The Emotional Geographies of Migration and Brexit: Tales of Unbelonging

This article focuses on the emotionality of belonging among European Union (EU) citizens in the context of the United Kingdom’s (UK) 2016 referendum and its result in favour of the UK leaving the EU, commonly referred to as Brexit. Drawing from testimonies of EU27 citizens in the UK (mainly mid- to long-term residents) published in a book and on blog and Twitter accounts by the not-for-profit and non-political initiative, the ‘In Limbo Project’, it explores a range of emotions which characterise the affective impact of Brexit and how they underpin two key processes disrupting the sense of belonging of EU citizens: the acquisition of ‘migrantness’ and the non-recognition of the contributions and efforts made to belong. The resulting narratives are characterised by senses of ‘unbelonging’, where processes of social bonding and membership are disrupted and ‘undone’. These processes are characterised by a lack of intersubjective recognition in the private, legal and communal spheres, with ambivalent impacts on EU citizens’ longer-term plans to stay or to leave and wider implications for community relations in a post-Brexit society

Integració de l'anglès en el nou grau en enginyeria de sistemes TIC

Des de l’entrada en vigor de l’EEES que cal treballar i avaluar les competències genèriques. Una d’elles és la tercera llengua, i a totes les escoles, en les assignatures, majoritàriament es treballa l’anglès. En el nou grau en Enginyeria de Sistemes TIC (iTIC), es proposa treballar aquesta competència de manera progressiva, des del primer quadrimestre fins a l’últim, utilitzant metodologies diverses en funció de l’assignatura i el nivell. Es pretén començar el grau fent petites parts de l’assignatura en anglès, per exemple veient vídeos, xerrades de professors nadius, consultant documentació en anglès... per acabar el grau cursant assignatures senceres en aquesta llengua. Es potenciarà, també, l’intercanvi amb altres universitats estrangeres. D’aquesta manera l’estudiant arribarà a integrar l’anglès dins el seu treball, poc a poc, de manera gradual, assolint un millor domini d’aquesta llengua, pràcticament sense adonar-se’n. A part, en utilitzar l’anglès en assignatures obligatòries, serà fàcil que els alumnes arribin i sobrepassin el nivell marcat per la UPC per assolir aquesta competència genèrica. Amb aquesta introducció gradual, l’alumne (tingui el nivell que tingui), serà capaç de seguir classes totalment o parcial en anglès amb normalitat i sense por.Peer Reviewe

Negotiating Ethnic Recognition Systems in the UK: the soft pan-ethnic identifications of Latin American migrants in the north of England

Despite aiming to provide minority ethnic groups with material equality and protection from discrimination, the British ethno-cultural system of recognition has perpetuated social differentiation which is difficult to transcend. Drawing from interviews with informants and 10 in-depth case studies with Latin American and Latino-British families in the Yorkshire and Greater Manchester regions of the north of England, the paper explores the fraught relationship between these migrants and their multicultural framework of incorporation. Significant here are the contested understandings of the Latin American collective identity, combined with the diversity of migration trajectories, socioeconomic backgrounds and life-course needs of migrants and their children, which contribute to soft pan-ethnic identifications among the participant population. It is argued that, by encouraging migrants and their descendants to seek recognition through absolute ethnic differences, multicultural recognition systems can reproduce colonial categories and fail to respond to the diverse social and life-course needs of migrants

The UK National Health Service’s migration infrastructure in times of Brexit and COVID-19: Disjunctures, continuities and innovations

The COVID‐19 pandemic and Brexit were separate yet inter‐related developments which affected the British National Health Service (NHS). The UK's state‐funded health sector had historically relied on migrant labour and depended on a migration infrastructure designed to solve its nursing labour shortages. The analysis of primary qualitative and secondary quantitative data shows that the NHS migration infrastructure increased its orientation towards Asia to compensate for the effects of Brexit. The paper reveals how the persistent use of temporary visas along with conditional contractual arrangements has led to various exclusions for migrant nurses and midwives. These data also demonstrate how international travel restrictions associated with COVID‐19 created temporary obstacles for nurses' inflows. Alongside Brexit, this has also resulted in an increase in outflows amongst EU health workers. The article identifies the development of migrant support infrastructure amongst Filipino and Indian nurses as a major COVID‐19 linked innovation

My mother’s country: Relational nationality and transnational family ties

This chapter discusses the meaning of dual nationality for transnational family members. Using the concept of relational nationality as developed by Karen Knop (2001) as an analytic tool, it contributes to the literature on transnational families that largely ignores the role that law, i.e. dual nationality, plays in maintaining kin ties, as well as the literature on dual nationality that ignores the issue of family and kinship ties. It is based on interviews with parents, spouses and young adults from immigrant, emigrant and ‘mixed’ families about the meaning of dual nationality for their family relationships. The findings show that dual nationality is vital in performing kin work across borders, as well as a form of capital enhancing life opportunities, in providing access to multiple countries, identities and cultures. However, due to the hierarchy of nationalities, dual nationality is not equally accessible to everyone. Furthermore, in a political climate that increasingly problematises dual nationality, transnational family members may come to see dual nationality as a liability, which limits life opportunities rather than enhancing them. Thus, however appealing the concept of relational nationality is, its meanings at the individual, micro-level cannot be separated from the public, political sphere

Integració de l'anglès en el nou grau en enginyeria de sistemes TIC

Des de l’entrada en vigor de l’EEES que cal treballar i avaluar les competències genèriques. Una d’elles és la tercera llengua, i a totes les escoles, en les assignatures, majoritàriament es treballa l’anglès. En el nou grau en Enginyeria de Sistemes TIC (iTIC), es proposa treballar aquesta competència de manera progressiva, des del primer quadrimestre fins a l’últim, utilitzant metodologies diverses en funció de l’assignatura i el nivell. Es pretén començar el grau fent petites parts de l’assignatura en anglès, per exemple veient vídeos, xerrades de professors nadius, consultant documentació en anglès... per acabar el grau cursant assignatures senceres en aquesta llengua. Es potenciarà, també, l’intercanvi amb altres universitats estrangeres. D’aquesta manera l’estudiant arribarà a integrar l’anglès dins el seu treball, poc a poc, de manera gradual, assolint un millor domini d’aquesta llengua, pràcticament sense adonar-se’n. A part, en utilitzar l’anglès en assignatures obligatòries, serà fàcil que els alumnes arribin i sobrepassin el nivell marcat per la UPC per assolir aquesta competència genèrica. Amb aquesta introducció gradual, l’alumne (tingui el nivell que tingui), serà capaç de seguir classes totalment o parcial en anglès amb normalitat i sense por.Peer Reviewe

Micro‐ and meso‐regulatory spaces of labour mobility power: The role of ethnic and kinship networks in shaping work‐related movements of post‐2004 Central Eastern European migrants to the United Kingdom

European Union (EU) enlargement in 2004 produced a multi‐layered regulatory space structuring labour mobility between Central Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom. Building on a critical revaluation of the concept of labour mobility power as a phenomenon that cannot be reduced to earnings' maximisation, the paper contends that although post‐2004 migration was nested in the macro‐regulatory mechanism of EU freedom of movement of labour, kinship and ethnic networks constituted additional layers in regulating migrants' mobility trajectories. Drawing on migratory biographies, the analysis examines how these regulatory mechanisms shaped migrants' actions and intentions related to transnational exit, contributed in creating linkages through which migrants sought to actualise their labour power on a transnational scale, and provided directions for labour mobility power's use within the receiving country. By embedding labour mobility power within kinship (micro) and ethnic (meso) networks, this paper offers a complimentary understanding of labour mobility power that takes it beyond the homo economicus explanatory model

In/visibility strategies and enacted diversity: sameness and belonging among young people of Latin American descent living in the north of England (UK)

This article explores how young people (aged 8–18) of Latin American descent living in the north of England negotiate sameness and belonging within a context of socio-cultural invisibility (sparse presence of Latin Americans). It is argued that these young people, who are characterised by a diversity of marked and unmarked embodiments, use in/visibility strategies in order to navigate the visual regime of ethno-cultural difference which characterises their integration context. With these strategies, they either reproduce notions of sameness or enact forms of cultural diversity to gain membership to the places where they live