Population Mobility And Belonging

In a world of increasing mobility and migration, population size and composition come under persistent scrutiny across public policy, public debate, and film and television. Drawing on media, cultural and social theory approaches, this book takes a fresh look at the concept of ‘population’ as a term that circulates outside the traditional disciplinary areas of demography, governance and statistics—a term that gives coherence to notions such as community, nation, the world and global humanity itself. It focuses on understanding how the concept of population governs ways of thinking about our own identities and forms of belonging at local, national and international levels; on the manner in which television genres fixate on depictions of overpopulation and underpopulation; on the emergence of questions of ethics of belonging and migration in relation to cities; on attitudes towards otherness; and on the use by an emergent ‘alt-right’ politics of population in ‘forgotten people’ concepts. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography and media and cultural studies with interests in questions of belonging, citizenship and population.

Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows, millions of immigrants make their lives in Japan, dealing with the tensions between belonging and not belonging in this ethno-nationalist country. Why do people want to come to Japan? Where do immigrants with various resources and demographic profiles fit in the economic landscape? How do immigrants narrate belonging in an environment where they are "other" at a time when mobility is increasingly easy and belonging increasingly complex? Gracia Liu-Farrer illuminates the lives of these immigrants by bringing in sociological, geographical, and psychological theories—guiding the reader through life trajectories of migrants of diverse backgrounds while also going so far as to suggest that Japan is already an immigrant country.

This book draws renewed attention to migration into and within Africa, and to the socio-political consequences of these movements. In doing so, it complements vibrant scholarly and political discussions of migrant integration globally with innovative, interdisciplinary perspectives focused on migration within Africa. It sheds new light on how human mobility redefines the meaning of home, community, citizenship and belonging. The authors ask how people’s movements within the continent are forging novel forms of membership while catalysing social change within the communities and countries to which they move and which they have left behind. Original case studies from across Africa question the concepts, actors, and social trajectories dominant in the contemporary literature. Moreover, it speaks to and challenges sociological debates over the nature of migrant integration, debates largely shaped by research in the world’s wealthy regions. The text, in part or as a whole, will appeal to students and scholars of migration, development, urban and rural transformation, African studies and displacement.

Precarity and Belonging examines how the movement of people and their incorporation, marginalization, and exclusion, under epochal conditions of labor and social precarity affecting both citizens and noncitizens, have challenged older notions of citizenship and alienage. This collection brings mobility, precarity, and citizenship together in order to explore the points of contact and friction, and, thus, the spaces for a possible politics of commonality between citizens and noncitizens.The editors ask: What does modern citizenship mean in a world of citizens, denizens, and noncitizens, such as undocumented migrants, guest workers, permanent residents, refugees, detainees, and stateless people? How is the concept of citizenship, based on assumptions of deservingness, legality, and productivity, challenged when people of various and competing statuses and differential citizenship practices interact with each other, revealing their co-constitutive connections? How is citizenship valued or revalued when labor and social precarity impact those who seemingly have formal rights and those who seemingly or effectively do not? This book interrogates such binaries as citizen/noncitizen, insider/outsider, entitled/unentitled, “legal”/“illegal,” and deserving/undeserving in order to explore the fluidity--that is, the dynamism and malleability--of the spectra of belonging.

Within and Beyond Citizenship brings together cutting-edge research in sociology and social anthropology on the relationship between immigration status, rights and belonging in contemporary societies of immigration. It offers new insights into the ways in which political membership is experienced, spatially and bureaucratically constructed, and actively negotiated and contested in the everyday lives of citizens and non-citizens. Themes, concepts and ideas covered include: The shifting position of the non-citizen in contemporary immigration societies; The intersection of human mobility, immigration control and articulations of citizenship; Activism and everyday practices of membership and belonging; Tension in policy and practice between coexisting traditions and regimes of rights; Mixed status families, belonging and citizenship; The ways in which immigration status (or its absence) intersects with social cleavages such as age, class, gender and ‘race’ to shape social relations. This book will appeal to academics and practitioners working in the disciplines of Social and Political Anthropology, Sociology, Social Policy, Human Geography, Political Sciences, Citizenship Studies and Migration Studies.

The thesis of this study is that the forms of population migration change systematically over periods of time and from area to area. Using data from several parts of the world, the author shows how population mobility is linked to wider social, economic and political change, and that it is closely related to such processes as the rise of nationalism. He draws comparisons between the historical experience of Europe and patterns in today's developing world. The book is divided into three parts. Part I examines the problem of the measurement of population movements and reviews studies of mobility based mainly on the historical record. This part is concerned with the patterns of mobility in pre-industrial and early industrializing societies as a basis of comparison with more recent patterns. The specific focus is on mobility and the peasantry in order to examine critically the notion that peasants either are or were mobile. Part II contains detailed descriptions of migration in a number of countries, particularly Peru and Papua New Guinea. The author looks back on earlier work and attempts to review earlier conclusions in the light of recent research and data. Part III deals with certain changes that occur in the way they do. The central theme is the penetration of a European-dominated system and the two-way relationships between the factors giving rise to particular patterns of mobility and the effect that these patterns of mobility have on society and the economy. A separate chapter examines the ability of governments or other institutions to guide the changes in particular directions through migration policy.

Childhood and Migration in Europe explores the under-researched and often misunderstood worlds of migrant children and young people, drawing on extensive empirical research with children and young people from diverse migrant backgrounds living in a rapidly changing European society. Through in-depth exploration and analysis of the experiences of children who moved to Ireland in the first decade of the 21st century, it addresses the tendency of migration research and policy to overlook the presence of children in migratory flows. Challenging dominant adult-centric perspectives on contemporary global migration flows and presenting understandings of the lives of migrant children and young people from their own experiences, this book presents a detailed exploration of children's lives in four different migrant populations in Ireland. With a unique comparative perspective, Childhood and Migration in Europe advances upon current conceptualisations of migration and integration by interrogating accepted views of migrant children and focusing on children's own voices and experiences. It challenges the prevailing assimilationist discourses underlying much existing research and policy, which often construct migrant children as deficient in different ways and in need of 'being integrated'.

Moving Places draws together contributions from Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, exploring practices and experiences of movement, non-movement, and place-making. The book centers on “moving places”: places with locations that are not fixed but relative. Locations appearing to be reasonably stable, such as home and homeland, are in fact always subject to practices, imaginaries, and politics of movement. Bringing together original ethnographic contributions with a clear theoretical focus, this volume spans the fields of anthropology, human geography, migration, and border studies, and serves as teaching material in related programs.

Questions of migration and citizenship are at the heart of global political debate with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump having ripple effects around the world. Providing new insights into the politics of migration and citizenship in the UK and the US, this book challenges the increasingly prevalent view of migration and migrants as threats and of formal citizenship as a necessary marker of belonging. Instead the authors offer an analysis of migration and citizenship in practice, as a counterpoint to simplistic discourses. The book uses cutting-edge academic work on migration and citizenship to address three themes central to current debates – borders and walls, mobility and travel, and belonging. Through this analysis a clearer picture of the roots of these politics emerges as well as of the consequences for mobility, political participation and belonging in the 21st century.

The issues around settlement, belonging, and poor relief have for too long been understood largely from the perspective of England and Wales. This volume offers a pan-European survey that encompasses Switzerland, Prussia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain. It explores how the conception of belonging changed over time and space from the 1500s onwards, how communities dealt with the welfare expectations of an increasingly mobile population that migrated both within and between states, the welfare rights that were attached to those who “belonged,” and how ordinary people secured access to welfare resources. What emerged was a sophisticated European settlement system, which on the one hand structured itself to limit the claims of the poor, and yet on the other was peculiarly sensitive to their demands and negotiations.