Growing old in a transnational social field: belonging,mobility and identity among Italian migrants

This article focuses on ageing in transnationalism. Drawing on the experiences of Italians in the UK as a paradigmatic example of settled European migrants, it explores the lived experiences of this group of older migrants. Using Levitt and Glick Schiller's framework, it concentrates first on migrants' ways of being and then on their ways of belonging. The article argues that a transnational lens is necessary to understand the experiences of older migrants and that a focus on older people needs to be incorporated into studies of transnationalism. Through a discussion of their narratives and experiences, the article offers a long view on the migration process and brings attention to the significance of gender, time and the life course to understand both migrants' transnationalism and their integration.     

Embodied narratives of disaster: the expression of bodily experience in Aceh,Indonesia

The devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004 caused massive destruction to coastal Aceh, Indonesia, and left countless numbers of people dead or wounded. This article focuses on the embodied narratives of three Acehnese women who survived the disaster and, like many others in Aceh, told their stories ‘through’ their bodies. A detailed ethnographic account of their narratives reveals how the body stretches temporally between the ‘narrated event’ and the ‘narrative event’, both through the representation of the body in narratives and through the embodied performance of narratives. Moving beyond meaning‐centred analyses of narratives, I argue that the central accomplishment of these narratives is that they convey poignant bodily experiences to others and thereby create a shared, post‐disaster, world. Ultimately, through these embodied narratives of disaster people remake their world, with others, in the wake of its ‘unmaking’.     

Diverse cities and good citizenship: how local governments in the Netherlands recast national integration discourse

Western European national policies increasingly portray diversity as negative and migrants as ‘others’ who do not belong to the national community. This article examines how local governments articulate alternative discourses of belonging based on residents' shared membership in the civic life of the city. In a Dutch case study, the ways in which local policymakers diverge from exclusionary national narratives are examined. It is argued that discourses about urban citizenship offer opportunities for the inclusion of migrants by drawing new boundaries between ‘good’ citizens and those who are unwilling to participate.     

Diaspora identification and long-distance nationalism among Tamil migrants of diverse state origins in the UK

Accounts of Tamil long-distance nationalism have focused on Sri Lankan Tamil migrants. But the UK is also home to Tamils of non-Sri Lankan state origins. While these migrants may be nominally incorporated into a ‘Tamil diaspora’, they are seldom present in scholarly accounts. Framed by Werbner's (2002) conception of diasporas as ‘aesthetic’ and ‘moral’ communities, this article explores whether engagement with a Tamil diaspora and long-distance nationalism is expressed by Tamil migrants of diverse state origins. While migrants identify with an aesthetic community, ‘membership’ of the moral community is contested between those who hold direct experience of suffering as central to belonging, and those who imagine the boundaries of belonging more fluidly – based upon primordial understandings of essential ethnicity and a narrative of Tamil ‘victimhood’ that incorporates experiences of being Tamil in Sri Lanka, India and in other sites, despite obvious differences in these experiences.     

Performing the Nation: Unauthorized Mexican Migration and the Politics of Language Use and the Body along the US–Mexico Border

ABSTRACT

Given the harsh environment for Mexican migrants in the US state of Arizona, migrants must think carefully about instantiating their identities in White public space through clothing, bodily movements, and language. This article explores the ways some unauthorized Mexican migrants in Arizona perform belonging to the USA by performing Chicano. Performing Chicano means passing as a US citizen, and migrants’ well-being can depend upon the recognition of those performances. Other unauthorized migrants perform the Supermexicana, to pass as Mexicans who are shopping in the USA, and need to hide the fact that they clandestinely live there. This article examines how some migrants perform a commitment to the USA in public while privately disavowing it, and how others perform a commitment to Mexico that they simply cannot have. This analysis argues that the experiences of unauthorized migrants in the USA can be productively seen through the lens of national performativity.     

Bound between care and control: Institutional contradictions and daily practices of healthcare for migrants in an irregular situation in Italy

On the books, the inclusiveness of the Italian framework regulating healthcare access for migrants is indisputable. However, we might wonder how access takes shape on the front-line of the healthcare system, particularly in times of increasingly hostile institutional and discursive environments. By focusing on Italian migration and healthcare policies and the practices of health workers during their encounters with migrants in an irregular situation, this contribution analyses how health workers deal with institutional tensions in the field and how these, in turn, shape their narratives and actions. It suggests that individual positioning plays a major role in favouring the adoption of discretional practices of care or control. Nonetheless, practices are also mediated by the wider institutional and discursive landscape, which has been exponentially characterized by a tension between a medical-humanitarian logic that legitimates providing healthcare to vulnerable migrants, and a control-oriented logic targeting immigration and health expenditure.     

Policy actors' narrative constructions of migrants' integration in Malmö and Bologna

Governments have policies explicitly directed at the integration of migrants. This article addresses how policymakers and politicians privilege certain constructions of the social relationship between migrants and the majority society (expressed through narratives of ‘integration’), while making it seem as if they were presenting facts in their policies. These constructions provide the justifications for adopting a direction in policy-making over other alternatives. This article sets to analyse comparatively how policy actors in two urban contexts construct migrants' integration through policy narratives and how, within this, they evaluate migrants as ‘integrated’ and ‘non-integrated’. Through narrative analysis, the article sheds light on how migrants are positioned by political institutions within the normative order of the society in which they live. Furthermore, it shows that local policy-making is shaped by national citizenship regimes, models of steering, welfare regimes and stories about the nation and its people.     

The value of culturedness: Bosnian and Hungarian migrants' experiences of belonging in Australia

In this paper we investigate how the values of respect and dignity inform the ways migrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Hungary in Australia locate themselves in relation to local, national and transnational identities. Drawing upon ethnographic insights, we discuss how the concept of culturedness is implicated in these migrant claims for dignified belonging. Determinants of culturedness are informed by influential narratives of ‘East versus West’, ‘Balkan versus Europe’, the ‘New World (Australia) versus the Old World’ (Europe). Implicit within these discourses are attempts to demarcate civilisational distinctions. We argue that dignified belonging for people from these migrant communities in Australia involves negotiating identification with culturedness and positioning themselves on the right side of the civilised/primitive divide. This collaboration draws attention to the significance of ontological security through respect within the shared discourses and experiences of belonging for members of these two migrant groups in Australia.     

Patient waiting: care as a gift and debt in the Thai healthcare system

Drawing on fieldwork in Chiang Mai during 2010 and 2012, I examine poor Thais’ and Shan migrants’ experiences of receiving healthcare from a public hospital, and, in parallel, care from the state. While universal health coverage has become a way in which the state finds legitimacy in people's lives through giving care, being a recipient of state aid is implicated in the emotive domain of waiting. By focusing on how people feel and think of a gift and debt of care, I suggest that flows of affects that loom large in social interactions within the public hospital denote not only poor people's subordinate position but also their effort to achieve a sense of mutuality and moral autonomy. This study contributes to a broader understanding of experiences of paternalism, inequality, and dependence by illuminating people's agentive submission into relations of care.     

Migration as Adventure: Narrative Self-representation among Caribbean Migrants in Denmark

Narratives of adventure constitute a well-established convention of describing travel experiences, yet the significance of this narrative genre in individuals’ accounts of their migration and life abroad has been little investigated. Drawing on Simmel and Bakhtin, among others, this article analyses how Caribbean immigrants in Denmark present themselves through narratives of adventure as travellers of the world eager to experience different cultures and societies. In this way they assert themselves as actors within a global arena in contrast to a Denmark that, like many other nations in the global north, presents itself today as increasingly inward oriented and anxious to protect the local culture and society against foreign intruders. It is suggested that ethnographic analysis of migrants’ narrative self-representation in receiving societies can offer new insights into migrants as acting and reflecting subjects at a time when many societies display growing scepticism towards people on the move.     

Diaspora tourism and the negotiation of belonging: journeys of young second-generation Eritreans to Eritrea

In this article, I address the diaspora tourism of children of migrants. Based on a case study of second-generation Eritreans, I reveal how journeys to parents’ home countries affect the sense of belonging of the second generation. Applying a translocal perspective, I understand diaspora tourism as a translocal phenomenon which is both based on and creates interconnectedness between individuals and places. I illustrate different locally grounded situations and the socio-spatial interconnectedness that second-generation Eritreans experience at various places in the course of their journey in Eritrea. I conclude that diaspora tourism and the associated experiences at the places visited represent crucial identity-establishing events for second-generation Eritreans and influence the negotiation of their belonging and positioning towards both Eritrea and the Eritrean diaspora. This paper contributes to the debate on second generation and belonging by focusing on how localities and socio-spatial interconnectedness affect the negotiation of second-generation Eritreans’ belonging.     

Complex belongings: Racialization and migration in a small English city

The article explores how long-term residents in a small city with rural links in the East of England related to new migrants at a time of changing patterns and increased volume of migration. Based on in-depth interviews and observations in 2005–6, the article shows dynamic, complex, and nuanced constructions of belonging and governmentalities of belonging. Long-term Peterborians felt proud that their city attracted migrants and became more multicultural. Many saw this as a normative aspect of being modern. Yet, the arrival of migrants also led to tensions and re-inscribed the racialization of Peterborough's ethnic minorities, articulated through the theme of neighbourliness. Through the figures of ‘uncaring migrant neighbours’ and ‘ruthless Pakistani landlords’, migrants and ethnic minority Peterborians were portrayed as refusing injunctions to care for the neighbourhood and the nation. Ethnic minority Peterborians were positioned ambivalently as hosts of and – at times – targets of racism by new migrants.     

“Frame That Rug!”: Narratives of Zapotec Textiles as Art and Ethnic Commodity in the Global Marketplace

This article explores representations of Mexican Zapotec textiles as texts and as sites of contested values and meanings. Discussion of this indigenous cottage industry begins in the Oaxacan village of Teotitlán del Valle, the site of production, and follows the textile as it moves across social and cultural borders as a commodity in postindustrial consumer culture. The anthropologist's mediating role in brokering Zapotec textiles is considered within the social context of exchange relations between buyer and seller. Ethnographic stories about the production and aesthetics of Zapotec textiles are contrasted with consumers’ self-fashioning narratives of embodied experiences associated with their hand-woven possessions. The article concludes with reflections on the narrative threads of text that comprise a Zapotec textile's intrinsic value as both art and craft.     

Migrant warriors and transnational lives: constructing a Gurkha diaspora

The Nepalese Gurkhas have often been regarded as brave warriors in the scheme of British military recruitment since the 1800s. Today, their descendants have settled in various parts of South East and South Asia. How can one conceive of a Gurkha diaspora, and what are the Gurkhas and their families’ experiences of belonging in relation to varied migratory routes? This paper locates Gurkhas as migrants by deliberating upon the connection between military service and migration paths. I employ the lens of methodological transnationalism to elucidate how the Gurkha diaspora is both constructed and experienced. Diasporic consciousness and formation undergo modification alongside subsequent cycles of migration for different members of a diaspora. The article thus evaluates the transnational lives of migrants, and how these are connected to re-territorialized dimensions of identity and belonging.     

Movements,moments and moods. Generation as unity and strife in Peruvian migration

This article discusses the meaning and use of generation in migration studies. It argues that the term is useful to examine how migrants create linkages between their pre- and post-migration lives. The article draws on Mannheim's notions of ‘generational units’ and ‘fresh contact’ to scrutinize how Peruvians engage resources from their previous lives in Peru to achieve social mobility in the USA, Japan, Spain and Argentina. In particular, the article focuses on the role of education, ethnicity and conflict in Peruvians’ efforts to create support networks and form migrant institutions. It suggests that generational units grow out of migrants’ shared experience of mobilizing the same resource to establish fresh contact with their receiving society. The article concludes that while generational belonging can generate a strong sense of solidarity among some groups of migrants, this often happens at the cost of the unity and inclusion of the migrant community at large.     

‘Wasting mbeng’: Adventure and Trust Amongst sub-Saharan Migrants in Morocco

This article examines how irregular migrants from Central and Western Africa stranded in Morocco forged tenuous but essential relationships in the face of hostile and violent border politics constraining their mobility and resulting in systematic infringement of their rights. I examine the basis of trust amongst migrants in Morocco, who called themselves ‘adventurers’ on a quest for the ‘objective’ (e.g. ‘finding their lives’, usually through getting into Europe). Although most of them had embarked on individual journeys, they regularly needed to cooperate in order to face arduous living conditions and attempt crossing the border into Spain. The article demonstrates how trust was entangled not only with hostile migration politics but with regular moral conundrums as migrants needed to manage a balance between collaborating with other migrants and reaching their own ‘objective’.     

Not-the-Troubles: Disinterring the Marginalised Stories of the Ordinary and the Everyday

ABSTRACT

Urban studies of Belfast, Northern Ireland, thoroughly explore the contested or post-conflict city. However, these ‘grand narratives’ do not necessarily accord with people’s day-to-day experiences. Although the ordinary and the everyday are the lifeblood of anthropological inquiry, the mundane in Belfast dwells on the narratorial margin, as academic and political loci predominantly align to the Troubles: to the protagonists, the causes or the peace-building aftermath. Ten by Nine (Tenx9) is a monthly, public storytelling night showcasing ordinary people and their true, personal, everyday stories, juxtaposing the funny, poignant and educational, and celebrating the quotidian. Retelling Belfast at Tenx9 challenges hegemonic discourse by moving the mundane from the margin to the centre, opening up a space for small ‘t’ troubles to be shared. The communitas at Tenx9 promotes a sense of belonging in the city outwith Troubled narratives and storytelling, an ancient Irish oral culture, becomes a new form of symbolic practice.     

Violence against migrants in Greece: beyond the Golden Dawn

Violence perpetrated against migrants by Golden Dawn was rarely investigated or prosecuted by Greek authorities and was discursively constructed as exceptional, contrary to the norms of Greek democracy and committed by marginalized individuals and groups. The article argues that state responses have been shaped by racialized discourses and policies on migration and racism. Anti-migrant violence has been legitimated through three interlinked discursive strategies: a narrative of ‘isolated events’; the denial of its racialized nature; and the rationalization of both state and non-state anti-migrant violence as a regrettable yet understandable defensive reaction to the threats posed by migration.     

How marginality leads to inclusion: insights from mobilizations of Chinese female migrants in Paris

ABSTRACT

This article examines the collective actions undertaken by two groups of Chinese female migrants in Paris: sex workers who opposed a new law on prostitution, and manicurists who joined trade unions and went on strike. These women share similar geographical origins and migration projects; many came to France alone, and thus have much weaker social capital than other Chinese migrants in Paris, which pushed them to choose professional sectors viewed as marginal or even stigmatized. Despite their precarious situation, their marginal position has created conditions for collective action, enabling them to develop strong sense of collective belonging and receive support from organizations outside the community. These findings show how a marginal position in an ethnic community can be a triggering factor for migrants’ inclusion and political engagement in the host society.     

Both black and symbolically white: The ‘Bajan-Brit’ return migrant as post-colonial hybrid

The research presented in this article centres on an under-researched demographic group of young return migrants, namely, second-generation Barbadians, or ‘Bajan-Brits’, who have decided to ‘return’ to the birthplace of their parents. Based on 51 in-depth interviews, the essay examines the experiences of second-generation return migrants from an interpretative perspective framed within post-colonial discourse. The article first considers the Bajan-Brits and issues of race in the UK before their decision to migrate. It is then demonstrated that on ‘return’, in certain respects, these young, black English migrants occupy a liminal position of cultural, racial and economic privilege, based on their ‘symbolic’ or ‘token’ whiteness within the post-colonial context of Barbados. But this very hybridity and inbetweeness means that they also face difficulties and associated feelings of social alienation and discrimination. The ambivalent status of this transnational group of migrants serves to challenge traditional notions of Barbadian racial identity.