Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Citizenship acquisition represents a crucial step to achieve full integration in the country of residence. Yet, citizenship studies have largely addressed the relevance of institutional configuration of citizenship regimes to foster integration while sidelining migrants’ subjective understanding of citizenship as a pathway to integration. The objective of this article is to gather empirical evidence of migrants’ understanding of how citizenship acquisition shapes integration. It argues that the subjective dimension of citizenship acquisition is crucial to understand the citizenship-integration nexus beyond policies, institutions and legal norms. Empirical findings have been structured along three themes that are considered relevant for integration: well-being, sense of belonging, and trust. Analysis is based on 50 semi-structured interviews conducted in Italy and Spain with migrants from Ecuador, Brazil, Morocco, the Philippines, and Romania. Italy and Spain have been chosen for comparison as two countries with a similar migration history but different citizenship regimes. Results show that in both countries citizenship acquisition is related with increasing well-being and sense of trust, while the sense of belonging overlaps with a sense of non-belonging linked to discriminatory attitudes perceived in everyday practices, despite the legal inclusion through citizenship acquisition.

This article engages with the concepts of 'bordering' and 'orientation' to explore experiences of becoming adult under conditions of protracted uncertainty and temporariness. As an analytical framework, these concepts intertwine with space, time and violence, while also accounting for how the structural and subjective shape both inner and outer worlds. The article is based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork among young Afghan men who have sought refuge in France after being refused asylum in Sweden and Norway. It considers the bordering effects of legal adulthood (i.e. turning 18) and how finding the way in various contexts of being settled and unsettled redefines what it means to become an adult. The young men's experiences were shaped by their orientation in relation to numerous bordering processes as well as self-making and life-building activities. Moreover, they were deeply affected by the varying ways in which European countries assess Afghan asylum seekers' protection needs.

Immigrant integration governance in Europe increasingly requires migranticized subjects to respect constitutional values. This paper examines the knowledge production on integration by street-level bureaucrats in Switzerland, combining a moral economies approach with a governmentality perspective. The empirical analysis builds on problem-centred interviews and participant observations of public authorities and caseworkers in the fields of immigration and naturalization, disclosing the norms, values and emotions guiding the knowledge production on integration by street-level bureaucrats. The analysis reveals a moral economy of integration in which caseworkers struggle with the application of the value requirement as a ‘mindset paragraph’. The tensions and negotiations in everyday knowledge practices revolve around the value of gentleness and, simultaneously, keeping a tight grip on the subjects’ intimacy and the imperative urge to know and ‘feel’ their integration. This evaluation of inner values and feelings by the state inevitably produces knowledge practices of suspicion and doubt. The prism of governmentality allows us to grasp how this moral economy of integration might have shifted the workings of power but not its disciplining nature. The paper suggests understanding integration governance as a totalizing institution in that it seeks to govern all aspects and spheres of life.

The debate about the relationship between migration-related diversity and threat is shaped by an opposition between, on one hand, positions that understand migration as a threat to established forms of social cohesion, and, on the other, positions that emphasize its emancipative, creative or economic potential. This opposition rests on a simplistic and static understanding of threat and diversity. Drawing on literature on moral economy,this article develops an alternative understanding of the nexus between threat and migration-related diversity. It turns the initial question around, shifting the focus from whether migration or diversity is threatening, to how threats affect interpretations of migration-related diversity. Working from a case study of the events of New Year’s Eve in Cologne in 2015, I assert that we can understand threat as a dynamic with a specific operational logic that inscribes its moral signatures upon the social space. The operational logic of threat sets processes in motion, which alter configurations and representations of diversity. This article demonstrates how in 2016, in the aftermath of the events of NewYear’s Eve, the operational logic of threat helps to explain why public opinion turned against refugees and led to the rise of right-wing populism in Germany.

Scholarship on domestic violence and abuse has sought to understand how women's experiences are influenced by gender and its intersections with other social relations of power. We draw upon life history interviews with Polish women and interviews with practitioners to contribute to this intersectional and transnational feminist scholarship by examining how intersections between the migration process, immigration status and socio-cultural, religious and institutional contexts of Poland and the UK shape Polish women’s experiences of domestic violence and abuse. In doing so, we seek to redress the invisibilisation of Polish migrant women in the scholarship on domestic violence and abuse in the UK and beyond, in a context where they are invisibilised as ‘white’ and the particularities of their experiences neglected. Beyond a focus on the specificity of Polish women’s experiences through utilising an intersectional lens to understand the difference that difference makes, we also draw attention to similarities in migrant women’s structural location within exclusionary immigration/welfare bordering regimes in the UK, which creates conducive contexts for such violence. In doing so, we widen the lens used to understand domestic violence beyond family and interpersonal dynamics to the opportunities and constraints posed by intersecting social relations and gendered geographies of power.

Chinatown can be found in almost every major American city, but their development trajectories vary significantly. During the past three decades, while some Chinatowns have achieved consistent economic growth, others have declined in population and commercial activities. What explains the diverse trajectories of Chinatown development? Through a comparative case study of Chinatowns in Chicago, New York City, Oakland, and San Francisco, this paper argues that the variation in the trajectory of Chinatown development is contingent upon two major factors, namely, the internal cohesion of Chinatown elites (cohesive versus fragmented) and the political integration of the Chinese community into local politics (strong versus weak). Based on the two dimensions of internal cohesion and political integration, the paper creates a fourfold typology of Chinatown development: constrained development, shrinking neighbourhood, contested development, and comprehensive development. The typology provides an analytical framework to study the development of Chinatown and other ethnic communities beyond the cases.