Migrant belonging, social location and the neighbourhood: recent migrants in East London and Birmingham

Scholars examining different aspects of migrant settlement have long recognized the importance of questions around how newcomers forge a sense of connectedness to the society in which they settle. This article contributes new knowledge by focussing on three factors which shape migrants’ sense of belonging: firstly, the immigration-related diversity of the neighbourhood in which they settle; secondly, the migrants’ social location in regards to race, gender, religion and language; and thirdly, migrants’ previous experiences of migration-related diversity. Drawing on theories around civility, cosmopolitanism and migrant ‘place making’, and by comparing recent migrants in Birmingham and East London, the article focuses on the role of social interactions and encounters in public space. While migrants who had little previous experiences of diversity go through a process of multicultural adaptation when settling in ethnically diverse areas, others stressed the need to live in areas characterized by visible diversity because of fear of racism. Furthermore, their sense of belonging was also shaped by previous experiences of exclusion in countries of transit migration. The findings highlight that it is not necessarily the ethnic make-up of a city overall which impacts on a migrants’ sense of belonging, but it is the neighbourhood, the immediate locality in which migrants live, and the nature of social interactions with other residents in such areas, which crucially impacts on their sense of inclusion or exclusion

System and Method for Measuring Skin Movement and Strain and Related Techniques

Described herein are systems and techniques for a motion capture system and a three-dimensional (3D) tracking system used to record body position and/or movements/motions and using the data to measure skin strain (a strain field) all along the body while a joint is in motion (dynamic) as well as in a fixed position (static). The data and technique can be used to quantify strains, calculate 3D contours, and derive patterns believed to reveal skin's properties during natural motions

Everyday cosmopolitanism in representations of Europe among young Romanians in Britain

The paper presents an analysis of everyday cosmopolitanism in constructions of Europe among young Romanian nationals living in Britain. Adopting a social representations approach, cosmopolitanism is understood as a cultural symbolic resource that is part of everyday knowledge. Through a discursively-oriented analysis of focus group data, we explore the ways in which notions of cosmopolitanism intersect with images of Europeanness in the accounts of participants. We show that, for our participants, representations of Europe are anchored in an Orientalist schema of West-vs.-East, whereby the West is seen as epitomising European values of modernity and progress, while the East is seen as backward and traditional. Our findings further show that representations of cosmopolitanism reinforce this East/West dichotomy, within a discourse of ‘Occidental cosmopolitanism’. The paper concludes with a critical discussion of the diverse and complex ideological foundations of these constructions of European cosmopolitanism and their implications

'Diverse mobilities': second-generation Greek-Germans engage with the homeland as children and as adults

This paper is about the children of Greek labour migrants in Germany. We focus on two life-stages of ‘return’ for this second generation: as young children brought to Greece on holidays or sent back for longer periods, and as young adults exercising an independent ‘return’ migration. We draw both on literature and on our own field interviews with 50 first- and second-generation Greek-Germans. We find the practise of sending young children back to Greece to have been surprisingly widespread yet little documented. Adult relocation to the parental homeland takes place for five reasons: (i) a ‘search for self’; (ii) attraction of the Greek way of life; (iii) the actualisation of the ‘family narrative of return’ by the second, rather than the first, generation; (iv) life-stage events such as going to university or marrying a Greek; (v) escape from a traumatic event or oppressive family situation. Yet the return often brings difficulties, disillusionment, identity reappraisal, and a re-evaluation of the German context

Carbon Nanodot:Supramolecular electron donor-acceptor hybrids featuring Perylenediimides

We describe the formation of charge-transfer complexes that feature electron-donating carbon nanodots (CND) and electron-accepting perylenediimides (PDI). The functionalities of PDIs have been selected to complement those of CNDs in terms of electrostatic and \u3c0-stacking interactions based on oppositely charged ionic head groups and extended \u3c0-systems, respectively. Importantly, the contributions from electrostatic interactions were confirmed in reference experiments, in which stronger interactions were found for PDIs that feature positively rather than negatively charged head groups. The electronic interactions between the components in the ground and excited state were characterized in complementary absorption and fluorescence titration assays that suggest charge-transfer interactions in both states with binding constants on the order of 8 7104\u2009M 121 (25\u2005L\u2009g 121). Selective excitation of the two components in ultrafast pump probe experiments gave a 210\u2005ps lived charge-separated state

Researching social relations in super-diverse neighbourhoods:Mapping the field

In recent years, there has been a surge in studies on immigration-related diversity and, more specifically, super-diversity. This paper aims to give an overview of recent academic debate on social relations in super-diverse contexts. It draws together studies focusing on how people of different backgrounds relate to each other in such contexts, with a particular focus on the role of the neighbourhood regarding social relations. Findings of some recent studies have shown how diversity has become commonplace and is not experienced as something particularly unusual in such areas. At the same time, however, negative attitudes towards others can persist. Although primarily conceptual, the paper also draws on empirical qualitative data from an ethnographic study undertaken by the author in the London Borough of Hackney