The politics of evidence-based policy in Europe’s ‘migration crisis’

ABSTRACT

Increased migration across the Mediterranean to Europe during 2015 was associated with growing interest in generating new research evidence to assist policymakers in understanding the complexities of migration and improve policy responses. In the UK, this was reflected in funding by the Economic and Social Research Council for a Mediterranean Migration Research Programme. Drawing on evidence from the programme, this volume explores the nature of Europe’s ‘migration crisis’ and the extent to which the development of new migration management policies was grounded in evidence about the causes, drivers and consequences of migration to Europe. The authors conclude that there is a substantial ‘gap’ between the now significant body of evidence examining migration processes and European Union policy responses. This gap is attributed to three main factors: the long-standing ‘paradigm war’ in social research between positivist, interpretivist and critical approaches which means that what counts as ‘evidence’ is contested; competing knowledge claims associated with research and other forms of evidence used to construct and/or support policy narratives; and, perhaps most importantly, the politics of policymaking, which has resulted in policies based on underlying assumptions and vested interests rather than research evidence, even where this evidence is funded directly by European governments.     

Refugees,migrants, neither,both: categorical fetishism and the politics of bounding in Europe’s ‘migration crisis’

The use of the categories ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ to differentiate between those on the move and the legitimacy, or otherwise, of their claims to international protection has featured strongly during Europe’s ‘migration crisis’ and has been used to justify policies of exclusion and containment. Drawing on interviews with 215 people who crossed the Mediterranean to Greece in 2015, our paper challenges this ‘categorical fetishism’, arguing that the dominant categories fail to capture adequately the complex relationship between political, social and economic drivers of migration or their shifting significance for individuals over time and space. As such it builds upon a substantial body of academic literature demonstrating a disjuncture between conceptual and policy categories and the lived experiences of those on the move. However, the paper is also critical of efforts to foreground or privilege ‘refugees’ over ‘migrants’ arguing that this reinforces rather than challenges the dichotomy’s faulty foundations. Rather those concerned about the use of categories to marginalise and exclude should explicitly engage with the politics of bounding, that is to say, the process by which categories are constructed, the purpose they serve and their consequences, in order to denaturalise their use as a mechanism to distinguish, divide and discriminate.     

Imperial Ghetto: People and Rituals in a South African Ghetto

In this paper, I demonstrate that the position of the postcolonial ‘Self’ in Malaysia is legitimized through inherited imperial mechanisms of power, both structural and ideological. The emergence of this ‘new-Self’ was situated in colonial discursive practices that positioned it as an ‘Other’ under British colonial rule. As such, this creates unexpected binds for the ‘new-Self’, particularly as it negotiates its relations with a number of ‘new-Others’. Up to the present, indigeneity has remained the main basis for legitimizing political power and the economic redistribution of wealth. However, this remains persuasive only when it is seen as primordial and timeless, essentially located in certain individuals in an unchallengeable manner. This basis of power, I argue, produces anxiety for the ‘Malay’ new-Self, for its claims to being essentially ‘indigenous’ come under questioning when Malay identity construction is set vis-a`-vis the Orang Asli (the ‘aborigines’ of the Malaysian Peninsula). I review the ways such anxieties have been managed in Malay responses to the Orang Asli, an ambivalent combination of acknowledgement, administration, rejection, and transformation. I argue that the ‘programme of progress’ that has been imposed upon the Orang Asli — which minimizes differences between them and the Malay ‘new-Self’ — masks the desire of the ‘new-Self’ for the impeccability and exclusivity of Orang Asli claims to indigeneity, a dual mimicry that continues to be repressed and transferred by constructing the Orang Asli as ‘not quite/not Malay’.     

‘Both an Arab and a woman’: gendered,racialised experiences of female Palestinian citizens of Israel

Following feminist and postcolonial discourses, this paper uses the concept of ‘everyday experience’ as a tool to trace the social world of educated Palestinian women in Israel. The term refers to the complex array of these women's experiences in racialised and gendered social sites, as well as within the class, religious, and ethnic contexts in the subordinated group and its relations with the dominant Jewish group. Based on 108 in‐depth interviews with Palestinian women citizens of Israel, the paper claims that educated Palestinian women are located in a ‘third place’ between cultural, gender, class, national and racial structures that generates a continual ambivalence. Within this marginal, ‘unhomely’ space women negotiate their own identities and challenge dominant social definitions. Women create various modes of interim spaces and multi‐dimensional, shifting identities for themselves. The ambivalent attitudes generated by the women's experiences expose the possibility of shedding categorising markers. The omnipresent existence of the gendered, racialised regime of knowledge makes every place a potential site of subversion and resistance.     

Land of welcome,land of fear: explaining approaches to ‘new’ diversity in Catalonia and South Tyrol

This article contributes to recent work on the interplay between sub-state nationalism and migrant integration, showing the different government approaches toward migration developed in Catalonia and South Tyrol and exploring factors behind this divergence. In particular, the articles emphasised three main interplaying variables: (1) previous historical experience with internal migration; (2) how this experience shaped the process of national identity construction; (3) and the institutional context, that is, arrangements in place to regulate and manage ‘old’ diversity. In this way, the article lays bare additional contingent processes that advance accounts of the relationships between ‘old’ national minorities and ‘new’ migrant communities.     

The hybrid self and the ambivalence of boundaries

The paper outlines the main features of the contemporary discourse on hybrid subjectivity, a discourse which is internally differentiated along ‘organic’, ‘intentional’, and critical social theory lines. It then examines how these discourses can be applied to our understanding of hybrid cultures and identities. The article focuses on two central claims underlying the intentional approach: one, that cultural boundaries are theoretically and empirically problematic; and secondly, that a hybrid position provides the potential for an enlightened and critical world-view. In response, two contentions are articulated that will provide a more nuanced understanding of the hybrid self. Drawing on the work of Simmel and Park, the paper, in contrast to the intentional account, highlights the ambivalence of boundaries; secondly, a critical investigation of the enlightened hybrid consciousness is offered which suggests that this new form of consciousness underplays the role of prejudice and ambivalence. As a result of these discussions, the article demonstrates that the discourse on hybrid identity raises key theoretical issues either ignored or insufficiently addressed by existing scholarship.     

Transcending apartheid in higher education: transforming an institutional culture

Twenty years after Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa, deeply entrenched inequalities and injustices are still at the core of the country’s social fabric. South Africa’s public and private sectors continue to battle with the situation and higher education institutions are no exception. The South African Ministry of Education has identified systemic problems within the institutional cultures of universities as one of the key obstacles to change. This article focuses on a racist incident that occurred at the University of the Free State (UFS) in South Africa in 2007. The incident shook the university’s institutional culture to the core and became a catalyst for change for universities across the country. We portray the institutional culture of the UFS on the basis of a series of interviews with management and student leaders who personally played key roles in handling the incident in 2008. The interviews reveal some of the ‘story stock’ within the institutional culture and highlight four interrelated dimensions of contestation. The stories also show that the interviewees frequently situate and justify their beliefs and actions in an intergenerational chain. Finally we consider some of the implications of our findings for the ongoing reconstruction of post-apartheid institutional cultures in higher education.     

Constructing poverty in anti-welfare Singapore

In recent years, attention on the issue of poverty in Singapore has been increasingly placed in the spotlight. This study examines the various types of attitudes among Singaporeans and how they are formed, relating them to the broader institutional context of Singapore. A mixed method design is employed where clusters or groups of attitudes are derived through the use of cluster analysis. Subsequently, discourses of poverty and welfare attitudes are construed through qualitative interviews with the aid of Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Quantitative findings point to three clusters of attitudes: ‘Conservatives’, ‘Liberals’, and ‘Sui Generis’. Qualitative findings, however, show that ‘Sui Generis’ ultimately align themselves closer to either ‘Conservatives’ or ‘Liberals’ in their discourses of welfare. In fact, respondents in all three clusters reproduce state discourses, albeit in varying ways. In essence, this study explicates poverty and welfare attitudes as a product of social identities premised on subjective notions that are shaped by state discourses of meritocracy, self-reliance and anti-welfarism. It is thus argued that current socio-political constructions of poverty ensue a paucity of major welfare reform in the near future of Singapore.     

The racialisation of African youth in Australia

In this paper I argue that patterns of reporting on ‘African youth’ in Australia show how both the constraints under which the media operates and the wider sources of institutional racism contribute to new applications of racialising frames. I seek to establish specific patterns of racialisation through an analysis of newspaper articles appearing in Melbourne over a roughly two month period when media attention was focused on a series of violent incidents in which African refugees were identified as either victims or perpetrators. Initial reporting is determined by journalistic reliance on police accounts of incidents involving a racially defined ‘problem group’ as evidence of the predispositions of this group within a wider narrative of worsening gang crime. The racialising premises established by police are retained even in subsequent coverage framed by the problematic of ‘integration’. Despite racism being identified and named in the course of reporting, it remains subsumed under the weight of frames which assume that the problem lies essentially with the ‘problem group’.     

From ‘Russianness’ to ‘Israeliness’ through the landscape of the soul: therapeutic discourse in the practice of immigrant absorption in Israel with ‘Russian’ adolescents

This article explores the increasing incorporation of professional therapeutic knowledge and practices into the state-led apparatus of absorption of new immigrants in Israel. Singling out this phenomenon is the seemingly unexpected alliance between the therapeutic ethos, which leans on individualist, a-national and universal values, and state-led absorption practices, based on a Zionist, collectivist and local ethos. According to the Zionist ethos, the newcomer ‘returning to an historical homeland’ is expected to become part of a territorially bounded collective entity and to adopt a new national identity that will predominate over other identities. The therapeutic ethos undermines moral authorities promoting collective redemption through identification with community goals and challenges a patronizing attitude towards new immigrants. Analysing the rhetoric and practice of Na'aleh – a decade-and-a-half-old project for adolescents immigrating from the former Soviet Union, characterized by a ‘therapeutic absorption policy’, this article examines the meaning of ‘therapeutic’ absorption in shaping a new Israeli citizen within the current social context. In order to clarify the historical uniqueness of this phenomenon, Na'aleh's absorption paradigm is compared to Youth Aliyah – the project that absorbed youngsters in a distinctly different ideological period of Israeli history (early 1940s), particularly with regard to the status of Zionism. A locus of comparison is the perceptions of the absorbing personnel and the absorbed immigrants in both ventures. The main claim of this article is that the psychologizing of the absorption apparatus both challenges and fortifies the traditional role of statist Zionism under global, postmodern conditions, typified by the erosion of the nation-state and questioning the moral status of its constitutive ethos. Therapeutic absorption transforms the newcomer into the object of therapeutic intervention rather than assimilative education. However, it simultaneously enables the ‘Russian’ teenagers from a ‘pre-therapeutic society’ to internalize a ‘therapeutic habitus’, which grants them the skills and competency to become a ‘local’ and to attain symbolic goods significant in their new social environment. Therapeutic personnel, characterized by emotional skills and cultural proximity to the absorbed pupils, rather than ideological identification with Zionist project, serve as a newer version of traditional agents of Israeli socialization, by virtue of their own unique course of absorption in Israel that blends the process of ‘becoming Israeli’ with socialization into a professional/therapeutic culture.     

Immigration,anti-racism,and Indigenous self-determination: towards a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary settler colonial

ABSTRACT

Anti-racist attempts to conceptualize Indigenous decolonial justice are preoccupied with the contested relationship between immigrant settlement and Indigenous self-determination. In the process, an ethically and politically driven practice of implicating immigrants onto the settler colonial project has emerged. Paying particular attention to the emerging concept of ‘immigrant settlerhood’ as a sign of severing of political economic considerations from theories of settler nationalism, I advocate for a comprehensive and concrete analysis that does not lose sight of the capitalist colonial project of simultaneous dispossession (of Indigenous people) and precarious incorporation/resettlement (of immigrants). Next, since notions of sovereignty primarily enact the conditions for exploitation of immigrants and impale them onto the settler project via anti-racist claims, I propose ‘no border’ politics as a conceptual tool for confronting settler colonialism. Finally, considering the centrality of land/place in Indigenous self-determination, I reflect on the possibility of a ground between Indigenous rootedness and diasporic placelessness. This essay thus makes an attempt to conceptualize an anti-racist politics that could meaningfully respond to the settler-colonial project of simultaneous recruitment/resettlement (of immigrants) and dispossession (of Indigenous people) without casting social justice demands of Indigenous peoples and immigrants as inherently oppositional.     

师儒与官绅：传统中国治水社会的士绅研究述评

Already for quite some time, the u-nique power structure of the traditional Chinese so-ciety has been viewed and discussed in the field of humanities and social sciences. Focusing on the status and role of its gentry class, Chinese and Western scholars have deeply researched the gen-eral characteristics of the political structure in the traditional Chinese society. And the analysis of the interaction between different social groups from the perspective of the traditional Chinese ‘hydraulic ’ structure has even gradually deepened and expand-ed this research topic. This paper looks at relevant research conducted by former scholars like e. g. Weber, Wittfogel, and Fei Xiaotong while attemp-ting to come to a more historic understanding of the relationship between the imperial power and the gentry class within the power structure of tradition-al Chinese society: this essay indeed focuses on the political status and social function of the gentry class in the traditional Chinese hydraulic society. Based on the research findings of scholars like Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Heinrich Marx, Weber pointed out that in Eastern societies there was a certain relationship between the autoc-racy and the local irrigation-based agriculture. And Weber believed that the relationship between the autocratic imperial power and the more local Con-fucian gentry was the key to understanding the po-litical structure of the Chinese society. At that time and place, the local water management-projects, other entrenched bureaucracies, the respected Confucian gentry, as well as the central imperial power were all intertwined together; this shaped a unique form of political power in traditional China. By borrowing Marx’ s concept of ‘the Asiatic mode of production’ , Wittfogel discussed the rela-tionship between ( i ) the political autocracy and ( ii) indigenous irrigation projects in Eastern socie-ties, seen from the perspective of political econom-ics. He proposed that the political autocracy was a result of the social functioning of hydraulic pro-jects, and briefly described the Eastern society as an ‘Oriental-authoritarian ’ society under the rule of an ‘absolute monarchy’ . In the eyes of Wittfo-gel, the traditional Chinese gentry was just a bu-reaucratic group attached to the totalitarian rule:their power did not draw from their own knowledge monopoly of value ethics and ritual standards, but solely from their power-relationship with the des-potic ruler. According to Wittfogel, the‘hydraulic society’ , totalitarian rule, bureaucratic groupings, and imperial power were all intertwined and togeth-er made up the government form of the traditional Chinese society. While Weber described the gentry as reputa-ble Confucian intellectuals, Wittfogel regarded them as mere bureaucrats firmly attached to the to-talitarian rule. In contrast with the Western schol-ars’ too simple view of the ‘gentry group’, Chi-nese scholars have emphasized that this ‘gentry group’ was an organism made up of bureaucrats and literati:they not only participated in local gov-ernance and cultural activities, but they also lived and passed on the inheritance of Confucian ortho-dox ideology. Fei Xiaotong stressed constantly that the tradi-tional Chinese political system wasn ’ t completely arbitrary;instead it was closely related to the so-cial class of the scholar-officials ( a combination of the bureaucrats and gentry within Chinese socie-ty) . Fei stated that the traditional Chinese society had a‘bottom-up’ or‘secondary/parallel’ track:this ‘informal track’ made it possible for the ordi-nary people to pass on their opinions to top level people. Guided by tao-t’ung ( Confucian orthodox-y) , the scholar-intellectuals were able to influence political power by expressing their opinions and by putting forward a set of ethical principles. Al-though they had no part in real political power, they still maintained a social prestige. As a buffer between imperial power and the common people, the scholar-officials could not only extend the pow-er of the monarch to the far corners of society, but they also could properly protect the interests of farmers through some informal channels outside of the system. In the view of Yu Yingshi, the scholar-offi-cials not only were royal officers but also teachers of the emperor: that is why they could exert con-straint to autocratic imperial power. Nevertheless, autocratic imperial power also constrained them. Even so, the bureaucrats and gentry kept alive the tao-t’ung in traditional Chinese political life, which safeguarded basic social values. However, the strength of tao-t’ung was always weaker than that of the royal power, therefore, Chinese society did have a tendency of ‘oriental despotism’ described by Wittfogel. In the study of Zhang Yahui, the scholar-offi-cial group was positioned right in middle of the so-ciety: this allowed them to work upwardly and downwardly. They thus could ( i) cooperate with the public to fight against the rulers ’ invasion of local life, and they ( ii) could compromise and a-gree with the rulers as to construct a new harmoni-ous coexistence model. His study reemphasized the historical role of the scholar-official group in keep-ing social harmony. In this study, the scholar-offi-cial group on one hand counterbalanced the central power’ s interference with local affairs, and on the other hand shaped more reasonable identities of the central power, acceptable for local communities. Zhang Yahui’ s study reminds us that-in the tradi-tional Chinese society-authoritarian rulers, the scholar-official group, and the public interlaced with, constrained, and supported each other, and thus constituted the overall picture of the traditional China. The scholar-official group thus was a major force in maintaining the social cohesion of the tra-ditional Chinese society. When indeed we consider both the ‘master-scholars’ and ‘bureaucrats’-the two special components of Chinese scholar-official class-we can better understand the characteristics of the vivid and interactive relationships between the rulers, the scholar-officials, and the local com-mon people. In other words, only when we recog-nize these two aspects of the gentry class, can we see the ‘unifying mechanism ’ of the traditional Chinese society;this allows us to develop a clearer social and historical picture of the traditional Chi-nese interaction between imperial power, scholarly power, and civil rights. To get to this new under-standing of the power structure of the traditional Chinese hydraulic society, we need to critically re-view all sorts of other simplified understandings of the period gentry group.     

Variations of identities among the leaders of a minority group of immigrants

This paper discusses the complex identity of Kessoch immigrants in Israel. One group of Kessoch is regarded as ‘young’ and the other as ‘old’. These are two ‘invisible’ groups, which cope in their own way with their social and cultural marginality. They are delegitimized within both Israeli society and the religious establishment. Among the older Kessoch, the authors differentiated between those who have found new meaning for their life in Israel, while attempting to preserve significant ‘scraps of identity’, and those who are disconnected from their present-day life materials and find little meaning in them. In contrast, the younger Kessoch, 1.5-generation immigrants, express varied behaviour patterns of daily resistance to the host society. Their personalities and leadership patterns also indicate selective adoption of significant bits of reality that suit them. Their intelligent use of ‘scraps of identity’ serves their social integration processes.     

Museums and the Utility of Culture: The Politics of Liberal Democracy and Cultural Well-Being

Contemporary museums exist as variously configured sets of institutional coordinates that aspire to function as popular, demotic spaces dedicated to representing a variety of experiences and modes of citizenship. In some cases, they can be seen as gesturing toward Yúdice's formulation, whereby recognizing the value of culture as a resource may facilitate or enable a new episteme that is ‘posthegemonic’ (from the ‘purview of the national proscenium’) and predicated on the withdrawal of the state from the public sphere (which also redefines the parameters of social agency). This post-Habermasian take on publicity has real implications for museums, which are, by and large, still functioning within what is, according to Yúdice, an exhausted model of citizenship.

This paper examines whether, in aiming to provide a much-publicized social advocacy role for indigenous peoples and source communities, the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa might be seen as producing open and inclusive public spaces that encourage debate about what constitutes citizenship in postcolonial multicultural societies. I argue that a neo-Habermasian realm of association and interaction may be provided by cultural centre-like museums. However, I qualify this point by adding that this suitability also reveals the double-edged role of culture at the NMAI and Te Papa—where it is unclear whether culture provides a key resource for the state's social management discourses, or whether it is connected to discourses of development produced by—or in consultation with—communities.     

‘Volunteer Humanitarianism’: volunteers and humanitarian aid in the Jungle refugee camp of Calais*

The informal refugee camp in Calais, dubbed the ‘new Jungle’, reached an approximate population of ten thousand people in 2016. The settlement, despite these high numbers, did not receive aid from the French government or international aid agencies. As a response to the lack of institutional support, and given the squalid conditions of the camp, hundreds of volunteers and grassroots organisations took on the burden of delivering humanitarian aid and basic services in the Jungle. This grassroots humanitarian aid, which I call ‘volunteer humanitarianism’, has particular characteristics that will be explored. The article argues that volunteer humanitarianism can be interpreted as a symbol against the violent border practices across Europe and, because of its informality, provides an alternative to formal humanitarian aid. The article also shows that volunteer humanitarianism formed a connection between humanitarianism and activism that stands in tension with neoliberal governmentality. As the Jungle was demolished in October 2016, this article is a contribution to the history of the camp as well as a testimony of the volunteers’ work there.     

Communities of belonging in the temporariness of the Danish Asylum System: Shalini’s anchoring points

Refugees often find themselves in a protracted situation of temporariness, as applications for asylum are processed, deportations negotiated and possible extensions of temporary protection status considered within the context of increasingly restrictive governmental policies across Europe. Through the case of a young Sri Lankan woman who arrived in Denmark as an ‘unaccompanied asylum-seeking minor’ and spent five years within the Danish asylum system, this article explores how she experienced moving through different legal categories and the institutional settings associated with them. I argue that, by engaging in social relations in the localities where she was situated, she developed places of belonging that could serve as ‘anchoring points’ providing some measure of stability in her otherwise unpredictable and precarious life situation. This case suggests that, even under conditions of protracted temporariness and legal uncertainty, individuals are able to create important anchoring points and develop communities of belonging that can serve them in a difficult process of belonging to Denmark.     

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.     

Defining ‘real India’: representations of authenticity in independent travel

As an alternative to the stereotypical mass tourism, independent travellers – travellers who travel for extended periods on low budgets while ostensibly avoiding formalized tourist activities and locales – are invested in constructing ‘authentic’ travel experiences. Practices such as ‘off-the-beaten-track’ travel and cultural engagement provide the means by which independent travellers are able to make claims to such authenticity. Authenticity is constructed by travellers through idealizations of intimacy and non-commodification. These idealizations are tangled in narrative representations of ‘real’ India and ‘real’ Indians, their ‘real’-ness typified by an absence of other travellers, tourists and, more generally, Western contamination. In these ways, ‘authentic’ travel is dependent upon actively constructed binaries of Western travelling subjects and exotic Indian objects. Yet travellers' fantasies of the Other are fragile and subject to collapse at moments in which so-called Others articulate their subjectivity in a way that is inconsistent with travellers' expectations. Through a focus on travellers' narratives of their experience, both the requirement for an Orientalist dichotomy as well as the ruptures that continually challenge this dichotomy, will emerge.     

Learning through laughing: an ‘African-American’ singer with ‘Japanese soul’ and the possibility of a new subjectivity in Japan

In this article, we argue that laughter can be a catalyst in learning about a new subjectivity – simultaneously African-American and Japanese – by analyzing an audience’s initial reaction to Jero, a young ‘African-American’ singer wearing hip hop attire who sings enka, a genre of music that is considered the ‘heart and soul of Japan’. Using television clips uploaded to YouTube and the viewers’ comments left on the sites as data, we analyze the audience’s laughter and amazement, followed by the question, ‘Why?’ and explanation of his background. Drawing on Hervé Varenne’s argument that learning occurs when we acknowledge our ignorance and seek to change it, we argue that the laughter marks their ignorance of such subjectivity, followed by learning as to why such subjectivity is possible. Challenging hegemonic behavior in daily life is often considered ‘bad sport’ and thus difficult. While involving complex relations of power of consumer-performer relations and authenticator-authenticated relations as well as a problematic race-talent link, we suggest that learning-through-laughing may be a new field worth exploring as an effective strategy for social change.