Here, there, in between, beyond…: Identity negotiation and sense of belonging among Southern Europeans in the UK and Germany

Whilst most of the research on intra-EU mobility has mainly focused on the reasons behind young Southern Europeans leaving their home countries, and secondly on their experiences within the new context, little is known about their sense of belonging and identities. This article aims to fill this gap by exploring Italian and Spanish migrants\u2019 social identity repositioning and the cultural change characterising their existential trajectories. Drawing on 69 semi-structured interviews with Italians and Spaniards living in London and Berlin, this article shows that the sense of belonging to one or more political communities and boundary work are related to individual experiences and can change due to structural eventualities such as the Brexit referendum. While identification with the host society is rare, attachment to the home country is quite common as a result of people\u2019s everyday experiences. Cultural changes and European/cosmopolitan identification are linked to exposure to new environments and interaction with new cultures, mostly concerning those with previous mobility experience, as well as to a sentiment of non-acceptance in the UK. However, such categories are not rigid, but many times self-identification and attachments are rather blurred also due to the uncertainty around the duration of the mobility project. This makes individual factors (gender, age, family status, employment, education) that are often considered as determinants of identification patterns all but relevant

Public drunkenness as a nuisance in Ghent (Belgium) and Trento (Italy)

This article explores the reality of the nuisance of public drunkenness in one nightlife location of Ghent (Belgium) and in one of Trento (Italy) and inspects the way alcohol-related disorder is viewed and tackled by police officers there. Drawing on the literature arguing for the existence of different "cultures of drinking" in western and southern European countries, a distinct reality of the nuisance of public drunkenness was hypothesized to be present in these two cities. Against the backdrop of cultural criminology scholarship and of the national literature on policing practices, it was expected that the physical/aesthetic appearance of street drinkers would differently impact on the way police officers there represent alcohol-related disorder and enforce national and local nuisance regulations. The gathered data indicate that while drinking patterns and connected disorderly behavior do not significantly vary in Ghent and in Trento, the aesthetic/physical characteristics of certain groups of people play a role in shaping the representations of some police officers in Trento. The study concludes that cultural and context-specific factors, including those linked to the cultures of drinking and to aesthetics, should be considered in criminological research to more fully understand and explain the different policing views on and attitudes to alcohol-related disorder in inner-city nightlife areas. In its conclusions, the article also highlights some directions for future research

Irregular Migration Theories

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