Before and beyond Brexit: political dimensions of UK lifestyle migration (original) (raw)
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Lifestyle migrants in Spain. Contested realities of political representation
The empirical debate carried out will give us a panorama about three key issues that are pursued here: (i) quantifying and analysing the electoral turnout of lifestyle migrants in local elections in Spain; (ii) analysing the political representation of lifestyle migrants after the different local elections in Spain; and (iii) characterising and interpreting the role that foreign candidates and foreign voters have in different local political constellations. In a final step, the results of this research will then be interpreted against a conceptual frame that considers the political participation of lifestyle migrants in Spain as a practice of European citizenship.
Migration and Politics is a complex issue and it covers more than the well-known attempt of nation states to influence migration by political decisions. The idea of migrants being political caused very different reactions: On the one hand, receiving countries disapproved any political activities and -in some cases -explicitly disciplined migrants for doing so by expelling them at least until the beginning of the sixties. On the other hand, most western European societies at some point discussed the missing political representation of migrants, whose part of the population was growing steadily, when it comes to politics. They tested four possibilities in order to deal with this new democratic dilemma: easier naturalizations, suffrage on different levels without for all inhabitants, a growing "denizen"status and advisory boards for migrants. This article focuses on the last possibility and analyses a micro historic case study, an advisory board for foreigners in a small industrial commune in Belgian Wallonia called Seraing, founded in 1973. By using the board's minutes, interviews with members and civil servants of the community and ego documents, this essay explores the different concepts of political participation that were discussed in the board, the internal conflicts as well as factors of group belongings and the relation to the local authorities.
Lifestyle migration, such as the temporary or permanent movement of European citizens to coastal areas in Southern Europe, widely responds to the freedom of movement that EU citizenship provides to all its members. Although this migration can be evaluated as an individual and rather apolitical expression of a politically intended mobility within the European Union, it may seriously alter political life within destinations. The following article presents a case study about the political mobilization of lifestyle migrants living on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. It is based on empirical research and explores narrative interviews with members of a transnationally active political pressure group that campaigns against misapplications of local and regional land use policies. The central aim of the text consists of evaluating how central actors draw on European identity within conflict negotiations that traverse diverse scales including the European level. Referring to this, the article engages with key issues in contemporary sociological debates addressed in this monograph , namely the question of how sociologists approach the study of the political in general and how imaginations of Europe and European identity are strategically appropriated within political debates.
Making political citizens? Migrants’ narratives of naturalization in the United Kingdom
Citizenship Studies
Citizenship tests are arguably intended as moments of hailing, or interpellation, through which norms are internalized and citizensubjects produced. We analyse the multiple political subjects revealed through migrants' narratives of the citizenship test process, drawing on 158 interviews with migrants in Leicester and London who are at different stages in the UK citizenship test process. In dialogue with three counter-figures in the critical naturalization literature-the 'neoliberal citizen'; the 'anxious citizen'; and the 'heroic citizen'-we propose the figure of the 'citizen-negotiator' , a socially situated actor who attempts to assert control over their life as they navigate the test process and state power. Through the focus on negotiation, we see migrants navigating a process of differentiation founded on preexisting inequalities rather than a journey toward transformation.
Citizens increasingly respond to the greater visibility of migration by means of taking part in mobility regulation themselves. Examples are civic initiatives to accommodate refugees, to travel to the Greek islands to provide first aid, and even to navigate to the Mediterranean Sea to set up rescue operations (VPRO Tegenlicht 2015). Apart from initiatives demonstrating support towards asylum seekers, grassroots actions demonstrating opposition towards asylum seekers similarly drew attention, such as citizens engaging in anti-migrant surveillance (The New York Times 2016). The shifting of responsibility for migration policies away from the national government-to the EU, municipalities and non-state actors-allows for a new dynamic to civic initiatives. The ideal of active citizenship as subjectivity promoted over the last decades seems to encourage these mobilizations of affective and vigilant citizens. Whereas bottom-up initiatives of responsibilized publics are often applauded for manifesting societal energies that would enhance policy legitimacy and social cohesion, the adverse may be observed in current mobilizations. By articulately opposing the government – either blaming it for not doing enough to support or instead oppose migration-civic initiatives may influence migration politics by challenging policy legitimacy. In reaction, citizen's actions face the risk of being politically discouraged (RTV NH 2015) or even criminalized (The Guardian 2016)-thus revealing the limits set for counter-democratic participation. Moreover, civic initiatives may effect a bottom-up reproduction of social divides, both among asylum seekers and between asylum seekers and citizens. The figure of the asylum seeker resonates with the figure of those not 'mature enough' to meet up to the ideal of the self-reliant individual-the assumed moral dichotomy underlying responsibilization being dependency versus independency. It will be shown how, as a consequence, capillary civic mobilizations reinforce the inextricability of politics of care and control in the public sphere.
Luso-London: Identity, Citizenship, and Belonging in ‘Post-National’ Europe
This paper explores relations between Portuguese-speakers living in London. It takes the experience of Lusophones as a case study in illuminating how intragroup diversity is negotiated and transnational, multi-ethnic identities constructed and performed in everyday life. Through critical ethnography and interviewing, I provide an account of the varied experience of ‘belonging’ in Europe, for citizens and migrants who connect through similar language and cultural affinities and a shared, albeit contentious, history. By exploring daily rituals in workplaces, bars, cafes, and shops owned, operated, and patronized by Lusophones, I unpack postcolonial reconfigurations of citizens and migrants in their everyday experience of ‘open’ Europe and provide insight into the discursive processes of emergent and complex diasporic identities. The study found that while Portuguese and Brazilian individuals connect in daily ritual, often to consume similar goods and/or work together in similar roles, language ideology plays a central role in mediating interaction and relations remain superficial and often contentious. For Portuguese, narratives of their own ‘rightness’ – when it comes to stories of migration, doing business, and conducting everyday life – along with the privilege of European citizenship, are tropes employed to distinguish themselves from other Lusophones, especially Brazilians, with whom they are often compared to by other groups. Luso Africans share less connection in every day life with both Portuguese and Brazilians despite living in close proximity, and express more affinity with migrants from other African points of origin than fellow Lusophones. The study suggests that for Portuguese and Brazilians especially, language, identity politics and the citizen-migrant distinction play a central role in mitigating meaningful interaction around shared concern and social issues impacting both groups as ‘non-native’ to the UK. Furthermore, important questions of race – which since colonial times have been at the very core of determining social privilege - are sidestepped by the drawing of moral boundaries of ‘right versus wrong’ and the ‘European vs. non-European’.
(De)constructing Identities: The Depiction of Post-Brexit Migration in Years and Years (2019)
JACLR, 2022
The BBC TV fictional series, Years and Years (2019), presents how policies of exclusion complicate migratory movements. The series displays controversies in the definition of identities according to the nation-state and family models. The present study investigates the de/construction of identities through a critical perspective of post-Brexit Britain in Years and Years. Drawing from postcolonial scholars like Bhabha or Gilroy, this essay examines the script of the series to shed light upon the construction of (national and migrant) identities and the portrayal of new family models that reshape the nation-state. The methodology followed focuses on the critical and textual analysis of the series. Previous research has documented the value of “postcolonial melancholia” on the construction of identities and on how migration has been adversely affected (Gilroy 52). Lastly, the results of the current study show how the series portrays the complex issue of migration, stressing how (national and migrant) identities are defined within a post-Brexit society.
Towards a new politics of migration?
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2017
This paper reconsiders Stephen Castle's classic paper Why Migration Policies Fail. Beginning with the so-called 'migration crisis' of 2015 it considers the role of numbers is assessing success or failure. It argues that in the UK public debates about immigration changed with EU Enlargement in 2004, when the emphasis shifted from concerns about asylum to concerns about EU mobility. Concerns were exacerbated by the government's failure to meet its promise to reduce net migration. This policy is hampered by the general problem of definition of 'migrant' and the gap between statistical measures and popular usage in which 'migration' signifies problematic mobility. In fact, concern about migration has become a placeholder for concerns about globalisation and democratic accountability. A new politics of migration must make connections between migrants and citizens, but also between migration and other global processes, particularly outsourcing and the exploitation of labour and resources in the global south