile) migrant subjects in the city. As such, this work contributes to research that highlights the mutual constitution of place and movement, by considering the role of migrants in the everyday production of urban space.