Strangers within? Russian-speakers’ migration from Latvia to London: a study in power geometry and intersectionality

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to contribute to debates on ethnic identification and migration through a focus on a specific group – Russian-speakers from the Baltic state of Latvia who have migrated to the UK. Twenty-six interviews with members of this group were gathered in London and the wider metropolitan area during 2012 and 2014. Russian-speakers represent uniquely combined configurations of ‘the other within’: in most cases, they are EU citizens with full rights; yet, some still hold non-citizens’ passports of Latvia. While in Latvian politics Russian-speakers are framed as ‘others’ whose identities are shaped by the influence of Russia, interview findings confirm that they do not display belonging to contemporary Russia. However, London is the ‘third space’ – a multicultural European metropolis – which provides new opportunities for negotiating ethnic identification. Against the background of triple ‘alienation’ (from Latvia, from Russia and from the UK), we analyse how ethnicity is narrated intersectionally with other categories such as age and class. The findings show that Russian-speaking migrants from Latvia mobilise their Europeanness and Russianness beyond alienating notions of (ethno)national identity. The paper also demonstrates that being open to ethnicity as a category of practice helps us towards a progressive conceptualisation of often overlooked dimensions of integration of intra-EU linguistic ‘others’.     

Circumcising the body: negotiating difference and belonging in Germany

ABSTRACT

The circumcision debate in Germany in 2012 is an exemplary case for symbolic struggles over national boundaries. The debate became a site for the negotiation of traditions practiced by religious minorities. We ask, first, how the clinical gaze constitutes Muslim and Jewish others. Second, we investigate how ‘writing around’ the debate’s center, bodily integrity, became meaningful through analogies to other practices said to harm it. We compare newspaper coverage in Germany, Israel and Turkey, and reveal transnational discursive dynamics that transgress national boundaries. We show how ‘otherness’ of Muslims and Jews remains present in a self-perceived secular, liberal imaginary.     

Contained mobility and the racialization of poverty in Europe: the Roma at the development–security nexus

ABSTRACT

This paper starts from the observation that, since the collapse of eastern European state socialism, the Roma have become the subject and target of Europe-wide development programs and discourses, while, at the same time, they have been problematized in terms of social, public and national security. Due to the ways in which development and security have ambiguously come together in Europe’s recent history, I will argue that the living conditions of the poorest among the Roma have not only worsened, but also, and more fundamentally, the divide between Europe’s rich and poor has become seriously racialized and almost unbridgeable. I explain how the bio- and geopolitical conditions under which development and security have merged in Europe’s engagement with the Roma have led to a situation in which the official aim of Roma-related development programs – the improvement of their living conditions and life chances – tends to result in a dreadlock.     

Are we all constructivists now? Exploring the impact of nationalism studies among Slovakia’s secondary-school teachers

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the impact of current nationalism studies on national narratives disseminated through secondary education. The paper draws on interviews and focus group discussions with 31 teachers in Slovakia as a case study and asks to what extent these teachers’ understandings of national identity reflect primordialism, constructivism or ethno-symbolism. It also explores the teachers’ awareness of these mainstream paradigms. The findings defy the straightforward categorisation of the teachers’ views into these paradigms and suggest that nationalism studies have a limited impact, as the teachers’ understandings remain unchallenged. The paper concludes with the implications for educational research and practice.     

In the shadow of fortress Europe? Impacts of European migration governance on Slovenia,Croatia and Macedonia

ABSTRACT

This article analyses European integration's effects on migration and border security governance in Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia in the context of ‘governed interdependence’. We show how transgovernmental networks comprising national and EU actors, plus a range of other participants, blur the distinction between the domestic and international to enable interactions between domestic and international policy elites that transmit EU priorities into national policy. Governments are shown to be ‘willing pupils’ and ‘policy takers’, adapting to EU policy as a pre-condition for membership. This strengthened rather than weakened central state actors, particularly interior ministries. Thus, in a quintessentially ‘national’ policy area, there has been a re-scaling and re-constitution of migration and border security policy. To support this analysis, social network analysis is used to outline the composition of governance networks and analyse interactions and power relations therein.     

Promoting majority culture and excluding external ethnic influences: China’s strategy for the UNESCO ‘intangible’ cultural heritage list

ABSTRACT

China’s enthusiasm for having many World Heritage–listed sites is well-known as a national strategy of cultural soft power, economic development, and incorporating minority groups into the Han-dominated Chinese state. Relatively understudied are China’s efforts related to UNESCO’s lists of ‘intangible’ cultural heritage, which inscribe people’s living culture – such as dances, costumes, and songs – as world heritage. This study focuses on how some ethnic groups’ intangible culture has been objectified for the World Heritage Lists by the Chinese state. This study argues that by enlisting ethnic minorities’ culture under the name of Chinese state, the state can reinforce state borders that often run across ethnic and cultural boundaries, reducing external influences on minorities from their trans-border ethnic or cultural kin. Concomitantly, the majority’s cultural prominence is further entrenched in this process by the emphasis placed on minorities’ folklore in contrast to the Han’s culture of civilization.     

Images of 1812: Ivan Terebenev and the Russian Wartime Lubok

This article explores the articulation of national identity in Russia during the Napoleonic Wars. It examines this expression by focusing on the work of Ivan Terebenev, who produced 48 popular prints known as ‘lubki’ between 1812 and 1815. These images represented one of the first attempts by a Russian artist to redefine Russian national identity in the wake of Napoleon's invasion. By mocking the French emperor and emphasising the strengths of the Russian peasants, Cossacks and the Russian spirit in his images, Terebenev established themes that would continue to appear in prints in future Russian wars. Moreover, this article focuses on the reception of these images in Russia as a means of exploring how Russians who encountered them thought about their Russianness. Terebenev's images of 1812, as this article concludes, left a lasting impression on Russian visual culture and national identity.     

Orientalism and Russian speaking minority regions in Europe: representing Narva

ABSTRACT

This paper uses the concept of orientalism to propose a framework for understanding the relationship between international news media and individual representations of minority groups in Europe. Even though the case study focuses on Narva, Estonia, the model here provides a basis for comparing the identity formation practices, particularly of geographically separated Russian speaking minority groups in Europe. Narva’s large Russian speaking population and geographical proximity to Russia have been pinpointed as security concerns due to the convenient source of information and mass media sponsored by the Russian Federation causing a misrepresentation of Russian speaking minority groups in international media.     

Perceptions of diversity and attitudes of tolerance in the ‘fragmented’ U.K.

ABSTRACT

Relying on a quantitative survey (n = 1497) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30) conducted in the U.K., we explore British nationals’, Romanian and Turkish migrants’ attitudes of tolerance and the factors influencing them in the current socio-political context in the U.K. The quantitative data reveal the role of younger age, diverse networks, higher education, attachment to city/region and supranational identifications in more open attitudes towards diversity. The qualitative findings illustrate how diverse these three groups’ attitudes of tolerance can be and how they are affected by their position and status in the U.K. The British’ attitudes show their tolerance can reflect diverse forms of acceptance of ethnic and cultural differences but can also draw lines in terms of civic values opposing ‘those who contribute to society’ versus those who ‘live as parasites’. The Turks are in favour of diversity with the expectation of receiving more civic rights and facing less prejudice. The Romanians tend to have a more ambiguous relation to diversity given their position of stigmatised migrants in the U.K. Our analysis reveal how inclusive or exclusive people’s (sub- and supra-)national identities can be and how these frame their attitudes of tolerance.     

Making good citizens: local authorities’ integration measures navigate national policies and local realities

ABSTRACT

Using the case of Odense (Denmark), this article explores how, in the process of devising and implementing integration measures, local authorities mitigate between the demands of national-level integration policies and the local realities. It shows that Odense's local authorities combined local resources into a variety of horizontal governance structures geared towards supporting refugees’ integration, and engaged in vertical interactions responding to local priorities. The study finds that new governance structures emerging at sub-national create opportunities for refugees and help their integration. However, inequalities between national and sub-national levels may have negative consequences for refugees’ integration outcomes.     

Exploring Greek-Cypriot media representations of national identities in ethnically divided Cyprus: the case of the 2002/2004 Annan Plan negotiations

ABSTRACT

This paper explores Greek-Cypriot media representations of national identities during negotiations on a United Nation Plan (the Annan Plan), aiming to reunite ethnically divided Cyprus under a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. The study analyzed thematically 57 editorials and lead commentaries published in all the daily Greek-Cypriot Press from the presentation of the Annan Plan in November 2002 to April 2004, at which point two simultaneous referenda were held. The study’s findings are consistent with ideas that national identifications are not static and provides an in-depth exploration of exclusive forms of Cypriot identities vis-à-vis more inclusive forms and vis-à-vis hellenocentric identifications.     

Rhetorics of the State: The Public Negotiation of Political Character in Germany,Russia, and Quebec

National identity construction is a fundamentally rhetorical phenomenon maintained and transformed through public discourse. Through the analysis of dramatically rejected state speeches related to national identity and public responses to them, critics can compare competing articulations of national identity against the chronological historical record to identify various instances of strategic memory. By isolating dominant strategies of remembrance, the political character of emergent national identities can be outlined. In this essay, I explicate a critical rhetorical approach to controversial speech called limit work, providing examples of the public negotiation of national identity in 1988 West Germany, 1993 Russia, and 1995 Quebec that illustrate its utility.     

International nurse migration from India and the Philippines: the challenge of meeting the sustainable development goals in training,orderly migration and healthcare worker retention

ABSTRACT

This paper examines nurse migration from India and the Philippines through the lens of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) 4.3 (access to training), 10.7 (orderly and responsible migration) and 3.c (retention of health workers). The international migration of health workers has increasingly featured on the agenda of global health agencies. Ameliorating the negative impact of international nurse emigration from low-income nations has been addressed by several western governments with the adoption of ethical recruitment guidelines, one element of an orderly migration framework. One of the challenges in creating such guidelines is to understand how the emigration of trained nurses influences health education and clinical training systems within nurse exporting nations such as India and the Philippines, and how these relate to various SDGs. This paper maps the connections between India’s and the Philippines’ increasing role in the provision of nurses for international markets and the SDGs related to training and migration governance and the retention of health workers. The paper calls for greater attention to the global structuring of migrant mobility in order to assess national abilities to meet SDG goals in these areas.     

Historiography and National Identity among the Eastern Slavs: Towards a New Framework

The article surveys Tsarist, Soviet and Western historiography of Russia and how this affected the national identities and inter-ethnic relations among the three eastern Slavs. Western historiography of Russia largely utilised an imperialist and statist historiographical framework created within the Tsarist empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although this framework was imperialist it was gradually accepted as 'objective' by the Western scholarly community. Yet, this historiography was far from being 'objective'. After 1934 Soviet historiography also reverted to the majority of the tenets found in Tsarist historiography. Within Tsarist, Western and Soviet historiographies of 'Russia' eastern Slavic history was nationalised on behalf of the Russian nation which served to either ignore or deny a separate history and identity for Ukrainians and Belarusians. In the post-Soviet era all 15 Soviet successor states are undertaking nation and state building projects which utilise history and myths to inculcate new national identities. The continued utilisation of the Tsarist, Western and Soviet imperial and statist historiographical schema is no longer tenable and serves to undermine civic nation building in the Russian Federation. This article argues in favour of a new, non-imperial framework for histories of 'Russia' territorially based upon the Russian Federation and inclusive of all of its citizens.     

Performing new identities: the community language of post-crisis Italian migrants in London

ABSTRACT

After the 2008 global crisis, Italy has experienced a relevant resumption of emigration. Tens of thousands of young Italians have chosen London as their favourite destination, giving rise to a new Italian community in the city. This article focuses on the transformation of migrants’ national identity and on a distinctive device of identity expression: language. Sample cases, extracted from a dataset collected for an original doctoral project, are used to explain how the insertion of English elements in speakers’ native language become the expression of the loss of pure national identity and of the renegotiation of transnational and migratory identities.     

Constructing nation: national narratives of history teachers in Ukraine

This paper scrutinizes history narratives as a practice of a specific kind of nation-building and analyzes the role of history teachers in this process. Based on 60 semi-structural interviews with history teachers in Ukraine, this paper analyzes three major national narratives used by history teachers to produce specific meaning of social identity among school pupils. This paper shows how history teachers reproduce national identity in their classrooms by altering the teaching program and textbook narratives and by promoting their vision of a nation, rights of specific groups to participate in nation-building process and defining enemies and allies.     

Still left out: healthcare stratification under the Affordable Care Act

ABSTRACT

The 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) increased healthcare access for many Americans. But, its exclusion of most noncitizens and imperfect state-level implementation stratified coverage by documentation status, place, income level, race, and ethnicity across the U.S.A. Drawing from the sociological literature on boundaries, this paper argues that these demographic boundaries facilitate de jure and de facto stratification for immigrants and low-income Americans of various ethnoracial backgrounds. Using existing survey research regarding national ACA implementation and a qualitative study of ACA implementation in Boston, MA, this paper shows how such stratification may worsen existing disparities in healthcare coverage and access among the U.S. population. Implications regarding President Donald Trump and conservative lawmakers’ plans to repeal the ACA are also discussed. The paper contributes to researchers’ understanding of how public policies produce boundaries by place, documentation status, race, ethnicity, and income that facilitate inequality.     

The state of the nation: the Norwegian King’s annual addresses – a window on a shifting nationhood

ABSTRACT

This article supplements the limited research on the monarchy by highlighting the symbolic and cultural value of Norway’s Royal House in nation-building. To maintain his unifying and non-partisan role, the king must balance between conflicting perspectives on national identity. Our analysis of royal New Year’s speeches 1960–2014 examines the concepts of ‘Norwegianness’ conveyed, noting the increasing focus on diversity and a multicultural society.     

Parental migration and disruptions in everyday life: reactions of left-behind children in Southeast Asia

ABSTRACT

Increasing feminisation of transnational labour migration has raised concerns over potential ‘care crises’ at home, and consequently a ‘care deficit’ for children left in origin countries. Our paper focuses on how left-behind children from Indonesia and the Philippines understand, engage and react to changes in their everyday lives in their parents’ absence. While many children had no say over their care arrangements, some were able to assert their agency in influencing their parents’ decisions and eventually migratory behaviours. Their thoughts and actions reinforce the importance of including children’s views in development and migration studies to improve both the children’s and families’ well-being, and make migration a sustainable strategy for all.