Transnational spaces of class: International migrants’ multilocal, inconsistent and instable class positions (original) (raw)
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Building on the reflexive turn in migration studies, the editorial proposes a conceptual heuristic for studying current conflicts over migration in Europe and beyond. The article integrates a non-essentialist understanding of migration, theories of belonging, membership and boundary-making and perspectives from cross-border studies. It calls to approach multiple social and political conflicts around migration as embedded in struggles over the migration-reladted classifications and powerful discourses of othering. Finally, it provides an overview of the contents of the special issue.
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Symposium organized by Saskia Bonjour and Sebastien Chauvin within the "Class in the 21st Century" conference. Amsterdam Research Center on Gender and Sexuality (ARC GS) 22-23 October 2015 University of Amsterdam 1) Class and the policy construction of the (un)deserving migrant Immigration policies create categories of people that distinguish between those allowed to enter and stay in destination countries, and those to whom borders stayed closed. A substantial body of scholarly work explores the ways in which these politics of belonging are shaped by conceptions of national identity, ethnicity and race. Increasingly, there has also been attention to the role of constructions of gender and sexuality in shaping immigration politics. While intersectional approaches to the analysis of immigration policies are thus on the rise, the role of class, and its intertwinement with other axes of inequality, has remained remarkably underexplored. The first two panel of the symposium ask which role class plays in the construction of the ‘(un)desirable’ migrant in political debate and policies. How are different requirements relating not only to income but also to education, housing and even national origin or ‘integration’ related to class? How does class intersect with ethnicity on the one hand and gender and sexuality on the other hand in construing degrees of desirability? Do we observe class serving as a proxy for ethnicity, or vice versa, in political debates and policies? 2) Class in mobility strategies and migration experiences While class figures at various degrees in migration policy, it also shapes the strategies and experiences of transnational migrants. Class defines the resource inequalities that separate those who are able to migrate from those who lack the means to travel. It also determines the array of conditions that drive people to want to leave or not, whether in reference to local competition in origin communities or through classed imaginaries of success associated with destination countries. Together with gender and age, class cultures inform the nature of migration decisions and the types of collective expectations invested in individual migrants. The last two panels of the symposium asks which role class plays in constraining and shaping the agency of international migrants, the differences in prestige between various groups of migrants, and internal conflicts within diasporas. How do class differences translate into various experiences of transnational marriage and family migration? How does class become relevant for asylum seekers persecuted for their sexual or gender identity? Does class play out in value conflicts over gender and sexuality within migrant communities in destination countries? How do migrant men and women navigate and perform gendered and class expectations embedded into host country migration policies? Do policy categories only function as constraints, or can they also become resources to strategize with?
In this paper I want to investigate whether EU migration should be viewed in terms of collective action and a social movement or an individual act of resistance. Furthermore, as migrants’ class character is heterogeneous yet underlies the global division of labour, we need to ask ourselves whether migration to the EU possibly even amounts to a form of class struggle. In Empire, Hardt and Negri they write: “A spectre haunts the world and it is the spectre of migration. All the powers of the old world are allies in a merciless operation against it, but the movement is irresistible” (Hardt & Negri, 2000:213). By implicitly referring to Marx’s ‘spectre of communism’ they elevate migration to a global social movement. Moreover, a number of scholars have contended that migration is an act of resistance itself through which the migrant can transcend her/his gender and class position, for example (Bach, 2010; Munck, 2011). In this reading, migrants’ mobility then constitutes a form of power (Alberti, 2014:3). But how does one distinguish between individual acts of resistance and collective action? En route to the EU and within its borders, migrants make use of social networks, family and mobilise other social bonds (ethnic, national, religious). According to Swider precarious migrants develop a type of “bounded solidarity” which upholds between migrants from the same towns, regions and possibly also from the same countries. This kind of solidarity also extends to those employers, businesses from the same country and draws upon old forms of kinship (Swider, 2014:50). What does this mean for how we understand the co-constructive dynamic of labour exploitation and being a migrant? References Alberti, G. (2014). Mobility strategies, “mobility differentials” and “transnational exit”: the experiences of precarious migrants in London’s hospitality jobs. Work, Employment & Society. doi:10.1177/0950017014528403 Bach, S. (2010). Managed migration?: nurse recruitment and the consequences of state policy. Industrial Relations Journal, 41(3), 249–266. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2338.2010.00567.x Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. (First Harv.). Cambrigde, MA & London, UK: Harvard University Press. Munck, R. (2011). Beyond north and south: migration, informalization, and trade unin revitalization. WorkingUSA, 14(March), 5–18. doi:10.1111/j.1743-4580.2010.00317.x Swider, S. (2014). Building China: precarious employment among migrant construction workers. Work, Employment & Society, 29(1), 41–59. doi:10.1177/0950017014526631
Owning up to being middle class: race, gender and class in the context of migration
Women & Social Class: International Feminist Perspectives edited by Christine Zmroczek and Pat Mahoney, UCL Press, 1999
Women & Social Class- International Feminist Perspectives. Edited by © Christine Zmroczek, Pat Mahony and the contributors, 1999 Introduction Christine Zmroczek and Pat Mahony This volume presents new ideas about class within an international context. Its particular focus is on women’s theorized experience of social class from a variety of feminist perspectives, contextualized in relation to the countries and regions in which the authors live. The contributors write about their experiences of class in Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, Britain, Canada, Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, India, Israel, Korea, New Zealand, Poland and the USA. Many of the authors have lived in more than one country or region and are able to make comparisons and illuminate differences and similarities between them. The contributions reveal how varied entire class systems can be from one country to another, from one generation to another in the same country and from region to region. The authors analyze their own understandings of class and the implications for their feminism and for feminist theories in an historical period when capitalist market economics have claimed a globalizing influence and class has been said to be dead. In editing this collection it was our aim to explore how class appears and operates by using experience as the basis of analysis. In particular we wanted to spotlight social class while retaining a focus on its interconnections with other defined and defining social and political categories.