Rethinking Community in Migration Studies: Lessons from Transnational Families for Rethinking the Relationship of ‘Community’ and ‘Society’

Greschke, Heike; Ott, Josephine

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-31073-8_8

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The transnational and deterritorialisation turns in migration research shifted scholarly study of migrant networks towards examining transnational processes that extend across national borders (Appadurai, 1996;Glick Schiller et al, 1992;Greschke and Ott, 2020;Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2004). But Bourdieu's works also show that the boundaries of cultural fields are not predetermined and are not only confined within the nation-state but can also extend across transnational contexts.…”

Section: Discussion: Cultural Reproduction In Communitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Enacting Migrant Community: Struggles and Unbelonging in the Field of Russian-Speaking Cultural Production

Akifeva,

Baldassar,

Fozdar

2024

Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article, based on ethnographic research conducted in Perth, Western Australia and Madrid, Spain, we consider how community is understood and enacted for Russian-speaking migrants and its role in cultural (re)production. Studies often overlook the important role of struggle, contestation and power relations in everyday practices of community making. Drawing on Bourdieu’s field theory, we describe the Russian-speaking migrant community as a structured social space in which community leaders and migrant institutions compete for the right to represent the community. As a result of power differentials, contested ideas about what Russian-speaking culture is and how it should be transmitted, maintained and produced are established, (re)produced and revised. The community is perceived by its own members as disunited and/or consisting of members with whom migrants do not want to identify, forming a ‘community of unbelonging’.

show abstract

Section: Discussion: Cultural Reproduction In Communitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Enacting Migrant Community: Struggles and Unbelonging in the Field of Russian-Speaking Cultural Production

Akifeva,

Baldassar,

Fozdar

2024

Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, as Greschke and Ott (2020) showed, the transnational family as a topic of research has outgrown the above concerns and shows great promise as an exemplary entity for understanding global society. Namely, they argued that transnational families succeed in bringing together two essentially distinct aspects of human coexistence previously understood as community and society , that is, belonging and the participatory aspects of social life.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Viewing transnational family practices as practices of belonging relevant for envisioning global society (Greschke & Ott, 2020), including principles of functioning, administration, and communication, as well as solidarity, justice, and rights draws attention to family functioning and rights in a transnational context. This includes both the family's external context—its embedding in and recognition by societies at both ends of the transnational relationship—and its internal one—including children's and other dependent persons' situation and cross‐generational solidarity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Besides, children's right to family, contact, care, supervision, protection, home, safety, and physical and emotional well‐being, each under the principle of the best interests of the child, are obvious segments where children's life is affected by transnational digital family practices. Further, we may view transnational familyhood as a participatory practice, with a need to negotiate, advocate, and indeed perform participation in a multisegmented global society and across inequalities (Greschke & Ott, 2020). In this context, rights must be seen as actively performed ( done ), not just possessed (Odasso, 2021); in other words, rights should not be passively taken for granted, but actively pursued through the assertion of specific rights claims.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Asserting children's rights through the digital practices of transnational families

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective This study investigates how transnational families function as advocates, channels, and iterators of children's rights in the context of digital communication. Background Transnational parents are involved in practices of doing family through digital copresence, in doing rights toward society and coagency among family members, creating a rights context. Method Data were collected in Moldova and Ukraine through 102 semistructured interviews and 10 focus group discussions with adults and children in transnational families and caregivers, and 24 interviews with experts from local and national authorities as well as NGOs. Results Transnational parents represent their children by engaging in digital communication practices with institutions and maintain family togetherness through involvement and support of children within transnational family relationships. Communication with institutions is burdened by distrust of and constraints regarding information and communication technologies (ICT) access, the limited availability of adults as interlocutors for daily communication, and deliberate nontransparency of communication at both ends. Conclusion Digital communication offers families the capability to represent children's rights externally, and to create internal family togetherness as a potentially new register of presence, articulated by the limits and specificity of the mode of communication employed. Implications Inclusive digital communication capacities of transnational family members necessary for the practice of family togetherness, exercise of parental responsibilities, and support for children's participation should be enhanced on both ends as well as within and without the family.

show abstract

Elusive privilege: class, race and gender in Ukrainian war migrants’ (un)employment in France

Gorbach,

Polshchykova,

Ryabchuk

2024

Dialect Anthropol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

What happens when the state removes the usual obstacles preventing refugees to ‘integrate’? Our article analyses the case of Ukrainians who fled the war to settle in France. Their legal status is different from that of ‘classic’ refugees: the EU directive on temporary protection gives them the freedom to move and the right to work. Moreover, they benefit from a rather positive attitude of the general public. The absence of racist stereotypes and institutional barriers, however, does not translate into easy integration into the labour market: 2 years after the beginning of the Ukrainian exile, two thirds of the refugees in Western Europe remain unemployed. Based on our fieldwork made in three French regions from February to August 2023, we analyse the predicament of Ukrainian war migrants. We conclude that granting formal access to jobs and putting racist discrimination on pause is not enough to overcome other handicaps: lack of language and other ‘soft’ skills; lack of social capital that would allow insertion into formal and informal labour markets; the burden of social reproduction magnified by forced single motherhood; and the temporary nature of one’s supposedly generous legal status. The latter turns the perceived privilege into a handicap: Ukrainians are tolerated temporarily and being increasingly differentiated into ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’, ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ migrants. While those deemed ‘productive’ may be encouraged to remain in the EU, those who fail to integrate into the labour market are likely to gradually be cut off from social support and forced to return to Ukraine.

show abstract

Rethinking Community in Migration Studies: Lessons from Transnational Families for Rethinking the Relationship of ‘Community’ and ‘Society’

Cited by 6 publications

References 31 publications

Enacting Migrant Community: Struggles and Unbelonging in the Field of Russian-Speaking Cultural Production

Enacting Migrant Community: Struggles and Unbelonging in the Field of Russian-Speaking Cultural Production

Asserting children's rights through the digital practices of transnational families

Elusive privilege: class, race and gender in Ukrainian war migrants’ (un)employment in France

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About