Based on research amongst Brazilian and Moroccan temporary residents of the cities of Brussels and Antwerp (Belgium), this article engages with the changes in and current methodological approaches to migration studies. By demonstrating how the trajectories of many contemporary migrants are marked by ongoing mobility, it further complicates previous linear and unidirectional models of migration to move beyond a classical and potentially deterministic model of studying migrant trajectories. The authors illustrate how many contemporary migrants come and go, not always being sure how long they will stay in the different stopovers on their trajectories, when they will stop migrating or where they will eventually settle. Because of the temporality of their residence, many of these so-called ‘transmigrants’ are not only faced with the same problems and challenges as other migrants, arriving newly in another country and rebuilding social networks, but are additionally confronted with a number of risks that are related to their mobile lifestyle. Although globalization and the porosity of nation state borders facilitate transmigration, they result in juridical and practical complexities, reflected in transmigrants’ everyday struggles. The authors explore these struggles and the difficulties and opportunities transmigrants encounter when they turn to their (transnational) networks to ask for support. Transmigrants’ social life is not only oriented towards their country of residence, but consists of complex networks beyond boundaries. Through visits, telephone calls and the use of social media, many transmigrants create, sustain and (re)discover transnational as well as local social networks. While many address their transnational networks to partly alleviate their needs, the development of local networks still appears as indispensable.
Superdiversity implies increasing diversity within diversity, including the rise of flexible migration strategies: complex migration trajectories implying serial cross-border mobility between two countries or more countries. The article explores transmigration in the two main super-diverse Belgian cities Brussels and Antwerp, based upon in depth-interviews with Brazilian, Ghanaian and Moroccan transmigrants. The article analyses the social problems related to transmigration, how these problems transcend borders and challenge urban social work and social policies at different levels. It explores why transmigration requires forms of multilevel governance to deal with people living beyond borders in the EU.
The concept of honour and associated phenomena have often been associated with a gender ideology which forces women to obey restrictive moral prescriptions; accordingly, honour has sometimes been understood as unilaterally negative for women's well-being. A critical analysis reveals, however, how reductionist understandings of honour flow from a culturalist framing of issues, such as honourrelated violence, thereby failing to grasp the complexity of women's responses when socialized with traditional notions of honour. Based on the theoretical reflections of authors such as Phillips (2007), Ewing (2008) and Abu-Lughod (2011) and drawing on the narratives of two women of Moroccan descent in Belgium, this article aims to demonstrate how an analysis grounded in intersectionality theory and based on Bourdieu's concept of 'habitus' may provide a deeper insight into the complexities of women's lived experiences of honour. Rather than departing from fixed understandings of honour, it is argued that its content and meaning are fluid and changeable. Although closely linked with cultural ideologies and socialization processes which shape individual lives and experiences, these do not prevent personal choice and interpretation which, according to the positioning of individuals and their families in and outside their communities, may produce cultural continuity or bring about change.
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