IMISCOE Dissertations – serie

Paradoxes of Social Capital critically examines the robustness of social capital theory as an analytical tool in explaining the various 'integration' patterns amongst Moroccans in London. The book also considers how structural factors impact on the ways in which Moroccans, across generations, sustain, access and use social capital at the levels of family, ethnic community, migrant associations and schools. Furthermore, this research elaborates on how social capital serves as an identity (re)source that is continuously negotiated and redefined through (in)active group (family, ethnic, religious and national) memberships. An original model of studying the second-generation processes of adaptation, viewed as 'transversal adaptation'- is also introduced, shifting the focus from predetermined 'integration' patterns to a circular and a longitudinal approach to 'integration', where new opportunities and constraints emerge, structured by the temporal flow of life trajectories.

Questions surrounding 'race' as a spatial divider have come to the forefront of the political agenda, compelling us to revisit the debate on residential segregation. Drawing on the spatial analysis of changing dynamics in the ethnic geography of Greater Glasgow and qualitative research on the residential preferences of 40 South Asian households, this book enhances our understanding of settlement in the city.,Understanding Processes of Ethnic Concentration and Dispersal documents new residential patterns, including South Asian suburbanisation in traditionally 'white' areas. Processes underlying both the changes and signs of sustained ethnic concentration are shown to be dynamic and complex. They encompass elements of choice, constraint and negotiations between the two, while also revealing a remarkable array of differentials such as class, status, education, age and culture.

This book challenges every common presumption that exists about the trafficking of women for the sex trade. It is a detailed account of an entire population of trafficked Albanian women whose varied experiences, including selling sex on the streets of France, clearly demonstrate how much the present discourse about trafficked women is misplaced and inadequate. The heterogeneity of the women involved and their relationships with various men is clearly presented as is the way women actively created a panoptical surveillance of themselves as a means of self-policing. There is no artificial divide between women who were deceived and abused and those who “choose” sex work; in fact the book clearly shows how peripheral involvement in sex work was to the real agenda of the women involved. Most of the women described in this book were not making economic decisions to escape desperate poverty nor were they the uneducated naïve entrapped into sexual slavery. The women’s success in transiting trafficking to achieve their own goals without the assistance of any outside agency is a testimony to their resilience and resolve.

This empirical study examines issues surrounding the integration of immigrants in Greece, in particular in Thessaloniki, as well as looking at migrants in neighbouring countries, Albania and Bulgaria. The book suggests that immigrants’ integration should be understood in relation to broader processes of social change, which are increasingly connected to global forces. The transformation of Greece into a multicultural society has taken place during a period of transition and of increasing exposure to the international environment. Within this context, Thessaloniki has become a new home for immigrants from the Balkans in search of new identities.Integration is seen as a multifaceted and dynamic process. The concept of incorporation is critically introduced, in order to analyse both the ways by which migrants organise their lives in the host society and their structural, institutional and cultural conditions. The analytical framework is built upon an interdisciplinary approach that takes into account different incorporation contexts: socio-political responses, the labour market, housing and social space. A number of additional factors are also considered, e.g. the composition of migrant populations, migratory patterns and dynamics, the role of social networks, immigrants’ strategies.The book provides an empirical account of the immigrants’ characteristics, explaining the patterns and typologies of immigrants’ integration in Greece. “Immigrants” become a social category “constructed” by exclusionary mechanisms: restrictive immigration policy, labour market exploitation, xenophobia. However, they do make a living in Thessaloniki; their integration is subject to time. gradually, immigrants become organic elements of the host society, which shapes, but is also being shaped by migration.

Christou explores the phenomenon of ‘return migration’ in Greece through the settlement and identification processes of second-generation Greek-American returning migrants. She examines the meanings attached to the experience of return migration. The concepts of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ figure prominently in the return migratory project which entails relocation and displacement as well as adjustment and alienation of bodies and selves.Furthermore, Christou considers the multiple interactions (social, cultural, political) between the place of origin and the place of destination; network ties; historical and global forces in the shaping of return migrant behaviour; and expressions of identity. The human geography of return migration extends beyond geographic movement into a diasporic journey involving (re)constructions of homeness and belongingness in the ancestral homeland.

Navigating Borders into the Netherlands provides a unique in-depth look at human smuggling processes. Based on biographical interviews with smuggled migrants in the Netherlands, the study reveals considerable differences that exist in smuggling's underlying causes, how journeys evolve, and outcomes of the process. This research from an insider's perspective clearly demonstrates that smuggled migrants are not passive actors, there is a broad variety in types of smugglers, and interactions between migrants and smugglers largely determine how the smuggling process evolves.

Analyses in a comparative perspective naturalisation processes in Swiss municipalities and explores new theoretical and analytical approaches to the study of citizenship.

This book explores the importance of conspiracy rhetoric within populist and far right speeches in Europe and the United States. It shows how a “New World Order” plot give to populist and far right parties an opportunity to develop a rhetoric based on the rescue of democracy despite their obvious rejection of the values and principles which set up democracy.

Making illegal residence unattractive is a way for Western governments to limit migration from non-Western countries. Focusing on Dutch neighbourhoods with substantial levels of unauthorised migrants, Illegal Residence and Public Safety in the Netherlands examines how restrictive immigration policy influences immigrant crime and perceived neighborhood security. Salient questions arise. To what extent, and under which conditions, do illegal residence and illegal migration impact public safety? Does having illegal residence status influence how people observe or break the law and other social rules? Do their ties with established groups, such as legal migrants, employers and partners, have any sway? Answers to these issues begin surfacing in this rich combination of quantitative information, comprising police figures and surveys on victimisation, and qualitative sources, including interviews at the Dutch Aliens Custody and urban field research.

This book examines two major social changes experienced by European cities in the last two decades: post-industrial economic restructuring and new immigration flows. The link between both has been extensively discussed throughout a variety of theoretical approaches and in numerous descriptive contributions. Adding to those studies, this research focuses on three elements of migratory experience that have been relatively neglected thus far: a dynamic view of changes over time, the influence of national welfare and legislation frameworks, and the importance of support mechanisms outside the labour market. The material underpinning the arguments is the qualitative life-course analysis of 81 in-depth interviews with Senegambian migrants living in Antwerp and Barcelona.

Unraveled in this book are the real dynamics at stake in the Madame/housemaid relationship. While cases of extreme physical abuse by the Lebanese women who hire housemaids – Madames – are an exception, what has become normalised are more insidious patterns of domination used to control each and every aspect of their employees’ lives. For their part, Sri Lankan housemaids are not merely passive victims. Away from direct provocation and first-hand repercussions, they try to deflect what Pierre Bourdieu has called ‘symbolic violence’. These attempts at ‘everyday forms of resistance’, as defined by James Scott, can help loosen their employers’ grip. Yet, as this unprecedented study shows, the Madame/housemaid relationship and the rules that govern it remain under the managerial hold of the Madame.

In the last 50 years, the United Kingdom has witnessed a growing proportion of mixed African-Caribbean and white British families. With rich new primary evidence of ‘mixed-race’ in the capital city, The Creolisation of London Kinship thoughtfully explores this population. Making an indelible contribution to both kinship research and wider social debates, the book emphasises a long-term evolution of family relationships across generations. Individuals are followed through changing social and historical contexts, seeking to understand in how far many of these transformations may be interpreted as creolisation. Examined, too, are strategies and innovations in relationship construction, the social constraints put upon them, the special significance of women and children in kinship work and the importance of non-biological as well as biological notions of family relatedness.