Investigating everyday acts of contributing as ‘admission tickets’ to belong to the nation in Norway

This article examines the centrality of contributing to questions of belonging in Norway. Building on the diversity of individuals living within a shared national space, the study identifies how everyday acts of contributing were conceived of by the participants as ‘admission tickets’ to belong. The study further investigates the participants' motivations and desires for contributing and unveils how, given their migration background (internal, international or non‐migrant), they respond to expectations of contributing from different positions of ontological security. The participants reveal ontological (in)security at different geographical scales, and they seek to manage this less secure position of national or local belonging through their acts of contributing in everyday life.     

Exploring the Phenomena of Online Dating Platforms Versus Saudi Traditional Spouse Courtship in the 21st Century

While traditional Saudi Arabian courtship is rigidly structured according to a set of Islamic codes of conduct, over the past decade, Saudis have increasingly turned to unconventional means of finding and courting a potential spouse: matrimonial Web sites. This research explores the debate in the literature on computer meditated communication regarding whether online settings provide rich information about other users, as they show that online interactions can provide more information about the opposite sex for users who belong to gender‐segregated societies than they can get through their offline lives. The article will shed some light on the interplay between young generations and their obsessions with the world of Internet dating and the societal norms and social conducts with which they are comfortable while living in Saudi Arabia. The article may contribute to the online dating literature by showing the similarities and differences between conservative, Islamic Saudi users and Western users when using Web sites to search for a potential mate. The research shows the power of both social and religious norms in affecting these users’ behaviors and decisions when using matrimonial Web sites.     

Planting Roots,Making Place: Urban Autochthony in Port Vila Vanuatu

A contentious issue for Pacific Islanders, as well as researchers of the Pacific Islands, is ni-Vanuatu notions of ‘belonging’ to urban centres. Previous research in Vanuatu has shown that despite generations of people born and raised in Port Vila, the nation's capital, the urban centre is not generally perceived as a ‘place’ to which urban migrants can say they are from. For many, exclaiming that one is ‘from’ town is tantamount to admitting one has ‘no place’. This paper, based on fieldwork among a group of urban young men in Freswota, a residential community of Port Vila, argues that in contrast to this, Freswota young men are generating a new locative identity. Their urban community rather than their parents' home island places is emerging as their primary location of belonging and the source of their sense of self, personhood and social identification. As such, these young men are the urban autochthones of the country.     

The fragility of Europe's Willkommenskultur

In this guest editorial Chris Hann considers the refugee route via the Balkans to Germany that opened up in a big way in the summer of 2015. The influx of ‘economic migrants’, as most newcomers are widely perceived, is polarizing opinion throughout the member states of the European Union. Hann also detects a renewal of the old east‐west moral geographies, due in part to legacies of the socialist era in eastern Europe and the semi‐peripheral condition of the region today for European capitalism. Whereas most anthropologists tend to favor unconstrained mobility and hence call for the abolition of frontiers, Hann suggests that the solution cannot be so simple. Focusing on the interplay of economic and ethical factors, he urges empathy not only with all categories of refugees/migrants but also with the dispossessed in the societies that offer them a ‘welcome’.     

At home in the city: everyday practices and distinction in international student mobility

International students have been overlooked in geographies of ‘home’, yet this paper demonstrates how international student mobility offers unique insights that can advance our understanding of ‘home’ and belonging in the city. Drawing on photo-elicitation and mid-point and return interviews with Canadian students, this paper explores the everyday home-making practices of exchange students in urban centres in the Global South. It focuses on the ways in which international students create a sense of ‘home’ and belonging in their host city and how insider knowledge gained through local everyday practices is converted into cultural capital. It contributes to the literature by considering how home-making practices are implicated in spatial and scalar boundary-making processes for distinction. By illustrating through participants’ photographs how students articulate ‘home’ using spatial and scalar markers, I examine how students tighten the spatial boundaries of ‘home’ to focalise and localise symbolic capital within the city. The findings further add to debates on im/mobility by demonstrating that students’ distinguish their relative immobility during the sojourn from the mobility of travellers and tourists to legitimise claims of belonging as ‘insiders’ and of place-specific capital. The paper then concludes by considering how students are ‘collecting homes’ for distinction.     

Migrant bodies and the materialization of belonging in Sweden

Immigration and transnational adoption are both manifestations of the pervasive dislocations that characterize the contemporary era. Each illuminates as well the double movement of assimilation and internal exclusion through which racisms that are a heritage of colonialism are expanded and reactivated in the metropolitan centers of western Europe and North America. In this process, race is spatialized, different forms of migrant bodies are produced, and familiar logics of belonging that link person to place are transformed. The differential politics of adoption and immigration in late twentieth-century Sweden shed light on this process of racialization and the affective economies through which it is realized, as that nation pursues a multicultural project in which ‘Swedishness’ becomes ‘the measure of everything.’     

Street child spaces: belonging,conflict and resistance in the city of Durban through the eyes of street youth

ABSTRACT

This article is concerned with the everyday ‘spatial tactics’ deployed by children in a street situation in order to deal with notions of public space that define them as ‘out of place’, marginal and deviant. Using photovoice, we reconstruct former street children’s definitions of and feelings about their spaces in the city, bringing into view a complex set of social problems, attitudes and strategies that moves beyond the traditional binary notion of street children as either deviants or victims. This work points to the importance of finding ways to ensure the voices of marginalized and disadvantaged children are heard and presents the narratives that are important to our understanding of their worlds. Analyzing their spatiality in contexts of conflict, belonging and resistance, we found that children and youth in a street situation are mainly concerned with empowering themselves and resisting dominant labels and police repression.     

Urban foraging and the relational ecologies of belonging

Through a discussion of urban foraging in Seattle, Washington, USA, we examine how people's plant and mushroom harvesting practices in cities are linked to relationships with species, spaces, and ecologies. Bringing a relational approach to political ecology, we discuss the ways that these particular nature–society relationships are formed, legitimated, and mobilized in discursive and material ways in urban ecosystems. Engaging closely with and as foragers, we develop an ethnographically grounded ‘relational ecologies of belonging’ framework to conceptualize and examine three constituent themes: cultural belonging and identity, belonging and place, and belonging and more-than-human agency. Through this case study, we show the complex ways that urban foraging is underpinned by interconnected and multiple notions of identity, place, mobility, and agency for both humans and more-than-human interlocutors. The focus on relational ecologies of belonging illuminates important challenges for environmental management and public space planning in socioecologically diverse areas. Ultimately, these challenges reflect negotiated visions about how we organize ourselves and live together in cosmopolitan spaces such as cities.     

Culture for competitiveness: valuing diversity in EU-Europe and the ‘creative city’ of Berlin

The European Union (EU) has in recent years propagated an approach to ‘culture’ that pulls together support for the creative and cultural industries with diversity-sensitive immigration and integration strategies, drawing on popular policy visions of the ‘creative’ and ‘intercultural’ city. This approach emphasizes the role that the diversity of culture, as personal resource, can play in enhancing economic competitiveness. The article examines its logic and possible effects through an analysis of EU documents and policy in Berlin. Berlin intersects with the EU’s agenda, using EU structural funds and participating in the European program ‘Intercultural Cities’. It is shown that the attempt to use ‘culture for competitiveness’ equates support-worthy ‘diversity’ with forms of culture that conform to (neo)liberal values and priorities. The attempt to shape a cosmopolitan place attractive for investment and the high-skilled feeds into gentrification processes that create ‘diverse’ neighborhoods where ‘difference’ has no place.     

Indigenous migrants negotiating belonging: Peticiones de cambio de fuero in Cajamarca,Peru, 17th–18th centuries

Prehispanic corporate social units in northern Peru, the pachacas or ayllus and the guarangas, continued to structure social life in Cajamarca throughout the Spanish colonial period. They were restructured by Spanish rule, as they had been by the Inca conquest before. Spanish rule also reshaped indigenous migration and the social categorization of the migrants, which was closely intertwined with the regime of land tenure. This article takes a look at the integration of new and old migrants and their descendants into the local social structure and examines how they negotiated their belonging in petitions to change or defend their fuero. The petitioners successfully argued on the basis of their ancestry, whether legitimate or not, and activated personal networks on their behalf. In that, they paralleled mestizo and mulatto petitioners who, like migrants, benefited from fiscal prerogatives, which were however challenged during the course of the 18^th century, leading to a partial re-categorization. The redistribution of land was an important motive in these late colonial re-categorizations, but also earlier in the colonial period the absence of bonds to the land was an essential characteristic of being categorized as a ‘migrant.’     

A national cautionary tale: Russian women newcomers to Israel portrayed*

This article focuses on portrayals of recent women migrants from the (former) Soviet Union in Israel, as these found expression in jokes and in articles in the press. Analysis of these portrayals suggests that the ubiquitous association of the newcomer women with prostitution served to construct them as morally and socially fragmented. Loosened from the moral bounds of familial and, by implication, national ties, the newcomer women were located beyond the boundary of the Israeli Jewish collective. As the mirror image of the ‘loose’ newcomer women, mother-like, Israeli Jewish women were seen as eminently suited to the task of ‘domesticating’ the newcomers – bringing them in from the street into the familial, and national, home. The discussion suggests that the portrayals of the women as prostitutes served as ‘national cautionary tales’, which not only instructed their audience (newcomers and oldtimers alike) in fundamental tenets of Israeli Jewish national identity, but also warned those who might seek to undermine the ethno-national attachments and loyalties that lie at the heart of the Israeli polity.     

The imperial race and the immigration sieve: The Canadian debate on assisted British migration and empire settlement, 1900–30

During the 1920s assisted migration from Britain sparked a complex and often bitter debate in Canada. It had long been held that migrants who required assistance were highly unlikely to make desirable new citizens. While the great majority of Anglo-Canadians wished to see increased British immigration in order to strengthen imperial ties and maintain the cultural character of their nation, they feared an influx of ‘unfit’, unemployed urban workers. In some quarters, these negative attitudes intensified as a result of Empire settlement schemes. Complaints about assisted migrants have been interpreted by some historians as evidence of growing nationalist, anti-imperial feeling in Canada. However, a broader overview of the debate indicates that many observers blamed the problems of Empire settlement on Canadian economic and social conditions, calling for reforms that would help British newcomers to succeed. At the end of the 1920s, even the strongest critics of assisted migration were still eager to encourage British settlement, provided that the immigrants could be drawn from rural areas rather than the cities.     

Hierarchies of trade in Yiwu and Dushanbe: The case of an Uzbek merchant family from Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the trading trajectory of an Uzbek family of merchants from Tajikistan. This family runs businesses in both Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, and China’s famous international trading city: Yiwu. The analysis is centred on the accounts placed by Tajikistan’s Uzbek merchants about their historically sustained experience, often across several generations, in trading activities. These merchants’ claims of belonging to a ‘historical’ trading community rather than being ‘newcomers’ to long-distance commerce are articulated in relation to notions of ‘hierarchies of trade’ as they evolve in a twofold relational model linking Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood and Dushanbe. I suggest that the forms of conviviality enacted in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood need to be understood in terms of the historical, multinational and transregional contacts that have occurred within the spaces of the former Soviet Union, as well as along the China-Russia and China-Central Asian borders. Equally, the hierarchies of trade of Uzbek merchants from Tajikistan in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood cut-across markers of identity that juxtapose the roles of Tajik and Uzbek communities in Tajikistan’s contemporary politics and economics.     

Of kimchi and coffee: globalisation,transnationalism and familiarity in culinary consumption

This paper discusses the culinary consumption choices of South Korean international students in Auckland, New Zealand as a route to re-considering the transnational production of familiarity. In particular, this study questions the extent to which culinary consumption by transnational migrants is always an intentional declaration of ‘group loyalties’ or about the re-production of local or national identities. Drawing on research with students this paper illustrates that while some aspects of the familiarity enacted in culinary consumption appear to be ‘local’, in the sense that they are encoded as ‘Korean’, other aspects appear to represent forms of ‘global’ familiarity. Hence, it is argued that culinary consumption in transnational worlds can also more subtly represent an effort to recreate familiarity through reference to characteristics of everyday life before migration that may include what appear to be both global and local products. Such familiarity is then not necessarily about group loyalties or identities but rather an example of the importance of practical know how and familiar sensations in feelings of belonging and attachment.     

Mungiki,Vernacular Organization and Political Society in Kenya

This article uses the concept of ‘political society’ as unfolded by the ‘subaltern studies’ in India to shed new light on present‐day political actors and democratic transitions in Africa. It discusses the political practices and discursive terrains of organizations within ‘really existing’ civil society that are based on identities and regarded as outside legitimate civil society. It looks at politics from below, taking the example of the 2007 elections in Kenya, and the role of Mungiki, an organization characterized by the intersection of class, generation, religion and ethnicity. Mungiki builds on Kenya's history and rich archive of indigenous popular culture. It originated in the early 1990s’ turmoil of ‘ethnic clashes’ and population displacement and now operates in rural and poor urban areas, providing income opportunities, service delivery and extortion/protection. During elections, sections of Mungiki have been recruited by political leaders and functioned as violent militia; concurrently, it seeks representation in formal and parliamentary politics. The organization is distinct from ‘respectable’ segments of Kenya's civil society who participate in NGO activities and mainstream churches. The article ends by calling for an inclusive and non‐normative approach to the study of state–civil society engagement that recognizes culturally based discourses and organizations when analysing the transitions to and the broadening of democracy in post‐colonial societies.     

Geopolitics by another name: immigration and the politics of assimilation

In this introduction to the special issue on the geopolitics of migration, I discuss some of the problematic elements of current approaches to migration studies. In particular, I comment on the concept of ‘transnationalism’ as it has been applied to immigrant communities, and argue that claims about immigrant transnationalism resemble contemporary and historical polemics on the non-assimilation of immigrants. I propose that our understanding of the dynamics of immigrant-host society relationships must begin with an understanding of the geopolitical contexts in which migration takes place. I illustrate my argument using the case of Arab Americans in the aftermath of September 11, and I conclude by urging a reconsideration of the concept of assimilation as a ‘politics of sameness’.     

Multiple multiculturalisms: insights from the Edinburgh Mela

This paper contributes to debates about the future of multiculturalism in Britain by exploring how it is conceptualized, constructed and experienced in contemporary Scotland. The work is grounded in Hall's (2000) important but commonly overlooked distinction between a ‘multicultural society’, which designates a condition of cultural diversity, and ‘multiculturalism’, which refers to processes and policies that attempt to fix the meaning of such diversity. As these definitions suggest, the abandonment of multiculturalism as a ‘policy failure’ cannot be a solution to problems arising from the complex composition of contemporary societies. The fact that all societies must make decisions about the significance of cultural diversity and its management—they must all practise some form of multiculturalism—is established through a review of how multiculturalism has been conceptualized and pursued to date. The paper then draws on the example of Edinburgh's South Asian Festival—the Mela—to explore the empirical complexities of these different applications in a Scottish context. An analysis of the Mela's changing organization and artistic programme over time reveals the coexistence of multiple conceptions of multiculturalism—in time, space and experience. This progressive reinterpretation of multiculturalism—as multiple—advances the goals of both cultural diversity and societal cohesiveness.     

Belonging to the nation: Negotiating narratives of national identity in Aotearoa New Zealand

One of the most important yet complex contemporary political projects of belonging relate to rapidly diversifying societies. While prior research has tended to focus on how young people work to fit into the nation, this study sought to examine the processes by which ethnic minority young people (re)produced, reimagined and challenged narratives of national belonging. Underpinned by feminist theoretical understandings of citizenship and everyday nation, the study examined how young people (n = 180) attending four superdiverse high schools in Aotearoa New Zealand deliberated and negotiated the parameters of who belonged to the nation. The use of a qualitative participatory strategy – self-directed peer focus groups – opened up opportunities for young people to debate and contest complex ideas about belonging and national identity. Ethnic minority participants expressed widespread dissatisfaction with traditional narrow, monocultural narratives of national identity and drew on illustrations from their own everyday encounters with diverse others to offer more inclusive alternatives. Many employed affective notions of national belonging that centred on ‘feeling’ like, or choosing to be a ‘Kiwi’, rather than being chosen. Their deliberations and dialogue demonstrated agentic ways in which ethnic minority young people were ‘rewriting’ the narratives of national belonging to ensure that they and their peers were located as legitimate citizens of the nation, and in doing so, revealed the formation of their citizenship subjectivities.     

Latino immigrants and the renegotiation of place and belonging in small town America

This article compares the politics of place and belonging within two non-metropolitan communities—Woodburn, Oregon, and Leadville, Colorado—that have witnessed a significant increase in Latino immigration during the last fifteen to twenty years. Today both communities are approximately 50 per cent Latino, a demographic change that has reworked understandings of place identity and social belonging in each. Through a comparison of the two towns we seek to chart the unique regional political economic dynamics driving these changes, examine their spatial imprint, and interrogate how local context shapes the extent to which new arrivals are able to make effective claims to a sense of place and belonging despite hierarchies of race, class and ‘illegality.’ Assessing the differences between these two immigrant destinations provides insights into how sociospatial relations are crucial to analyzing immigrant–receiving society interaction, and contributes to scholarship on the uneven geography of immigrant incorporation in the contemporary USA.