To decolonize migration studies means to dismantle it. On Adrian Favell’s The Integration Nation and question-ability

What might remain after the “decolonization of migration studies”? Nothing that could have to do anything with “migration”. The contradictions of migration studies cannot be solved within its liberal parameters. To decolonize migration studies is to dismantle it.</p

Migration studies: an imposition

Abstract This is a rejoinder to the responses made to my paper ‘Against “immigrant integration”: For an end to neocolonial knowledge production’, which was based on my book Imagined Societies. A Critique of Immigrant Integration in Western Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Here, I aim to push the boundaries of our discussion a bit further by arguing that the point is not to come up with better concepts of ‘immigrant integration’. Rather, it is to recognize that any such concern with, and for, ‘integration’ is already an imposition, and that, perhaps, the thing conventionally called ‘migration studies’ should be seen as, itself, an imposition

Professional capital contested: A bourdieusian analysis of conflicts between professionals and managers

Although Bourdieu paid scant attention to (and in fact discredited) the notion of professionalism, his social theory is well-equipped to understand the evolution of professional work. Professionalism can be conceived as a set of symbolic resources that (re)produce an occupational order, favoring expertise and craftsmanship. In neo-liberal economies this order is contested and professional powers are distrusted; professional work is seen as closed-off and conservative. Managers have become important vehicles for rationalizing and innovating production, and improving "value for money." In fact, managerial "fields" are created, and conflicts between managerial and professional fields are well documented. These conflicts are ironic, as new classes of managers seek classic strategies of professionalization as well as classic forms of professional capital for securing managerial positions. They form professional associations, for instance, and invest in schooling, credentials and work codes. This paper explores conflicts between professionals and managers as "contests over symbolic capital." We argue that professional capital is appropriated by managers in order to distinguish "new" from "old" professional work in larger economized fields of power

Aspecten van burgerschap. Een historische analyse van de transformaties van het burgerschapsconcept in Nederland

Inleiding. Al sinds begin jaren negentig is duidelijk dat ‘burgerschap’ terug is van weggeweest (Kymlicka en Norman 1994; Van Gunsteren 1998). Nog steeds staat het begrip centraal in de aandacht in wetenschap en beleid. Daarbij valt op dat sociale wetenschappers interesse hebben in vormen van burgerschap die het traditionele staatsburgerschap overstijgen, terwijl beleidsmakers en politici eerder neigen naar een verzwaring van dat nationaal staatsburgerschap met nieuwe dimensies. Sociologen analyseren en pleiten bijvoorbeeld voor ‘transnationaal burgerschap’ (Bauböck 1994; Soysal 1994; Sassen 2006), voor ‘kosmopolitisch burgerschap’ of voor ‘wereldburgerschap’ (Habermas 1996; Dower 2000; Falk 2003; Benhabib 2004). Saskia Sassen constateert een denationalisering van burgerschap ondanks gelijktijdige pogingen tot renationalisering ervan (Sassen 2006, 22)

Het Nieuwe Contractualisme; Bestuursrationaliteiten op het gebied van criminaliteit aan het begin van de 21ste eeuw

__Abstract__ In deze bijdrage wordt de veranderde mentaliteit van bestuur geanalyseerd. Het criminaliteitsbestuur wordt als ‘strategische casus’ genomen. Op het spel staat het begrijpen van de manieren waarop wij onszelf en anderen besturen (via welke machtstechnologieën, welke waarheidsdiscoursen en welke subjectopvattingen) en wat daarvan de gevolgen zijn. Op basis van een analyse van het criminaliteitsbeleid van de afgelopen dertig jaar wordt beschreven hoe in Nederland twee bestuursrati‐ onaliteiten samengaan: communitarisme en neoliberalisme. Aan de hand van een genealogische analyse wordt beschreven hoe het criminaliteitsbeleid (macht) verweven is met criminologische theorieën (weten). Op deze manier worden de belangrijkste criminologische theorieën in kaart gebracht en wordt beschreven hoe hedendaagse preventie en bestraffing corresponderen met neoliberalisme en com‐ munitarisme. Neoliberaal communitarisme is een strategie van bestuur die ook in andere bureaucratische velden zichtbaar is. Dat die combinatie tot nog toe weinig wetenschappelijke en politieke aandacht heeft gehad in Nederland, ligt aan het paradoxale karakter ervan. Aan precies die paradox ontleent zij niettemin haar ordenende krach

A Genealogy of Neoliberal Communitarianism

This article investigates the power/knowledge relations between contemporary penal government and criminological theory. Based on an analysis of the strategic case of the Netherlands, the emergence of what can be called neoliberal communitarianism is discussed. In relation to the ‘penal welfarism’ it succeeds, neoliberal communitarianism provides a rationale of governing that allows a greater amount of complexity precisely because it consists of a paradoxical set of doctrines, discourses and techniques. This involves an emphasis on both ‘individual responsibility’ and ‘community’, protecting market and community by tightening social control, law and order and the production of rational self-controlling individuals while excluding the cultural and biological ‘risk citizen’. The article illustrates the incorporation of criminological theories as policy underpinnings, and it explicates how criminological theories can be placed in the discursive space of neoliberal communitarianism

Against ‘immigrant integration’: for an end to neocolonial knowledge production

This paper, written on invitation by the editors of Comparative Migration Studies, is intended as a provocation piece for invited commentators, and more broadly for those working with, or concerned about, the field of immigrant integration research. It outlines an argument put forward in Imagined Societies. A Critique of Immigrant Integration in Western Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2017) that 1) critiques immigrant integration research for bad (or lacking) conceptual work, specifically also in regard to the core sociological notion of ‘society’; 2) argues that immigrant integration monitoring is a neocolonial form of knowledge intricately bound up with the contemporary workings of power, and 3) proposes social science moves beyond notions of ‘immigrant integration’ and ‘society’ towards an imagination against the grain that involves paying due attention to what happens when migrants move across social ecologies, without resorting to commonsense and/or policy categories in doing so

Surveillance at sea: The transactional politics of border control in the Aegean

The relationship between vision and action is a key element of both practices and conceptualizations of border surveillance in Europe. This article engages with what we call the ‘operative vision’ of surveillance at sea, specifically as performed by the border control apparatus in the Aegean. We analyse the political consequences of this operative vision by elaborating on three examples of fieldwork conducted in the Aegean and on the islands of Chios and Lesbos. One of the main aims is to bring the figure of the migrant back into the study of border technologies. By combining insights from science and technology studies with border, mobility and security studies, the article distinguishes between processes of intervention, mobilization and realization and emphasizes the role of migrants in their encounter with surveillance operations. Two claims are brought forward. First, engaging with recent scholarly work on the visual politics of border surveillance, we circumscribe an ongoing ‘transactional politics’. Second, the dynamic interplay between vision and action brings about a situation of ‘recalcitrance’, in which mobile objects and subjects of various kinds are drawn into securitized relations, for instance in encounters between coast guard boats and migrant boats at sea. Without reducing migrants to epiphenomena of those relations, this recalcitrance typifies the objects of surveillance as both relatable as well as resistant, particularly in the tensions between border control and search and rescue

The state’s sexual desires: the performance of sexuality in the Dutch asylum procedure

The facticity of sexuality is a key driver of the asylum procedure in “LGBT” cases, where non-heterosexual identities can be grounds for gaining” refugee status.” The procedure becomes a test of sexual veracity by means of a truthful performance. This performance is primarily discursive, but it is also bodily in terms of the way bodily comportment is considered indicative of a “true story.” Underlying this process is a conception of sexuality as a fixed, invisible but ever present identity. Sexuality, we argue, gets configured in ways akin to what is commonly called an “infrastructure.” The veracity and facticity of accounts of, and for, this ‘infrastructure of selfhood’ can only be ascertained in live encounters during the asylum procedure. This article ethnographically highlights how such a particular facticity is composed in the Dutch asylum procedures. Building on Judith Butler’s work on narrative accounts of the self, we show how the state intervenes in crucial ways in asserting the authority to assign truth to such a narrative account

Building Better Ecological Machines: Complexity Theory and Alternative Economic Models

Computer models of the economy are regularly used to predict economic phenomena and set financial policy. However, the conventional macroeconomic models are currently being reimagined after they failed to foresee the current economic crisis, the outlines of which began to be understood only in 2007-2008. In this article we analyze the most prominent of this reimagining: Agent-Based models (ABMs). ABMs are an influential alternative to standard economic models, and they are one focus of complexity theory, a discipline that is a more open successor to the conventional chaos and fractal modeling of the 1990s. The modelers who create ABMs claim that their models depict markets as ecologies, and that they are more responsive than conventional models that depict markets as machines. We challenge this presentation, arguing instead that recent modeling efforts amount to the creation of models as ecological machines. Our paper aims to contribute to an understanding of the organizing metaphors of macroeconomic models, which we argue is relevant conceptually and politically, e.g., when models are used for regulatory purposes