Race,migration and neoliberalism: distorted notions of Romani migration in European public discourses

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the migration of Roma based on recent public, academic, policy and political debates in connection with two specific case studies in France and Italy. Moreover, it aims to understand how contemporary racialized discourses and neoliberal social and political forces (re)create Roma as a racialized internal ‘other’ to legitimize subtle anti-Romani politics in Europe. By doing that, it argues that the current migration of Roma cannot be understood apart from the proliferation of the hegemonic neoliberal ideology that facilitates the racialization of Roma and normalizes their social exclusion in Europe. Moreover, it explores the role of neoliberalism in the racialization and subjugation of Roma in Europe.     

How student teachers (don’t) talk about race: An intersectional analysis

This study explores how student teacher talk about their students illuminates the identities ascribed to these same students. It uses a hybrid intersectional framework based on Disability Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Latino Critical Theory and methodologies (like examining majoritarian stories, counter-storytelling, coded talk, and post-civil rights race talk) to uncover how student teacher talk reveals oppressive discourses of race, disability (and language status). This article focuses on how the medicalization of disability facilitates student teachers not identifying the racialization of disability in school. It demonstrates the need for educational research to employ an intersectionality lens when exploring educational issues related to students’ identities.     

Of models and myths: Asian(Americans) in STEM and the neoliberal racial project

This paper examines historical and contemporary racializations of Asian(Americans) within the STEM system. The prevailing perception of Asian(Americans) as model minorities masks how their multiple and contradictory positionings in the STEM system perpetuate the neoliberal racial project and reproduce systems of racism and oppression. Through a multidisciplinary analysis of STEM education and industry, we demonstrate that the shifting racialization of Asian(Americans) secures advantages for White Americans by promoting meritocracy and producerism and justifies White supremacy. By serving these functions, the racialization of Asian(Americans) within the STEM system is central to the neoliberal racial project. This paper also suggests how STEM education researchers can reveal and resist, rather than veil and support, the neoliberal racial project in STEM.     

The ‘new Chinatown’: the racialization of newly arrived Chinese migrants in Singapore

Studies of racism tend to rely on a presumed dichotomy between whites and ‘Others,’ whether Black or Asian. Even as many scholars have established that whiteness is manufactured, ethnographic studies of racism still have not escaped the color paradigm, basing their studies on the enactment of racism by white people on Others. Using the case study of Singapore, this article challenges the color paradigm by exploring racism between co-ethnic Chinese. I show that Singapore’s modernity is highly tied to place and that the ‘new Chinatown’ is used to ‘place’ and racialize newly arrived Chinese migrants. The racialization discourse, in this case, is subtle, and renders it a form of new racism - one that is reinforced by the media as well as state structures inherited from the nation’s colonial past. The aims of the article are two-fold: first, the paper aims to show parallels between the racialization of Chinese migrants in Singapore and colonial racism. However, this is not to say that locals are merely emulating colonial discourse which leads to the second aim of the paper: to locate this particular racialization process as a product of the intersection of global capital with Singapore’s local modernity. I conclude that although Singaporean-Chinese may enact racism against Chinese migrants, they do not hold unimpeded power. Rather, Singaporean-Chinese' construction of a ‘new Chinatown’ ironically acts to displace them.     

The (racial) biases of communication: rethinking media and blackness

The media studies approach to race often examines blackness through depictions in music lyrics, movies, and videos. The vast majority of these studies posit that media may provide ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’ depictions of blackness. Less examined is the importance of media environments to the structuring of racial relations in the United States. This article extends the contemporary literature on black media studies by taking a ‘medium theory’ approach to analyzing blackness. I argue medium theory aids studies of blackness by showing the ways in which the technologies we use transform the environments we inhabit in ways that further racialization processes beyond depictions of music lyrics or reality TV. To examine the interrelations between media environments and blackness, I offer a critical rereading of the Underground Railroad. I argue the Underground Railroad's success was related to the necessity of brilliant planning and a complex understanding by slaves and conductors of the essential overlapping of space- and time-biased media cultures. In short, the different understandings of media ensured that the slaves and slave catchers inhabited radically different yet interconnected worlds or galaxies, increasing the effectiveness of the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves.     

Racialization in Public and Private: Memories of First Racial Experiences

Research suggests retention of childhood memories into adulthood requires such memories to hold a certain amount of importance. Therefore, initial racial memories likely play a role in one??s racialization process, or formulation of an understanding of race. This study uses data from 49 in-depth interviews with white undergraduate students on memories of their first experiences of race. Data generally fell into the categories of private and public racialization. Private racialization included accounts of events that took place at home, primarily consisting of racist joking, derogatory comments, and family storytelling. Public racialization consisted of events that took place outside the home, most commonly at school. Data also revealed interactions between private and public realms, where accommodations were made in private to control, minimize or restrict interracial contact in public.     

Fluid adaptation of contested citizenship: second-generation migrant Turks in Germany and the United States

This paper explores belonging in the context of legal citizenship for second-generation Turkish immigrants in Berlin and in New York. Fluid adaptation refers to the discursive boundaries of immigrant identity articulations, the contextual and shifting adjustments immigrants make to their sense of belonging. Immigrant belonging, gauged by ‘encounters’ with bureaucracies and participatory expressions, is shaped in large part by the receiving state's legal framework and citizenship status. Belonging is complicated by racialization and exclusion, and affected by intersectionalities of immigrant experience. Limited citizenship models necessitate deployment of fluid and alternative membership models. Alternative forms of belonging underscore the power of the nation-state in delimiting belonging.     

Real fake? Appropriating mobility via Schengen visa in the context of biometric border controls

ABSTRACT

Although the majority of illegalised migrants in the European Union are so-called visa overstayers who enter with a Schengen visa only to become ‘illegal’ once it has expired, this mode of illegalised migration has only received scarce attention in border and migration studies so far. This article takes the introduction of biometric visa as an opportunity to compensate for this neglect by asking: How do migrants appropriate Schengen visa in the context of biometric border controls? Drawing on the autonomy of migration approach (AoM), it investigates the visa regime from the perspective of mobility in order to elaborate on one set of practices of appropriation that involves the provision of falsified or manipulated supporting documents upon which the decision to issue a biometric visa is based. The article draws on this example to develop a conception of the notion of appropriation that addresses the two central criticisms which have been raised against the AoM. Besides contributing to the AoM’s development, the article thus introduces a concept in debates on migrant agency that highlights, better than existing concepts, the intricate intertwinement of migrants’ practices with the means and methods of mobility control.     

Racism and Democracy Reconsidered

The use in genocidal propaganda of a modified ‘Hamitic Hypothesis’ (the assertion that African ‘civilisation’ was due to racially distinct Caucasoid invaders from the north/north-east of Africa) has become a key feature of commentary on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In order to historicise the Hypothesis, the article first traces the transformation by European anthropology of the ‘Hamite’ in to a racial object and how the extraneous provenance of ‘the Tutsi’ was articulated in colonial Rwanda. The article then critically assesses the centrality of the Hypothesis in constructing the Tutsi population as a target of genocide. Finally, the article explores both the inadvertent and explicit ways in which contemporary commentary reiterates aspects of the ‘Hamitic assemblage’.     

Reconciling transnational mobility and national social security: what say the welfare state bureaucrats?

The welfare state was constructed to ensure the well-being of a sedentary population, consisting of citizens living within the territorial boundaries of the nation. However, mobility patterns change, and more people lead lives that criss-cross national borders while drawing on different sources of transnational social protection – the welfare state included. Now, the daily work of bureaucrats involves delivering national social security benefits to transnationally mobile recipients. Through encounters and casework processes, these welfare state bureaucrats observe how ‘transnationals’ deal with complex regulations and make use of the social security system. This article explores bureaucrats’ perceptions of individuals’ agency and behaviour as they reconcile their transnational mobility with national social security. It builds on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in the Norwegian welfare administration, including 36 interviews, participant observation and informal conversations. The analysis identifies an institutional perspective of transnationals’ agency as shaped by their level of regulatory awareness and compliance. The bureaucrats observe some types of transnational behaviour to be more prevalent than others. As the article concludes, these bureaucratic perspectives have major implications for transnational social security delivery and how the welfare state accommodates transnational mobility.     

‘Felons are also our family’: citizenship and solidarity in the undocumented youth movement in the United States

The undocumented youth movement began in the United States in the mid-2000s. Drawing on qualitative research with undocumented young organisers in California, this article explores how relationships between undocumented youth, the wider undocumented population, and legal citizens have been understood in narratives of citizenship in the movement over time. It is argued that, paradoxically, the movement’s retreat from prioritising a pathway to legal citizenship for the most ‘eligible’, made visible historic and contemporary ties to the United States and its peoples that are obscured in hegemonic narratives of contemporary citizenship. In becoming more inclusive of the wider undocumented population, positions of solidarity with marginalised US citizens have also emerged. In the context of attacks on some racialised and other marginalised social groups during Trump’s presidency, such solidarity is even more vital.     

‘People take for granted that you know how to dance Salsa and Merengue’: transnational diasporas,visual discourses and racialized knowledge in Sweden's contemporary Latin music boom

In recent years US-based Latin culture has gained worldwide popularity through artists such as Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Ricky Martin. Taking the national context as an emerging vantage point from which to consider globalization processes, this article explores the growing popularity of ‘Latin music’ as a specific contemporary expression of global popular culture and its impact on young Latina women's everyday lives and identity work in Sweden. Based on interviews and focus group discussions with 29 high school young Latina women between 14–20 years of age, born and/or brought up in Sweden, the article examines how musical arenas and their appeal to hybrid identities are construed in contemporary articulations of commodity cultures and representations. In the particular context of Sweden, the article looks at how young Latina women negotiate popular representations of latinidad through an intentional and unintentional embodiment of these images. It is argued that while visual discourses and representations of popular culture tend to fix young women in preconceived ideas of ethnicity, race and gender, the young women themselves find a myriad of ways of reconstructing stereotyping ideas and creating diasporic links with other Latino/a diasporas, especially in the United States.     

Sydney, 1901: Federation,National Identity and the Arches of Commemoration

Triumphal arches are part of a long tradition of urban spectacle. They were employed in colonial and early postcolonial Australian cities to mark major state events including centenaries and royal visits. They signposted the official parade route for the inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth in Sydney on 1 January 1901. This article describes the temporary arches and the events leading up to them in the context of the Federation movement and the urban development of Sydney. It explores what the arches expressed of contemporary Australia, and how their unitary classicism both conveyed and represented more complex cultural meanings.     

From ‘Black people are not a homosexual act’ to ‘gay is the new Black’: mapping white uses of Blackness in modern gay rights campaigns in the United States

This paper examines the ways in which rhetorics of Blackness and civil rights have been deployed by Whites positioned on both sides of modern gay rights discourse in the United States. The authors argue that the contemporary deployment of Blackness by both gay and anti-gay movements concurrently is linked to the longstanding use of race on both sides of anti-gay referendum and initiative campaigns since the late 1970s, as well as to the even longer history of the racialization of homosexuality in Europe and the United States. The paper offers a brief history of the late nineteenth-century racial construction of homosexuality, which sets the stage for the later pairing of political discourses linking Blackness and homosexuality in the twentieth-century. Drawing on research of gay rights referendums and initiatives from 1977 to 2000, the paper then demonstrates how White religiously-motivated anti-gay activists relied upon divisive arguments about whether homosexuality is ‘like race’ to secularize and legitimize their campaigns. Furthermore, the authors show that White gay activists have adopted varying strategies as the lesbian and gay movement has evolved – from coalitional approaches that refused simplistic ‘like race’ arguments at the height of the gay liberation period, to color-blind ‘human rights’ frameworks in the 1990s, and more direct uses of race in the 2000s that mirror religious right rhetoric. The paper concludes with a discussion of the origins and effects of ‘gay rights versus Black rights’ discourses more broadly, and their implications for contemporary gay marriage debates.     

New ethnicities and old classities: respectability and diaspora

This article explores the contrasts between the flexibility and openness of interethnic and diasporic identifications and the fixity of class distinctions in contemporary Britain. The author draws on fieldwork conducted in the Midlands area and a suburban town in the south east of England and traces the ways in which project participants mobilised their biographies and ancestries to express feelings of empathy and relatedness across black, white and Asian identities. The author discovered the same people articulated a strong sense of classed distinction between themselves and others who were thought to lack respectability, social ambition and mobility. These observations have led me to reflect upon the theoretical contrasts between what Stuart Hall has famously called ‘new ethnicities’ and what the author calls ‘old classities’.     

Dialects of nostalgia: Downton Abbey and English identity

This article explores both Englishness and nostalgia in the period drama, Downton Abbey (Julian Fellowes, ITV, 2010–). The story of the Earl of Grantham and his family engage the viewer's emotions by recreating a by-gone era, which could actually stir an acute reflexive nostalgia. Given its popularity, we will explore the ideological use of nostalgia for this contemporary performance of Englishness. Through a close narrative analysis, we will further analyse the meanings of both English estates and social class in the series. Thus, we will see how instances of collective nostalgia may reveal underlying cultural values.     

De-politicization of the partisan forces in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

ABSTRACT

The paper explores possible means to achieve reform in the highly politicized security sector of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. We maintain that the de-politicization of the KRG’s security forces is crucial for the future stability and prosperity of an independent Kurdish state. One option is to accomplish reform as part of a unified, state-building process supported by an outside actor, specifically the United States. Alternatively, the KRG would preserve the existing, de-facto division between the ‘KDP dominated zone’ controlled by Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and a ‘PUK dominated zone’ controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Gorran Movement. The two zones would agree to a federal arrangement, working together to gradually develop shared policies on issues of national security, economic development, and foreign policy, while maintaining autonomy over local issues. Our article seeks to situate the KRG case study within the literatures of post-conflict environments, state building, and state security reform (SSR). The approaches we have suggested here for the depolitization of KRG security forces will be relevant for the foreseeable future if KRG continues to be a part of federal Iraq or becomes an independent state.     

Protestant Ulster: Ethno-history,Memory and Contemporary Prospects

This article highlights the processes by which an Ulster Protestant identity came to be fashioned, in the era of political conflict over Irish Home Rule, in accordance with ethno-religious and, more ambiguously, ethno-nationalist criteria. It explores how processes of myth-making and remembering have been central to the reproduction of this sense of identity. Finally, it considers the role played by ethnic essentialism in the contemporary period, and the question of whether ethnic imperatives might be transcended within the context provided by the Good Friday Agreement and the promise of new British-Irish structures and new relationships within these islands.     

Navigating Americanized Identities: Bicultural Ethnicity,Race, and the Incorporation Experience

This paper reports on the complex ways in which immigrant young adults make sense of their Americanized ethnic and racial identities. The analysis draws on a large set of in-depth interviews (N?=?233) collected with immigrants between the ages of 18 and 29 across three regions in the US (California, New York, and Minnesota) in the early 2000s and is in dialogue with emerging new theories of immigrant incorporation which combine the insights of traditional assimilation and racialization frameworks. The identity narratives that emerge from these interviews demonstrate the overarching significance of racial and ethnic identification for young adults across various immigrant communities. The narratives also highlight some of the contextual factors involved in the construction of an ethnic identity in the US such as experiences with discrimination; or the presence of co-ethnic communities. The final substantive section explores how young American immigrants in the transition to adulthood attempt to cultivate hybrid, bicultural identities that balance their American-ness with the ongoing experience of living in a deeply racialized society. The paper concludes by discussing implications for the literature on identity formation and the transition to adulthood as well as on the immigrant incorporation experience.     

‘Colour-evasiveness’ and racism without race: the disablement of asylum-seeking children at the edge of fortress Europe

This article explores discriminatory discourses articulated by Italian professionals operating in educational, health and social services for refugees in Rome, in relation to the educational and social inclusion of unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children. It locates such narratives within the historical ‘concealment and invisibilisation of race and racism’ that have characterised Italy particularly since the end of the Second World War, while showing how they legitimate contemporary processes of disablement and over-representation of forced migrant children in the category of Special Educational Needs. A theoretical framework influenced by Dis/ability Critical Race Studies, Italian postcolonial studies, and Judith Butler’s notions of subjectivation and performative politics is used to discuss how a ‘colour-evasive’ racial ideology has seeped into various institutions in Italian society, and importantly into education policies and practices.