Paper short abstract:

High income does not imply that child migrants have agency, nor legal rights. Autobiographies of diplomat children show how being ascribed a “privileged” status obscures a challenging serial migrant experience. Ascribing child migrants an “under-privileged” status devalues their resourcefulness.

Paper long abstract:

Ascribed categories can assist comprehension, yet they risk obscuring the complexities of migrant lives. This paper discusses implications of applying the ascribed categories “privileged” and “under-privileged” when studying child migrants, based on 43 autobiographies of former Norwegian Foreign Service children. Results show that because level of income was high, it was assumed that serial migration was voluntary also for children; that they could always return home; and that their legal rights to child protection and parental care were met. This pull-migration narrative was not confirmed. During childhood, the participants did not have agency in choices of migration; they were socially excluded in Norway; and diplomatic immunity placed them in an international legal vacuum. Told they were “privileged children”, they did not have the social right to grief, anxiety and anger upon migrating. When having these emotions, they would feel shame and develop a negative self-image. Moreover, accounts from first- and second-generation youth migrants in Norway state that they do not wish to be named “under-privileged”, which they feel obscures their individual and cultural resourcefulness and strengths. The paper argues for the need to explore empirically the many sides to migrant life from a child perspective (rights, agency, relationships, education, health, belonging, cultural and individual resources). Moreover, it illustrates the need to question the assumptions that lie within our categorizations of others; to be aware of the consequences of the use of our terminology; and to nuance policy away from the classic pull- and push-migration narratives.

Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to present the tension between institutional categories of asylum seekers and infiltrators and intercultural mediators’ practices that challenge the structural categories order which defines them as foreigners

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the double liminality experienced by Eritrean asylum-seeking intercultural mediators who are employed as linguistic and cultural translators by the Israeli state and by aid organizations serving asylum seekers in Israel. The paper is based on qualitative in-depth ethnographic research focusing on these intercultural mediators’ work and personal lives and the subjective meanings they attach to their professional roles. As such, it highlights how their very work as mediators, their knowledge of the Hebrew language, and familiarity with bureaucracy challenge the binary distinctions between local and migrant.

Furthermore, it demonstrates how asylum-seeking mediators experience dual liminality resulting from their personal and professional legal status. On the one hand, they lack permanent legal status in Israel and belong to a community that exists in “legal liminality” and at the mercy of the Israeli authorities, and on the other, they provide services linked directly or indirectly to the these authorities and their organizations. Thus, their role places them in an interstitial position between the state, the host society, and those receiving their services. This dual liminality creates a distinctive and complex reality for the mediators, which highlights the power of discursive categories to shape the lived experiences of migrants as much as the formal legal categories imposed by the state.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I examine how Muslim women in the Tohoku region of Japan negotiate with their surroundings within the context of existing political management approaches. I argue that these Muslim women achieve self-cultivation by agently translating their marginalized social status to their benefit.

Paper long abstract:

Concerns about migrant Muslim women who are perceived as oppressed have garnered extensive attention in contemporary Europe, where prescriptive norms of gender equality and sexual freedom are increasingly defining debates on immigrant integration (Bilge 2010). By contrast, their Muslim counterparts in Japan are in a very different situation. While Japan is regarded for its economic development, it lags behind other developed countries when it comes to “closed-door" immigration and descent-based citizenship politics (Chung 2010; Endoh 2019). Due to the little attention given to gender issues at the public level and the marginal position of religion in politics (Toyota and Tanaka 2002), migrant Muslim women have not been viewed as a distinct group. Combined with a sparse population, Muslim women in Japan confront a variety of challenges, including a lack of Muslim-friendly facilities, Japanese people's indifferent attitude towards the Muslim minority, and the problem of being othered. However, despite these inconveniences and difficulties, Muslim women tend to perceive their situation in a positive light and strive to take advantage of a society that is less Islamophobic than other popular immigration countries. By adopting a "cooperative" strategy, these Muslim women agently go beyond the compliance/resistance frame and aim to carve a life that suits them better: they do not strive to be recognized as members of Japanese society but rather see this as a chance to be a better Muslim and to promote the image of Islam in Japan, which at the same time allows them to achieve self-cultivation as well.

Paper short abstract:

Despite the perception of migrant categories as fixed, they are contested, contingent and shaped by the relationships between the state, its citizens, and migrants. This paper discusses the fluidity of migration categories as policy and looks at its effect on migrant workers in post-Brexit UK.

Paper long abstract:

Migration categories are often perceived in policy and public debates as stable, fixed and mutually exclusive categories. However, they are contested, contingent and fluid; a person can move between different migration categories over time. An example of this are EU citizens who, in general, were for many years able to come to the UK to work and to live without facing any restrictions and without being subject to immigration control, but who have since the 2016 Brexit referendum become subject to immigration regulations. Following the full enforcement of Brexit from January 2021, EU citizens in the UK have lost their free movement rights and have to apply for a settled status or a visa. The rhetoric of control over borders, together with the hostile environment implemented by the British government, have the aim of deterring migrants (both ‘forced’ and voluntary’) from coming to the UK. However, the debate in policy and public discourse around migration overlooks both the lived experience and strategies of migrants and the actual needs of the British economy for migrants as mobile labour. In reaction to significant labour shortages in several key sectors in summer 2021, the British government introduced several new temporary visa schemes for migrant workers. Drawing on our ongoing research of labour mobility after Brexit, we use anthropological perspectives to critically reflect on the fluidity, changeability, and temporariness of migration categories as policy, which allows the government to perform its ‘tough stance’ on immigration while letting some mobility in through the back door.