Between sacred gift and profane exchange: identity craft and relational work in asylum claims-making on religious grounds

Kim, Jaeeun

doi:10.1007/s11186-021-09468-8

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 102 publications

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“…Cecilia Menjívar and Sarah M. Lakhani (2016) have indeed shown that personal transformations immigrants undertake in the hope of improving their legal status-such as volunteering, joining the army, or getting married-can eventually have genuine and long-term effects on their behaviors, outlooks, and selves that far outlast any need for residence papers. Kim, similarly, shows how marriages that are initially "fake" can eventually become "real" (Kim 2011), and that religious conversion to secure one's legal status does not preclude "genuine" religiosity (Kim 2022). As I will demonstrate, this is also the case with minority age-an initially instrumental performance that may eventually have more consequential effects on a person's sense of self.…”

Section: Durable Transformationsmentioning

confidence: 79%

Ambiguous Ages, Ambivalent Youths: How Asylum Seekers in Germany Navigate Age Categorization

Bialas

2023

Mig. Pol.

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Many of the unaccompanied young migrants who have sought asylum in Germany since 2015 do not own documentation of their birth dates or even know their exact ages. Yet asylum and youth welfare laws distinguish precisely between minors and adults, down to the day, thus making it necessary for the German state to estimate the birth dates of young migrants and compelling some of the migrants to claim to be minors. In this article, drawing on years of ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin, I examine four features of the German state’s age categorization regime that make it so powerful: the discretion of street-level bureaucrats; the weight of written records; a prioritization of precision over accuracy; and—most important—the ability of bureaucrats to switch between the previous three features at will. I analyze the strategies young migrants employ against this regime to influence the outcomes of their own age categorization as well as the challenges inherent in living as a minor or within liminal, uncertain age categories. The latter include widespread distrust and fear of being found out as well as feelings of infantilization and emasculation. I use age categorization as a context in which to reflect on the agency of migrants vis-à-vis state bureaucracies and conclude that young migrants can try to affect only the determination of their own birth dates but have little impact on the prevailing definitions of age and youth. This article thus contributes to the study of categorization processes in international migration, the possibilities for migrants’ resistance, and the politics of time.

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Section: Durable Transformationsmentioning

confidence: 79%

Ambiguous Ages, Ambivalent Youths: How Asylum Seekers in Germany Navigate Age Categorization

Bialas

2023

Mig. Pol.

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Participating from the ground up: a case study of a co-ethnic association for Filipino migrants as a pathway-building organisation

Mitsuno

2023

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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Mobility–ethnicity nexus in the China–North Korea borderland of Yanbian: Migration infrastructure and multi-directional flows

Chen

2022

China Information

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Chinese nationals who are classified as belonging to the Korean ethnic minority have become increasingly mobile since the 1980s in the China–North Korea borderland. Korean ethnicity plays a significant role in facilitating migration. This article unpacks the mobility–ethnicity nexus through the theoretical lens of ‘migration infrastructure’. To investigate how the borderland residents became mobile subjects as well as the processes intertwined with Korean ethnicity, the ensemble of technologies, institutions, and actors through which migration is reproduced and mediated are examined. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnographic study focusing on a rural community, this research analyses the multi-directional flows between the village, urban regions in China, and the two Koreas. Included are discussions on the changing state policies and regulations, diplomatic relationships between China and the two Koreas, growing migrant networks, brokers, family members, humanitarian organizations and other intermediaries that jointly organize and mediate mobilities, and the processes that are usually linked to evoking and redefining ‘Korean’ as an ethnic category. Ethnicity-mediated migration infrastructure enables villagers to move, but throughout the move they are continuously perceived as ethnically Korean. Mobility-sustained ethnicity calls for research to look at how ethnic categories gradually become relevant in everyday life, and ultimately institutionalized as people move between places.

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Between sacred gift and profane exchange: identity craft and relational work in asylum claims-making on religious grounds

Cited by 3 publications

References 102 publications

Ambiguous Ages, Ambivalent Youths: How Asylum Seekers in Germany Navigate Age Categorization

Ambiguous Ages, Ambivalent Youths: How Asylum Seekers in Germany Navigate Age Categorization

Participating from the ground up: a case study of a co-ethnic association for Filipino migrants as a pathway-building organisation

Mobility–ethnicity nexus in the China–North Korea borderland of Yanbian: Migration infrastructure and multi-directional flows

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