Exclusion and reappropriation: Experiences of contemporary enclosure among children in three East Anglian schools

Transformations of the landscapes which children inhabit have significant impacts on their lives; yet, due to the limited economic visibility of children’s relationships with place, they have little stake in those transformations. Their experience, therefore, illustrates in an acute way the experience of contemporary enclosure as a mode of subordination. Following fieldwork in three primary schools in South Cambridgeshire, UK, we offer an ethnographic account of children’s experiences of socio-spatial exclusion. Yet, we suggest that such exclusion is by no means an end-point in children’s relationships with place. Challenging assumptions that children are disconnected from nature, we argue that through play and imaginative exploration of their environments, children find ways to rebuild relationships with places from which they find themselves excluded. This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE via http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/026377581664194

the overlapping uncertainties of film professionals

Returning to an interpersonal micro-perspective, this chapter centers on the development of ties between the three film professionals Hushang, Kian, and Milad and examines the way they try to generate capital in German and Iranian local and transnational professional social fields. Building on previous research on social capital and the film business, the analysis brings the difficulties of interdependence in internal relations to the forefront. Furthermore, I highlight how systems of value prevailing in different social fields may both intersect and overlap, thus accounting for the fact that agency in different social fields is interconnected. The ways the three men deal with uncertainties deriving from migration and the job market illustrates that people with similar resources may still find very different ways of dealing with barriers to inclusion

Qualitative Migration Research: Viable Goals, Open-Ended Questions, and Multidimensional Answers

Following a brief review of the epistemological premises informing qualitative methodologies, I identify the key features of qualitative research undertaken in the verstehende or interpretative social-science tradition, which render it particularly well suited to capturing the inherent dynamics of the lived experience of human beings in general and, in our case, of immigrants: its multi-dimensionality; its ability to accommodate ambiguity and outright contradictions; its emphasis on the temporality and fluidity of social phenomena; and its insistence on the contextual and situational nature of human perceptions and agency. Next, I argue that the research goals appropriate for qualitative investigations as proposed by Charles Ragin (Constructing social research. Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, 1994) – exploring diversity, giving voice, testing/refining theories or guiding concepts, and generating new research questions – can be realized by asking questions and gathering answers related to these issues in the context of (im)migrants’ experience. These claims are illustrated with questions asked and answers obtained through three standard methods of qualitative research: interviewing, observation, and document analysis. The examples draw from the current and emerging problem agendas in migration studies. I also discuss the strengths and limitations of research questions probing the complexity and un(der)determinacy of (im)migrants’ lives and the answers they generate