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Paper short abstract:

We analyze the practices of alertness and watchfulness among international university students, focusing on their inner states, bodies, families, communities, and urban spaces. Our analysis is grounded in PASSI, a research-action conducted at the University and the Polytechnic of Turin (Italy).

Paper long abstract:

Universities offer a chance for upward mobility to many international students. This “moving up” is often endorsed, both economically and socially, by family networks; international students are often encouraged to look for high ranked universities worldwide, in order to aspire to new socio-economic positionings. However, once students get to the destination country, they are often alone. Sometimes, social and institutional environments lack specific socio-cultural and political-economic support. Even student communities abroad are often ambivalent: while they can provide social support, they also manifest forms of competition, jealousy, and even social control. To navigate such complexities, students have to mobilize specific rationalities, moralities, discourses and practices, often between competing social norms. This activates several kinds of individual vigilance regarding affectivity, relationship, and morality. Watchfulness becomes a relevant tool to inhabit the social and the physical spaces of the study location.

Drawing on our ethnographic research with international students in Turin, we aim to explore these processes through the experiences of PASSI, a joint research-action project conducted at both the University and the Polytechnic of Turin (Italy). The project is designed to support international students through two main actions: an ethnopsychiatric counseling service and an ethnographic research activity. In this presentation, we analyze the practices of alertness and watchfulness among the international students, especially focusing on their inner states, bodily expressions, family ties, community dynamics, and urban spaces. Finally, we consider how these processes may produce forms of suffering, but also creative strategies that can reshape international students’ agency, subjectivities and geographies.

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Paper short abstract:

In sustaining their upward mobility achieved through migration, Lebanese-Australian returnees in Tripoli maintain a foreign personhood that is independent from local elite networks. Distinction from the local becomes crucial to avoid falling back into their pre-migration underprivileged status.

Paper long abstract:

Upon their resettlement in Tripoli—a city in the North of Lebanon—return migrants mobilized the economic and cultural capital they accumulated abroad towards projects of upward mobility. I examined, in my preliminary ethnographic fieldwork among Lebanese-Australian returnees, their engagement in entrepreneurial, social, and political projects, as they opened coffee shops and emigration consultancies, ran for parliamentary elections, and established charities and NGOs. While returnees often hailed from marginalized and rural, backgrounds, their return to the city entailed them occupying privileged positions, facilitated by their access to hard currencies in a time of economic collapse, their cultural competencies, and their perceived distance from a ruling elite. Maintaining their status vis-à-vis other residents hinged on their vigilant performance of enlightened citizenship away from local patronage networks, and the city’s “corrupt” political elite. This vigilance took various forms, including discursive acts of publicly criticizing local politicians and those loyal to them, and presenting an alternative model for humble and accountable politicians. The vigilance also took material forms, through installing metal meshes on one’s shop to signal a refusal of paying protection money to the local elite’s gangs. Moreover, returnees performed foreignness, and vigilantly displayed the cultural capital they gained in Australia such as their foreign accent and international connections. I argue that maintaining this returnee personhood—that is both foreign-presenting, and independent from the local—becomes critical for returnees’ social position, as they avoid falling back into the underprivileged status afforded to them by their working-class family names and their rural Arabic accent.

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Paper short abstract:

This article explores the relationships between a hyper-vigilant working class and a hostile payment infrastructure in Jamaica. It argues that a financial vigilance regime perpetuates inequalities and impacts the success of the adoption of new payment systems, like CBDCs.

Paper long abstract:

This article examines the relationship between working-class people in Kingston and the Jamaican payment infrastructure at the dawn of the introduction of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) - digital cash distributed through mobile devices.

Employing extensive ethnographic fieldwork and delving into bank statements from individuals within the middle-lower income stratum, I analyze discourses, practices, and performances surrounding cash, cards, and bank transfers. These investigations unveil categories of risk and danger related to the flow of money that contribute to a sense of financial hypervigilance among individuals (Ivasiucc et al. 2022). The conceptualization of hypervigilance is then contextualized within the Jamaican milieu: in the embodiment of memories of colonial practices, neo-colonial aspirations linked to social status, and specific perceptions of time and space (Sheller 2012; Thomas 2016).

The malfunctions of the infrastructure, based on both human and non-human actors, not only enlarge the sense of watchfulness among people worried about their upward social mobility but also demonstrate "who and what matters in the prevailing social order" (Alderman and Whittaker 2021). This hostile payment infrastructure exposes societal hierarchies and normative values and becomes the framework of a financial vigilance regime that perpetuates class, race, gender, and kinship inequalities (Bear et al. 2014).

In conclusion, I underscore the significance of such historical, social, and cultural factors associated with the payment infrastructure and their impact on the introduction of new forms of payment, like a CBDC.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper argues that there is a need to go beyond the conventional measures of understanding vigilance related to employment opportunities using an intersectional feminist lens and investigate the social barriers that exert power on middle-income women’s independent decision-making in Karachi.

Paper long abstract:

The middle-class populace in Pakistan endeavors earnestly to achieve upward social mobility by prioritising access to quality education and pursuing employment prospects. The proportion of female enrolment from this income group at universities is much higher than males. Nevertheless, women in this group are subjected to additional employment restrictions due to class and gender norms around their presence in public spaces. The study is based on life-history interviews with employed middle-income women in Karachi to unpack how their career progression is stigmatised, as women’s lack of visibility and work outside the house is considered a matter of pride for the families. It also sheds light on the impact of such behaviours and traditional gender norms, which pose barriers to their career advancements and perhaps force them to settle for lower-paid jobs despite their high qualifications. The paper argues that there is a need to go beyond the conventional measures of understanding vigilance related to employment opportunities using an intersectional feminist lens and investigate the social barriers that exert power on women’s independent decision-making. Although employment offers relatively more agency to women than being financially dependent on male family members, they still have to abide by strict spatial and temporal restrictions, which hinder their lasting growth, since rigorousness is considered ‘unsuitable’ for them. The study thus displays that employment on its own is not a key source of empowerment for women in Karachi since the complex social disadvantage faced by them still curtails their agency despite their access to income.

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Paper short abstract:

This empirical study focuses on the question of individual projects of ‘moving up’ with a comparative eye in a transnational setting. The study was conducted in the Austrian capital city Vienna among Turkish middle aged women divided into two groups of three migrants and three expats.

Paper long abstract:

The purpose of this comparison between the educated, economically advantaged group of expats versus migrant women with essentially ‘marriage strategies’ is to delve into their individual vigilance. They all follow a different strategy of vigilance, watchfulness although they all have the same aspiration as to move to a European country, temporarily or for a lifetime. The point of departure in their conceptions of ‘upward mobility’ is to move from their home country for better lives. Social mobility with marriage strategies did not bring migrant women the dream of ultimate happiness, on the contrary, they got divorced, faced living as single parents, unemployed and ‘feeling as a second class people’ in foreign lands. The lack of German knowledge is the most challenging problem for them. Despite their ‘unhappiness’, for their children’s better education opportunities, they want to stay. There is much less to offer there to kids in terms of public education and cultural activities like ballet or swimming school. Despite the disadvantages of being a migrant in a country in which they are not able to speak the local language, their point of ‘moving up’ is only partially realised through having kids. They see kids as a step of ‘upward mobility’, an investment for the future, hoping that they would be taken care of by them when they get older. The other group of highly qualified expat women came to Vienna for ‘career opportunities’ as they said they are better paid than their home country.

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Paper short abstract:

Brazil’s race quotas have garnered mixed responses from within the Romani (Cigano) communities. Romani individuals pursuing higher education and their families must adopt a series of measures to balance family life and gender expectations while avoiding community's reproach.

Paper long abstract:

The improved educational opportunities in Brazil's interior, coupled with affirmative action and racial quotas policies at public universities, have provided novel opportunities for poor, Black, Indigenous, and Romani people, also known as Ciganos. The quotas for Romanies are unique even from a global perspective, and while these policies have received praise from scholars and activists, they have garnered mixed responses within the Cigano communities. In fact, most reserved places remain unused. On the one hand, higher education is challenging to balance with family life, kinship, gender expectations, and economic factors, which are all interconnected. On the other hand, social mobility, which higher education can provide, often leads to detachment from the community and may result in a kind of social death. In this paper, I will delve into the experiences of two Romani women who decided to pursue higher education. I will explore the measures and strategies they and their families have taken to ensure that these women can continue their studies while still maintaining close ties to their community, even when studying hundreds of kilometres away from home.

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Paper short abstract:

Our presentation focuses on the inner tensions that arise from the contradictions of the normative expectations of social mobility and limited structural opportunities for it. We present these contradictions of social mobility through the case of Roma youth in a small peripheral Hungarian town.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation focuses on the inner tensions that arise from the contradiction of the normative expectations of social advancement and limited structural opportunities for it. Due to historically grounded structural racism, people who belong to the Roma ethnicity in Hungary often struggle with the psychological condition called “divided habitus” related to this contradiction. Grounded in Bourdieu's theory, we contend that dispositions are shaped not only by objective structures but also by normative expectations. Drawing on extended fieldwork in a small peripheral Hungarian town, we highlight that such tensions are the lived experience not only of those who manage to socially ascend, as previous research has thus far shown but also of those who cannot. Focusing on the struggles of the 'unsuccessful many’, our presentation explores these inner tensions through the case of disadvantaged Roma youth. We show that they face the dual pressures of having to adjust to their disadvantaged circumstances on the one hand and aspiring for social mobility on the other, which could lead to alienation from their current context. By examining the related tensions within their family, education, and their relations to the broader local Roma community, we expose the inherent contradictions of pursuing social advancement. Whereas understanding individual trajectories within social structures is crucial to unraveling the complexities of social mobility, our analysis points beyond the case of Hungarian Roma, suggesting that this double pressure might be present in different social positions affected by the normative expectations of social mobility too.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ambiguous relation between aspirations for social mobility and better lives through the lens of Singaporean parents who decide to opt out of conventional middle-class aspirations and the intense competition of the mainstream education and society.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the dilemmas of upward social mobility from the perspective of opting out of conventional middle-class aspirations in search of better lives. East Asian education systems are globally renowned for their high academic standards and for producing students who score at the top on international assessment tests and rankings. It is well established in previous research that (middle-class) parents invest substantial resources into their children’s education, in the hope of expanding their children's opportunities, prospects, and choices for the future. However, parent’s educational desire for academic excellence as a route to better lives is not as straightforward as it may seem. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Singapore, this paper explores the tensions and contradictions associated with the idea about upward social mobility through the lens of parents who decide to opt out of the formal education system to ‘protect’ the child from the potentially negative effects of a competitive and stressful environment. By highlighting opting-out-responses this paper addresses the ambiguous relation between aspirations for upward social mobility on the one hand, and better lives on the other. How do parents’ who opt out of mainstream education construe and negotiate ideas about better lives in relation to conventional aspirations of 'moving up'? What sacrifices are made and how are parents accounting for their decision to pursue an alternative education for their children?

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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines migrant families’ strategies to navigate multiple barriers to equality in order to realize the project of social mobility and how attentiveness to educational success creates intimate and intergenerational relationship problems within migrant families.

Paper long abstract:

Educational achievement has become central to migrant families and their imaginaries of social mobility. However, migrant children often fail to meet their families' expectations when experiencing hostile educational environments. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with children, youth and their families in situations of precariousness in central Catalonia, this paper takes an intersectional approach to examining the diverse strategies that families devise for navigating multiple barriers to equality, labor market inclusion, and educational success in order to realize the project of “moving up”. In the social imagination, integration, which denies the epistemic diversity of the world, is presented as a protection against discrimination and a guarantee of social mobility. However, intergenerational projects of social mobility through migration are shaped by the contradictions between states’ migratory policies and inclusion policies and practices at the local level. The Catalan ideology of integration through language, as an unproblematic and unidirectional process, which shapes the incorporation of migrant students into the educational system, can hardly be considered intercultural. In the absence of epistemological dialogue in contact zones such as the school, epistemic hierarchies and abyssal lines are reproduced. Consequently, students who live in situations of poverty, who have had schooling trajectories interrupted or altered by migration or who do not speak the language of schooling are at risk of school failure. The paper analyzes how attentiveness to educational success and the possibility of labor market incorporation in challenging conditions of racialization and ethnolinguistic hierarchies create intimate and intergenerational relationship problems within migrant families.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the role of individual vigilance in the formation of class. Focusing on the social and transatlantic mobility of migrants moving between the Azores and California , I show how being alert about one’s sensed social position contributes to the formation of class .

Paper long abstract:

Over centuries, the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean, have been left behind by its residents in pursuit of better livelihoods elsewhere. The resulting transatlantic ties, comprising both outmigration and return migration in significant numbers, have produced a dynamic economic setting that foments projects of distinction and watchful self-positioning amidst conflicts between returnees and permanent residents. I suggest that vigilance plays a decisive role in controlling one’s collective image and in consolidating or enhancing one’s (sensed) class location..

While an emergent class of highly mobile emigrants who move between the US and the Azores regularly is neither static nor circumscribed, the migrants’ comparatively coherent interests, material wealth, and life histories nonetheless impact on local dynamics of inequality. In a socioeconomic situation of outmigration and return, monetary aspiration and criminal deportation, one’s self-consciousness and sense of distinction from others are matters of concern. In this paper, I am interested in everyday instances of personal and intersubjective watchfulness in order to analyse how forms of vigilance relationally underwrite the formation of a social class of wealthy emigrants.