An innocuous quote by interviewee 11: re-thinking interviews in social research

In this cross-post, Shamser Sinha discusses the limitations of traditional forms of qualitative analysis and suggests social researchers have much to learn from creative professions, where are wider range of sensory and temporal inputs contribute to new understandings of social phenomena

Of method and freedom: How to re-shape the restrictive dynamic between researcher and participant.

The ever more clinical ways of extracting and analysing ‘data’ from human research ‘subjects’ are cause for concern, not only for ethical reasons, but also because the process itself limits insight. Shamser Sinha and Les Back argue for a form of research that shifts the ordering of dialogue, where researchers can make observations about participants’ personal worlds and participants can shed light on how issues in their personal worlds connect with public issues, opening up more public possibilities for social research

Los jóvenes y las relaciones de poder

Para la gente joven que llega al Reino Unido en busca de asilo, su movilidad y el acceso a la seguridad y a las oportunidades vienen determinadas por la legislación y las prácticas institucionales del Estado

Seeking Sanctuary: Exploring the Changing Postcolonial and Racialised Politics of Belonging in East London

This paper explores the changing postcolonial and racialised politics of belonging in East London. In particular it draws on research with multi-sector professionals and 15-18 year old young separated migrants. Separated from parents, these teenagers include those who had applied for asylum and were living under social services care as \'unaccompanied\' and those living with their extended family. It also includes separated migrants wanting sanctuary, but who had insecure immigration status because their asylum claim had failed, or because they had not yet applied for asylum and had no other visa status. The research focuses on healthcare issues and the broader life-situations of young separated migrants as a way to examine the changing politics of belonging in East London. Features of this politics include a rise in popularity of the Far Right, the impact of immigration and healthcare legislation and practice, and racial hostility. As well as looking at this, there is an exploration of resistance to this racialised political context by teenagers and certain professionals, and the struggle for a convivial multiculture that is a feature of their resistance. The argument here is that the changing racialised politics of belonging in East London: (1) show how underdevelopment, geo-political and postcolonial forces contribute to shaping local experiences of racism; (2) sometimes involves, rather than aggressively targets, British citizens from NCWP (New Commonwealth and Pakistani) backgrounds and their descendants, as skin colour becomes less of an articulated symbol of \'otherness\' than immigration status, (3) therefore excludes \'new migrants\' and especially those seeking sanctuary, such as the young people in this paper, from belonging (4) faces local resistance. However resistance to this politics might be better informed by a greater understanding of how postcolonialism shapes local racism and militates against a convivial multiculture, with sociology playing a role in accomplishing this.Asylum; Refugees; Racism; Multiculturalism; Health and Social Care; Belonging

Moving racisms, shifting targets: comparing racism experienced by mothers of mixed-parentage children with racism experienced by young people seeking sanctuary in Britain

As revealed by the 2011 Census, England is increasingly multi-ethnic. Yet, at the same time, racist discourses and practices continue to remain salient. In order to explore the contemporary manifestations of racism, this paper draws on research with two groups occupying different spaces within the sociology of race and ethnicity: young separated migrants seeking sanctuary in Britain and lone white mothers of mixed-parentage children. In this paper, we examine the everyday and structural racism experienced by each group in order to consider how seemingly different manifestations of race and racism are linked together and, in certain ways, dependent on each other. The paper argues that the public celebration of mixedness acts as a disavowal mechanism which can be used to conceal the endurance of colour-based racism as well as state racism operating legally through the immigration system

Migrant City

Migrant City tells the story of contemporary London from the perspective of thirty adult migrants and two sociologists. Connecting migrants’ private struggles to the public issues at stake in the way mobility is regulated, channelled and managed in a globalised world, this volume explores what migration means in a world that is hyper connected – but where we see increasingly mobile, invasive and technologically sophisticated forms of border regulation and control. Migrant City is an innovative collaborative ethnography based on research with migrants from a wide variety of social backgrounds, spanning in some cases a decade. It utilises recollections, photographs, poems, paintings, journals and drawings to explore a wide range of issues. These range from the impact of immigration control and surveillance on everyday life, to the experience of waiting for the Home Office to process their claims and the limits this places on their lives, to the friendships and relationships with neighbours that help to make London a home. This title will appeal to students, scholars, community workers and general readers interested in migration, race and ethnicity, social exclusion, globalisation, urban sociology, and inventive social research methods

Multicultural Conviviality in the Midst of Racism's Ruins

This article argues that the idea of multicultural tools is the best way to approach the understanding of conviviality. This argument is made through two discrete steps. The first offers a critical review of how issues of urban life and diversity have been theorised focusing on recent debates about ‘culture loss’ and ‘super- diversity’. The discussion, we suggest, elides historical and present racism, in the making of urban diversity in cities like London. The second step develops the notion of conviviality by identifying the ways in which young adult migrants living in London make convivial worlds emphasising the idea of tools, returning to Ivan Illich’s early formulation, and the capability to make multiculture. The article’s conclusion is that understanding urban multiculture requires equal weight being given to the paradoxical co-existence of both racism and conviviality in city life

New hierarchies of belonging

The article discusses the effects that the debate about the ‘crisis of multiculturalism’ is having on the regulation, scrutiny and the surveillance of migrant communities. Through the story of a young migrant it explores the ways that old hierarchies of belonging are taking new forms within the social landscape of contemporary London. This biographical case study is drawn from a larger qualitative study of 30 young adult migrants. Although the article focuses on a single case, its arguments are informed by the larger sample. The article argues that the debate about population mobility needs to transcend the ‘migrancy problematic’ and identify how the ordering of humanity works in a globalized and neo-liberal context. Combining insights from Stuart Hall’s recent writings and Franz Fanon’s lesser-known essays, the article argues that new hierarchies of belonging are established that replay aspects of colonial racism but in a form suited to London’s postcolonial situation