Who is allowed to stay? Settlement deservingness preferences towards migrants in four European countries

Following the refugee crisis, European countries have tried to stimulate the integration of migrants into local society. However, the public, influenced by negative framing of migrants by media and political actors, may feel that not all migrants are equally deserving of settlement. In this study, we obtain greater insight into the public’s attitudes towards migrants by applying the deservingness framework to migrant settlement in four European countries: Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden, using the CARIN typology (control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, need). We use data from the European Social Survey Round 1 (2002) and Round 7 (2014), and online survey data from 2017. We can draw four main conclusions: 1) (at least) three out of five CARIN-criteria (attitude, reciprocity, and identity) apply to settlement deservingness, 2) the identity criterion is considered the ‘least’ important criterion, while attitude is considered most important, but 3) identity has become increasingly important over time, and 4) there is significant variation in deservingness preferences between countries and over time. Findings indicate that older respondents, men, and Christians are more restrictive towards accepting migrants than younger respondents, women, and Muslims. The role of education is twofold: lower educated individuals value identity more, highly educated individuals value attitude and (future) reciprocity.     

Mediating a compromised solidarity

ABSTRACT

This article explores popular media as resources for judgment in how settled migrants in Europe imagine solidarities toward newer arrivals seeking entry into the region. It discusses the news and entertainment consumption of Filipino nurses in London and how this figures in their imaginary of social and political bonds with refugees. Drawing on ethnographic interviews, I argue that these Filipino migrants can only articulate a compromised solidarity: one fractured between empathy with refugees and concern about what these newer arrivals might mean for settled migrants in the city. I then explain how the media contribute to this fracturing. One way is that the xenophobia in popular media content on social media leads the Filipinos to assert their difference with other migrants, including refugees. A second is that the Filipinos deploy popular media content, especially on British television, to assert that they belong to UK society more than other migrants, again including refugees.     

Learning language that matters: A pedagogical method to support migrant mothers without formal education experience in their social integration in Western countries

BackgroundCourses for migrants in Europe are mostly aimed at literacy in western languages as a means for participation in society. These curricula are not suitable for migrants without previous basic education, which leaves groups of migrants vulnerable to alienation and without support for social integration.MethodThe IDEAL-programme (Integrating Disadvantaged Ethnicities through Adult Learning), which takes a participatory didactic approach and in which daily personal and family life is the starting point for learning, was provided and evaluated in the Netherlands and Sweden in 2011–2013. The participants (N = 16) were migrant mothers of Berber and Arabic origin without formal educational experience. The teachers shared the same background and served as role model facilitators and social brokers.ResultsThrough exploring their personal narratives, the participants showed new insights, skills, and attitudes on the topics of communication, health and parenting. All participants showed progress in language acquisition and participation in society. The Dutch group of migrant mothers reported to use less physical punishment and threats to their children, and to practise more positive parenting skills instead.DiscussionLiteracy oriented programmes for social integration are not suitable for all migrants and do not encourage acculturation. The proposed method offers a feasible alternative, so that migrants may be more adequately supported in their efforts for social integration in receiving societies. In order to advance the future development of participatory programmes for civic education, several key intervention design principles and political conditions are discussed.     

Racial moral panic and African youth in Australia

Since the mid-1980s, Australia has resettled thousands of African refugees. This paper focuses on the racialization of youth violence and the damage it sustains on refugee-background young Africans. The discussion proceeds in two interrelated stages. In the first stage, to understand the representation of African youth in the public sphere, the paper reviews the relevant literature, media headlines, and political commentaries. In so doing, it establishes that the continual framing of African youth as dangerous and violence-prone by conservative politicians and media outlets amounts to racial moral panic. In the second stage, guided by narrative research methodology, a small group of young Africans were invited to reflect on their everyday life under racialized frames. Accounts of the youth are presented under four themes: the presumption of guilt, emotional ill-being, opportunity hoarding, and the permanence of otherness. It is argued that, if left unaddressed, the racialization of youth violence can diminish the integration outcomes of African youth.     

Complicating cosmopolitanism: Ethno-cultural and sexual connections among gay migrants

ABSTRACT

Contemporary migrants are described as “connected migrants,” as they maintain multiple connections using digital and social media. This article explores how this leads to processes of cosmopolitanism and/or encapsulation in a particular group, voluntary gay migrants in Belgium, focusing on the intersection between ethno-cultural and sexual identifications and connections. Drawing on in-depth interviews, the cosmopolitan outlook of the participants becomes clear, as their national and ethno-cultural connections are relatively weak while they identify more strongly with cosmopolitan LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) culture. However, while more salient, sexuality is not all-defining either, bespeaking their rather privileged position as a group of migrants who are self dependent and not strongly encapsulated in ethno-cultural nor sexual communities, with neither minority identity causing excessive stigmatization. As a consequence, they use digital and social media to simultaneously connect to different social spheres, although most do manage their self-presentation to avoid the clash or “collapse” of different social contexts online.     

Symbolic bordering: The self-representation of migrants and refugees in digital news

ABSTRACT

In this article, I combine theorizations of the selfie as an aesthetic and technological practice of digital self-representation with a theatrical conception of spectatorship, inspired by Adam Smith, in order to argue that the selfie has the potential to operate as a significant ethico-political spectacle in the spaces of Western publicity. I exemplify my argument by using the remediation of migrant and refugee selfies in mainstream news as a case study of “symbolic bordering”—as a technology of power that couples the geopolitical bordering of migrants in the outskirts of Europe with practices of “symbolic bordering” that appropriate, marginalize, or displace their digital testimonies in Western news media.     

Intercultural relations among migrants from Caucasus and Russians in Moscow

This study examines intercultural relations in post-Soviet Russia. Russia currently has the world’s second highest number of immigrants with most migrants coming from the former Soviet Union, mainly the Central Asian and South Caucasian states. The research was carried out in Moscow, which is the most attractive destination for these immigrants. The paper presents the findings of an empirical study with migrants (N = 378) and residents of Moscow (N = 651) examining their intercultural relations, including their acceptance of multicultural ideology, intercultural contacts, intercultural strategies and mutual adaptation. The study was guided by three general hypotheses: the integration, the multicultural and the contact hypotheses. Data processing was carried out using path analysis, separately for migrants and Muscovites. For both samples, multicultural ideology predicts the strategy of integration positively, and of assimilation negatively. Intercultural contacts predict both acculturation strategies positively for migrants, but not for Muscovites. For migrants, both strategies positively predict life satisfaction, and integration predicts better sociocultural adaptation. For Muscovites, integration predicts life satisfaction. These specific findings fully support the two underlying hypotheses: integration and multicultural for both groups and contact hypothesis only for migrants. Multicultural ideology has positive relation to intercultural contacts of Muscovites and has indirect positive impact on intercultural strategies of migrants. Models demonstrated similar as well as different psychological processes underlying mutual acculturation and intercultural relations in the two groups. The similarities suggest that efforts should be directed at developing a multicultural ideology and facilitating intercultural contacts between migrants and members of the larger society.     

Does the subaltern speak? Migrant voices in digital Europe

ABSTRACT

This article examines a number of digital initiatives where refugees and migrants speak with/to Europe in the context of the “migration crisis.” The analysis of four institutional and grassroots initiatives illustrates digital Europe’s symbolic articulations of borders that divide people and territories. As argued, the mediated visibility and voice of refugees and migrants matter precisely as the order of appearance (in Arendt’s terms) in digital Europe represents a fundamental dimension of the continent’s communicative order: revealing who speaks and who is silenced, which actors are heard and which are sidelined in the context of Europe’s “migration crisis.” The incorporation of refugee and migrant voices in digital Europe shows that voice does not guarantee recognition; rather, its incorporation reveals the complex politics of digital representation: on occasions challenging hegemonic power structures but most often digitally reaffirming bordering power and its symbolical articulations.     

“I will not hate myself because you cannot accept me”: Problematizing empowerment and gender-diverse selfies

ABSTRACT

While selfies of beautiful cisgender women are declaimed by mainstream media as narcissistic and facile, some body-positive feminists and queer theorists argue that selfies can be empowering. They claim self-representation by traditionally stigmatized people can challenge normative presentations of beauty and gender. This article problematizes “empowerment” as a definitive and/or productive frame and argues instead for observation and analysis of “privilege” in situated practice. In this article I combine analysis of a collection of online cultural artifacts (including nonbinary selfies on Tumblr) and interviews with a small group of trans* social media storytellers to explore theoretical tensions between gender fluidity and identity fragmentation across multiple social media sites and practices. Gender-diverse digital self-representation encompasses both “consistent” androgyny, nonbinary, agender, and so on, and “emergent” presentations-in-flux. I assert that the ongoing iteration of self across social media—implied by self (re)presentation—can have simultaneous and contradictory political significance. I conclude that networked interpersonal complications frame understandings of empowerment, as perhaps they always have done.     

Gamers versus zombies? Visual mediation of the citizen/non-citizen encounter in Europe’s ‘refugee crisis’

ABSTRACT

This article identifies the visual representation of Europe’s “refugee crisis” in the media as a key dimension of the communicative architecture of the crisis and its aftermath. Effectively, it argues, the powerful, even iconic, imagery that the media produced and shared during the 2015 “crisis” affirmed ideological frames of incompatible difference, perpetually dividing European citizens and refugees. The article focuses on some of the fundamental elements of the 2015 crisis’s visual grammar to demonstrate how they have (re-)produced popular fears of strangeness and the need for containment and control of foreign bodies. This visual grammar, we argue, imitated and procreated recognizable representations of popular culture to exaggerate newcomers’ strangeness and incompatible difference from the national subject. On the one hand, many news media simulated zombies’ threatening strangeness in images of refugee massification; on the other, many news media images reaffirmed the decisive power of the national subject over refugees’ fate, not unlike the video game player who unilaterally controls a game and takes action when confronted by zombies. This grammar, we argue, symbolically predetermines encounters between citizens and refugees, by emphasizing their incompatible difference and newcomers’ strangeness.     

Framing the inclusiveness of the national ingroup: Do identity-related frames affect national identity representations salience?

This between-subject survey experiment, conducted in two waves using a German sample (N = 1166 in Wave 1, N = 829 in Wave 2), examined the hypothesis that identity-related frames – specifically, assimilation versus multicultural – affect outgroup prejudice and admission policy preferences by increasing the salience of different national identity representations (NIR). Participants were exposed to identical articles (except for the manipulations) framing information about Syrian refugees in Germany in either assimilation or multicultural terms. As predicted, exposure to assimilation versus multicultural frames led to higher ethnocultural NIR salience and, in turn, to higher outgroup prejudice and preference for more restrictive admission policies. Still, findings pointed to the defining role of frame content and valence perception in these effects, as perceiving the frame as more assimilationist and anti-immigration was related to higher ethnocultural NIR salience. Furthermore, frame perception explained a larger portion of variation in ethnocultural NIR salience than treatment alone. Additionally, ethnocultural NIR salience fostered intergroup threat perception leading to higher outgroup prejudice and preference for restrictive asylum policies. In contrast, civic NIR salience was unaffected by the experimental manipulation. We discuss the impact of identity-related frames on ethnocultural NIR salience and the role of exclusionary national identities on outgroup prejudice and preference for restrictive admission policies. We also highlight the benefits of using multicultural frames to frame information about refugees and asylum to foster positive intergroup perceptions.     

San Fancón and the Goddess of Mercy

ABSTRACT

This article examines two cases of religious syncretism among migrant and ethnic Chinese in Cuba. It shows that Chinese communities outside China, often described in popular and even in some academic discourse as inassimilable (a prejudice unfortunately assisted by the roots discourse now popular in China and elsewhere), were in fact authors of and participants in the same processes of transculturation and religious mixing as other migrants.     

Intersection of Asia,feminism and cultural studies: Yonsei University's experience in South Korea

Abstract

This article addresses the issues of how feminism, cultural studies and inter‐Asia studies can intersect amicably and meaningfully as an institutional program by using Yonsei University as an example. Speaking from the position of someone who is one of the founders and teachers of the Graduate Program in Cultural and Gender Studies at Yonsei University, I endeavor to analyze the possibilities and limitations of combining these fields together. This article suggests that practitioners of inter‐Asian cultural studies carefully formulate and establish a conceptual framework as foundation upon which we can begin to discuss some possible commonalities for future curriculum. I believe that the framework ought to focus more on the ‘post‐nation state paradigm,’ and incorporate the achievements of both critics of global capitalism and the neoliberal order, and creators of new meanings – including migrants and youths – as a possible transnational subjectivities. Inter‐Asia cultural studies also needs to learn some lessons from the history of the belittlement and groundless exclusion of feminism experienced by the Birmingham School and Korean cultural studies practitioners and the gender‐blindness they held.     

Postnational family/postfamilial nation: family,small town and nation talk in Marcos and Brocka

Abstract

This article explores the concept of authenticity, and its articulation with longstanding Japanese discourses of modernity, among contemporary Japanese lifestyle migrants in New York City. Considering the cases of artists in particular, it examines how migrants narrate the ideals and goals of life in New York City, thereby elaborating on concepts of the self, authenticity, meaning, and national cultural identity.     

“ʿAlā fūr Tuṭīla”: Jews and Muslims in the Administrative Culture of Post-Conquest Tudela,c.1118–1220

The early history of the Jewish and Muslim communities living under Christian rule in the Ebro Valleys tends to be overlooked in favour of the source-rich thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However, the nature and organisation of these groups should not be taken as a constant, as they underwent a significant transformation over the course of the twelfth century. Through the case study of Tudela, this article proposes to re-examine the dynamics of administration and judicial practice that developed in the immediate aftermath of the Navarro-Aragonese conquest. This town has a rich corpus of charters that allows us to contrast the administrative layout enshrined in the franchise charters known as fueros with the legal practice reflected in some particular bilingual interlineated purchase-sale contracts. A comparison of both sets of documents emphasises the use of the fuero in inter-communal negotiation, both in framing encounters and in guaranteeing each group's autonomy, during a key period in the gestation of Jewish and Muslim administrative and judicial practices under Christian rule.

Abbreviations: DAr = Mercedes García-Arenal, “Documentos árabes de Tudela Y Tarazona”, Al-Qan?ara: Revista de Estudios Árabes 3 (1982): 27–72; FdN = Luis Javier Fortún Pérez de Ciriza, “Colección de ‘fueros menores’ de Navarra y otros privilegios locales (I)”, Príncipe de Viana 165 (1982): 273–348     

The links that bind: WikiLeaks,Twitter, and the Julian Assange case

In the decade since the founding of WikiLeaks, no non-leak-related issue has dominated coverage of the organization more than the August 2010 allegations made by two women in Stockholm against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. This case has been addressed on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed on a consistent basis over the past 6 years. The tweets from WikiLeaks to millions of followers constitute a form of popular communication where a broad—albeit somewhat prefigured—audience is targeted using an open social media platform. With this audience in mind, I analyze the use of Twitter by WikiLeaks to address the 2010 rape allegations against Assange (and the subsequent follow-on events after those allegations), with a particular focus on two issues: (a) the framing by WikiLeaks of the allegations, Sweden, rape, and feminism; and (b) how the sources (links) used in those tweets to back up claims should be seen as part of the general framing process.     

Museums and the material assets of dignity and memory: Confronting loss without compensation in Expolio and Francofonia

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the connections between memory and human dignity as it intersects with art and art museums. Two recent examples—the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos 2016 exhibit Expolio, and Alexander Sokurov’s 2015 film-essay, Francofonia—highlight the need for a larger conversation regarding the way accumulation and loss of cultural products uphold or denigrate human dignity, a concept that is not often thought of in relation to the assets of art museums. Using the historical frames set out by these examples, which span from the opening of the Louvre to the plundering of cultural artifacts in Syria, I argue that dignity has always been an asset of museums. It is through the merging of dignity and memory, in the context of art and culture, that the emerging field of human rights museology can begin to speak more broadly to art history and memory studies alike.     

Once a refugee: selfie activism,visualized citizenship and the space of appearance

ABSTRACT

This article examines the social media campaign “Once I was a refugee” by former refugees as a response to the increasingly hostile political climate in Finland against refugees. With selfie activism, the campaign expanded the “space of appearance” and introduced new voice and visuality to the public debate. The case depicts politics of claiming citizenship and social value through self-presentation to counter views of refugees as economic burden, noncitizens, and surplus humanity. The empirical material is based on analysis of the Facebook and Twitter campaign and interviews with the participants. It is argued that selfie activism may occasionally, through new voice and visibility, expand the space of appearance and contribute to the rise of affective or counter-publics that can come together and make use of digital media for political action. However, the case also reveals how difficult it is to speak from a refugee position without being drawn into the discourse of deservingness.