The renaissance of Maori culture and tradition has played a significant role in the political campaigns of New Zealand's indigenous population over the past few decades. At the same time, however, it has brought to light that many Maori youngsters are unable to construct a cultural identity in terms of the discourses of culture and tradition that dominate the political arena. This article analyses the experience of urban Maori youngsters in ceremonial settings (marae) by examining the question of how they mediate different representations of their cultural identity within the self. It demonstrates that many young Maori people are engaged in a psychological dialogue between, on the one hand, the classic model for a Maori identity that prescribes them to embrace traditional culture and, on the other hand, their personal identification as outcasts in daily practices of New Zealand society.

This article explores how public policies regarding domestic violence aim at assembling a fragmented domain of views, attitudes and practices in a coherent manner. We propose to approach policy from an object-oriented anthropology, which makes it necessary to understand how objects come into being and to explore their ontology. We argue that policy objects, such as domestic violence, become real and multiply in practice when they associate in an assemblage: their ontology is relational. This implies an emphasis on motion, non-coherence and multiplicity in the study of how policy objects are enacted. We illustrate this approach by sharing a narrative of the development of a policy instrument, the reporting code on domestic violence and child abuse in Rotterdam (the Netherlands). The case study is focused on the interaction between the reporting code and its normative inscription, which is contested by a number of professionals. In order to demonstrate that policy instruments aim at constructing a new social order, we draw special attention to various modes of syncretism that are applied to create coherence.

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In this article, we examine the shifting role of aspirations in migration and integration processes by focusing on the experiences of a group of Syrian refugees settling in Sweden. We demonstrate that aspirations and capabilities may be used to study the lives of refugees (and immigrants) before, during, and after migration and that through a sequential study of aspirations it is possible to determine how refugees come to envision possible life trajectories in destination countries. Understanding the relevance of refugees’ aspirations and the effects that other actors have on these is important to recognize refugees’ active role in shaping migration and integration dynamics.