Multiple belongings: transnational mobility,social class,and gendered identities among Polish migrants in Norway

ABSTRACT

Using ethnographic research in Norway and in Poland, this article focuses on the dynamics of multiple belongings of Polish migrants. It explores their experiences of belonging in relation to social class, gendered identities, and their different strategies of transnational mobility between Poland and Norway. By approaching belonging ‘from below’, we posit that it is a dynamic, processual, and socially and culturally constructed attachment to places, times, and communities, which includes experiential, practical, and affective dimensions. Considering the importance of questions of belonging and home-making in migrants’ lives, always contextually produced and read through performative reiterations, we focus on migrants’ daily routines and migratory practices, and argue that belonging is a multifaceted process, which takes on diverse forms and meanings of ‘who’ belongs to ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’. Following intersectional perspective, the article aims at problematizing dependencies between mobility, gender, class, and migrants’ multiple belongings, and thereby, enhancing the understanding of the notion of belonging and its embeddedness in the inter-related social, cultural, economic, and political realms.     

Perceptions of the processes of radicalisation and de-radicalisation among British South Asian Muslims in a post-industrial city

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study exploring the perceptions of British South Asian Muslims in relation to the pathways towards radicalisation and the challenges of community leadership in relation to de-radicalisation. The study is based on in-depth interviews, using an ethnographic methodological framework, with a purposive sample of 30 Muslim men and women, including senior political figures, community leaders, religious figures and young Muslims (aged 18–25) from across the city of Birmingham, UK. The fieldwork was carried out between September 2005 and May 2007. Respondents reflected a general perspective that regards social exclusion, Islamophobia, lack of effective theological and political leadership, regressive anti-terror law and geo-political events as principal factors in the radicalisation and the de-radicalisation of British Muslims. These findings provide important insights into Muslims in Britain in relation to questions of ‘radicalism’ and politics, and they have specific implications for research, policy and practice in this area.     

Social structure,relationships and reproduction in quasi-family networks: brokering circular migration of Vietnamese sex workers to Singapore

This article proposes an ethnographic examination of the inner workings of unsanctioned informal networks that facilitate the circular migration and labour of Vietnamese sex workers to Singapore. These operations are coordinated by brokers who sell migration services to their clients. I conceptualise them as ‘quasi-family networks’ because kinship bonds, the fact that brokers (‘mothers’) and sex workers (‘daughters’) operate under the framework of a family ethos which allows them to establish intimate and unequal relationships, and socialising and reproductive processes inscribed in the family form, are defining structural features. The study of these organisational and operational traits allows us to consider a new network model in the field of transnational unsanctioned migration for sex work, and to discuss issues of network structure, adaptability and reproduction in repressive market environments in relation to the family form.     

Risky business and geographies of refugee capitalism in the Somali migrant economy of Gauteng,South Africa

Research on migrant livelihoods in South Africa reveals links between social exclusion and migrant ‘cosmopolitan tactics’, including multi-sited socialities, diverse spatial business strategies and orientations precluding integration into a ‘xenophobic’ host society. Drawing on 10 months of ethnographic research, this study explores how Somali migrants’ business practices and tactics of mobility within and beyond Gauteng Province, South Africa (which encompasses Johannesburg and Pretoria) articulate with both broader transnational flows and investments in the local economy. Since the end of apartheid, Somalis and other migrants from the Horn of Africa have carved out an economic niche in peri-urban townships where high risk and frequent movement characterise workers’ lives. The Somali enclave in the neighbourhood of Mayfair, Johannesburg, links local and national circulations of people, goods and money to international circuits of the Somali ethnic economy—an economy that also involves non-Somali groups, mainly from Kenya and Ethiopia. These diverse dynamics of human mobility and financial circulation complicate bounded conceptualisations of transnationalism and also illustrate how tactical cosmopolitanisms may be grounded in spatial and social arrangements. The convergence of migrant mobility and financial flows produces distinctive patterns of livelihood embedded in a multi-scalar geography of movement, remittance, investment, risk and opportunity.     

Un-American: Latina high school students’ testimonios of American and white conflation in the middle of nowhere

Abstract

Using a combination of counter-storytelling, testimonios, and Chicana feminist epistemology, I report on the findings of an ethnographic study that explores and analyzes the educational experiences of geographically isolated Latina high school students in a rural city in Wyoming. I demonstrate the labeling of these students by peers and teachers as ‘Un-American’ and the ways in which such a label is embedded in intersecting hegemonic discourses of whiteness, rurality and nationhood. It is through such labeling that white privilege is established and maintained and the immediate and future educational biographies of Latina/o students highly circumscribed.     

From consensual reconciliation to a discourse of friendship

When in multicultural states the concept of reconciliation is tied to national unity in order to institute consensus and stability, the outcome often is exclusion and oppression of those others who do not ‘fit’ or who ‘disturb’ the very consensus and unity reconciliation purports to form. The hidden side of violence embedded in consensual reconciliation is the main theme of this paper. Our aim is to problematize the relations between reconciliation and nationalism on the one hand, and to offer an alternative working concept of friendship on the other. Based on an ethnographic case study of conflict between religious and secular groups in Israel, we examine the language of reconciliation and its semiotic gestures, in order to demonstrate that sentiments of ‘neither/nor’ or ‘either this or that’, when rooted in nationalist ideology of unity, obfuscate identities for purposes of homogeneity, closing the social and cultural space for different others who are present but not included in the discourse of reconciliation. By contrast, a discourse of friendship signifies a movement (rather than diffusion) between social and cultural identities. Our concept of friendship is based on a civic idea of causing no harm to others as a way of life.     

Performing colonial sovereignty and the Israeli ‘separation’ wall

As a structure that does not mark an actual border and is constructed primarily on occupied territory, the Israeli ‘separation’ wall is a unique space that functions as both border and borderlands. Here, I explore the wall as a performance of sovereignty which simultaneously constructs and de-constructs imaginings of the Israeli nation-state. On the one hand, I contend that the wall is a colonial production that draws a psychic line between a ‘civilised in here’ and ‘uncivilised out there’, fulfilling the double function of forging a perceived bounded, protective national enclosure at the same time as buttressing the necessity of controlling territory beyond the bounds of that enclosure. On the other hand, I argue that the complex relationship between settler and state materialised in the wall points to a blending of theology and politics in Israel, which threatens to empower a God-sanctioned politics that undermines state. In addition to promoting anxiety of the Palestinian ‘out there’, then, the wall is understood as also fostering an anxiety increasingly turned inward to the structures of the Israeli state itself.     

The roles of social housing providers in creating ‘integrated’ communities

ABSTRACT

Cohesion and integration agendas in Britain can be characterised by localisation of ‘race relations’ responsibilities and the importance of local institutions in shaping neighbourhoods has been acknowledged. However, little is understood about the roles of housing providers in integration initiatives. Indeed, research on housing and race has experienced a lull in the 2000s. Thus, this paper aims to examine how social housing providers negotiate their positions and are complicit in constructing a certain vision of community. It draws on interviews from the ESRC Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE)’s work in the ethnically diverse neighbourhoods of Cheetham Hill (Manchester), Newham (London), Butetown (Cardiff) and Pollokshields and Govanhill (Glasgow). The paper makes three arguments: first, that race and ethnicity as facets of ‘integration’ have been subsumed into broader agendas, yet remain implicit in community building; second, that housing organisation practices are often detached from local meanings of community and prioritise exclusionary activities focusing on behaviour change and, third, that the roles of housing organisations in constructing ‘integrated’ communities are highly variable and localised, influenced by the history and contemporary dynamics of place.     

Information and communication technologies and migrant intimacies: the case of Punjabi youth in Manila

This article examines how South–South migrants use information and communication technologies (ICTs) in negotiating their encounters with traditional cultural imaginaries of intimacy. It focuses on second-generation Punjabi Indian youth in the Philippine capital of Manila. Through an ethnographic approach, it unpacks how these migrants harness technologies to steer through two particular ideals about the end-goal of intimate relationships: the Punjabi notion of arranged marriage and the Filipino notion of love marriage. I characterise how the young Punjabis use ICTs to enact what I call a ‘temporarily resolution’ to their migrant double consciousness about intimacy. I also describe how this temporary resolution continues to be entwined with the wider dynamics of multicultural relations in the Philippines. Ultimately, I aim to better understand the role of ICTs in migrant intimacies, especially within the realities of multiculturalism in a postcolonial city in the Global South.     

Multiple and flexible identifications and the understanding of political voices of the Kurdish self

This article addresses multiple ethnicity-related identifications of Kurdish migrants in Istanbul from the perspective of the ‘dialogical self,’ a model derived from psychology that takes the individual's self as the core of analysis and highly values the situational content in which identities become visible. This approach to identity allows us to see that the Kurdish self is creative and flexible in dealing with an ethnic identity that is subject to ambiguity and political interference. Additionally, this analysis enables us to grasp the meanings of Kurds' political narratives that are often misunderstood.     

Orientalising deafness: race and disability in imperial Britain

This article explores the conflations and connections that postcolonial and disability scholars have drawn between ‘race’, ‘colonialism’ and ‘disability’ from a historical perspective. By looking at the connections drawn between ‘race’ and ‘disability’ in the context of nineteenth-century imperial Britain, I hope to probe beyond them to examine the origins and implications of their interplay. I do so by focusing on ideas about deafness, an impairment radically reconfigured in the colonial period, and inflected with concerns about degeneration, belonging, heredity and difference. Disability, I argue, not only operated as an additional ‘category of difference’ alongside ‘race’ as a way of categorising and subjugating the various ‘others’ of Empire, but intersected with it. The ‘colonisation’ of disabled people in Britain and the ‘racial other’ by the British were not simply simultaneous processes or even analogous ones, but were part and parcel of the same cultural and discursive system. The colonising context of the nineteenth century, a period when British political, economic and cultural expansion over areas of South Asia, Australasia and Africa increased markedly, structured the way in which all forms of difference were recognised and expressed, including the difference of deafness. So too did the shifts in the raced and gendered thinking that accompanied it, as new forms of knowledge were developed to justify, explain and contest Britain's global position and new languages were developed through which to articulate otherness. Such developments reconfigured the meaning of disability. Disability was, in effect, ‘orientalised’. ‘Race’ I argue was formative in shaping what we have come to understand as ‘disability’ and vice versa; they were related fantasies of difference.     

Black-boxing political intersectionality: on ‘othering’ that deprives individuals of their citizenship

The case of the Aegean Macedonian refugees, survivors from the Greek Civil War (1946–1949), is particularly powerful in ‘demonstrating’ that one must address the ways in which the categories of difference on the one hand and identity and inclusion on the other hand, condition the very mode of ‘othering’ specific to certain histories of subjugation that are consubstantial with the hierarchical and differential value social identities have within our contemporary European society. Through the case-narrative of L, I analyze the practice of ‘othering’ as deployed by Greek laws within the parameters of ethnicity and the social ontology of collectivity. The analysis shows that citizenship, as one element of the nationalist project, intersects with ethnicity and forced migration bringing about ‘by genus’ repatriation.     

“I am here for a reason”: minority teachers bridging many divides in urban education

Minority teachers are overwhelmingly employed in urban schools in underserved, low-income communities with large minority student populations. They receive little in the way of multicultural preparation, mentorship, and professional induction to meet the demands of teaching diverse student populations. This grounded theory study explores the experiences of novice teachers from various minority backgrounds working in urban classrooms. A tentative grounded theory, ‘I am here for a reason’ emerged, suggesting that minority teachers rely on their personal backgrounds and experiences to help them take an insider’s perspective with minority students in light of poor multicultural preparation and limited support in schools. The shared cultural perspective with students enables teachers to connect with and advocate for students, which represents both a strength and challenge for minority teachers. Finally, minority teachers are motivated by a strong desire for social justice as they work to bridge many divides, and are intentional in their work despite facing significant obstacles in training and teaching.     

Navigating the city: internal migration of Oaxacan indigenous women

The relationship between migration and gender roles has received increased attention in recent decades but most of the literature has focused on transnational migration while the relationships between transnational and internal migration, and gender roles and internal migration have not been widely studied. In this paper, I analyse internal migration as a ‘transborder experience’. I argue that indigenous women from Zegache who engage in internal migration to Mexico City pose greater challenges to ‘traditional’ gender roles in their community because their experience as single young women navigating Mexico’s capital and their reliance on female social networks allow them to obtain social legitimation by claiming migration experience and courageousness. I contrast migration to Mexico City with transnational migration. Although transnational migration challenges, to some extent, existing gender roles, women from Zegache who migrate transnationally often do so as part of couples and within gendered social networks.     

Hiding within racial hierarchies: how undocumented immigrants make residential decisions in an American city

In the United States, the residential segregation of Latinos from whites has persisted but has fallen between Latinos and blacks. Demographers offer the size of the Latino population that is undocumented as one potential explanation for these patterns. However, little work has examined undocumented immigrants’ first-hand accounts of residential decision-making. Drawing on interviews with undocumented-headed, Latin American-origin families in Dallas, Texas, we explore how lacking legal status relates to residential selection. We find that some undocumented families perceive certain neighbourhoods to be ‘off-limits’, not only because of financial constraints, explicit legal impediments to their tenure, or individual racial preferences, but also because they perceive them as high-risk: Most sample households agree that law enforcement patrols areas with white majorities in order to exclude Latinos and, specifically, the undocumented. As a strategy to minimise the perceived risk law enforcement poses to their families’ stability, some undocumented families in the study report opting into neighbourhoods with Latino majorities in order to ‘blend in’, whereas others describe feeling safe in neighbourhoods with black majorities where they can ‘hide in plain sight’. We demonstrate how undocumented families’ perceptions of law enforcement in neighbourhoods with differing racial compositions may partly underlie trends in residential selection and stratification.     

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.     

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.     

Diversity discourses and the articulation of discrimination: the case of public organisations

ABSTRACT

Public organisations are contexts that particularly further a contested diversity discourse. They have a long tradition of various equal opportunity policies and are characterised by an internally differentiated structure. Based on interviews in a university and two city administrations in Austria and Germany, this study shows that the ubiquitous ‘diversity turn’ is not intrinsically opposed to the articulation of discriminations and social inequalities. Rather, diversity discourses in public organisations are characterised by a ‘heterogeneous space’, which enables the recourse to discriminations of groups of people marked as diversity-relevant as well as to instrumental benefits of diversity-related activities. As a consequence, the organisational diversity discourses and their related practices are far less driven by one-dimensional motives of marketability than commonly assumed.     

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.