Marriage-Related Migration to the UK

Spouses form the largest single category of migrant settlement in the UK. Research and policy making on marriage-related migration to the UK has been dominated by a focus on South Asian populations, which are among the largest groups of such migrants. This article brings together the available evidence on marriage-related migration and settlement to provide a much broader perspective on this phenomenon. The varied and dynamic picture which emerges challenges conventional understandings of marriage-related migration to the UK. It also exposes the limitations and lacunae in existing research, highlighting the danger that policy made on the basis of partial evidence will produce unexpected consequences

Shifting markers of identity in East London's diasporic religious spaces

This article discusses the historical and geographical contexts of diasporic religious buildings in East London, revealing – contrary both to conventional narratives of immigrant integration, mobility, and succession and to identitarian understandings of belonging – that in such spaces and in the concrete devotional practices enacted in them, markers and boundaries of identity (ritual, spatial, and political) are contested, renegotiated, erased, and rewritten. It draws on a series of case-studies: Fieldgate Street Synagogue in its interrelationship with the East London Mosque; St Antony's Catholic Church in Forest Gate where Hindus and Christians worship together; and the intertwined histories of Methodism and Anglicanism in Bow Road. Exploration of the intersections between ethnicity, religiosity, and class illuminates the ambiguity and instability of identity-formation and expression within East London's diasporic faith spaces

Counting the cost: refugees, remittances and the ‘war against terrorism’

Could there be a better way to create more hardship,more instability and more potential refugees,while increasing the appeal of extremism, than tocut off the money transfer lifeline to Somalia byshutting down remittance agencies

New state-theoretic approaches to asylum and refugee geographies.

This paper examines recent innovations in the way the concept of the state is employed by geographers researching forced migrants' and refugees' experiences. A still-dominant body of thought tends to essentialize the state and foreground both its institutional forms and coercive powers by asking questions that take the primacy of these attributes for granted. In response, poststructuralist geographers and sociologists have begun to forge alternative views of states, drawing upon a useful cynicism over the coherence of the state, as well as an engagement with Foucauldian notions of governmentality. The paper examines these alternative approaches in order to distil the characteristics of an emerging critical asylum geography

Are Migrants More Extreme Than Locals After War? Evidence From A Simultaneous Survey of Migrants in Sweden and Locals in Bosnia

Little is known about the attitudes of migrant populations originating from countries affected by conflict. This article examines a key assumption in the literature: that migrants harbor more conflictive attitudes than locals after war. Until now, we simply lacked the micro-level data necessary to examine migrant attitudes directly. Rather than relying on indirect evidence, I analyze new data from simultaneous surveys conducted in Sweden and Bosnia in 2010. As a whole, the empirical analysis supports the article’s novel theoretical approach. Under certain conditions, migration may promote inclusive and reconciliatory attitudes by improving access to coping resources and providing an exit from detrimental wartime and postwar conditions in origins countrie