Book review: injustice: why social inequality still persists by Danny Dorling

The revised edition of Danny Dorling’s book Injustice: Why Social Inequality Still Persists provides an analysis of contemporary issues and practices underpinning inequality and a concise interpretation of the main causes of the persistence of injustice in rich countries, together with possible solutions. Gaja Maestri finds that despite touching only marginally on broader scholarly debates, the book remains a critical contribution to the ongoing debate on growing social inequality. Moreover, the pragmatism of the book gives readers the feeling that we can start to do something from our very everyday practices, workplaces and neighbourhoods

Struggles and ambiguities over political subjectivities in the camp: Roma camp dwellers between neoliberal and urban citizenship in Italy

What is the political subjectivity of the Roma living in Italian camps? Although the camp prevents the Roma from enjoying a series of rights, it does not fully determine their citizenship status. Indeed, citizenship is always contested and evolving through the interaction of a plurality of actors. By understanding the camp as an ‘assemblage space’, this article aims to unpack the complex political subjectivities of Roma camps-dwellers and to reflect on the struggles and ambiguities characterising the citizenship-making process in camp spaces. Through in-depth interviews conducted with members of non-governmental organisations and social movements in the city of Rome, I investigate the contention over meanings produced around the space of the camp and the Roma political subjectivities. I finally identify and discuss two framing strategies constituting the Roma as right bearers and supporting their demand to housing inclusion: a neoliberal and a ‘right to the city’ discourse that generate entrepreneurial and urban subjects

Who deserves compassion? The moral and emotional dilemmas of volunteering in the ‘refugee crisis’

Since the ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015, civil society across Europe has participated in an unprecedented wave of support towards migrants. This article focuses on the volunteers engaged in this movement and explores how they relate emotions of compassion and evaluations about the ‘deservingness’ of refugees. We do so by analysing the moral dilemmas British volunteers face in their interaction with refugees, and the strategies they develop to avoid the difficulties that emerge when judging who the ‘deserving’ refugees are. We illustrate how these coping strategies lead them to emphasise the practicality of their role and to move beyond logics of deservingness. We argue that these dilemmatic situations reshape the meaning of compassionate acts in ambivalent ways: while reinforcing a tendency to create an emotional distance, they also allow volunteers to challenge idealised representations of refugees and foreground the political nature of their vulnerability

Persistently Temporary. Ambiguity and Political Mobilisations in Italy's Roma camps: a comparative perspective

This thesis interrogates the temporal persistence of Roma camps to understand the mechanisms that lead to the protraction of their temporary condition. While persistent temporariness has been widely acknowledged as a common aspect of camp-like institutions, it has rarely been problematised. Examining the cases of Italy and France, this thesis unpacks this notion of persistent temporariness and investigates the factors contributing to its different forms. In so doing, the thesis re-thinks the concept of persistence as gradual change and offers a new theorisation of the camp as a site of contentious governance. The three empirical questions examined in the thesis are: 1) What are the factors that contribute to the persistence of the Italian Roma camps? 2) Can these factors also help with understanding of other cases of persistent temporariness? 3) What are the strategies developed to oppose the persistence of the Roma camps? These are addressed by way of a comparison of three institutional camps characterised by different types of enduring temporariness: today's Italian Roma camps, the historical French transit estates for Algerian migrants, and contemporary French integration villages for Roma migrants. Following an analysis of the Italian Roma camps, the thesis presents what I call an ‘asymmetrical comparison’ with the French cases, which aims to investigate how the factors implicated in the persistent temporariness of the Roma camps can help to explain the persistence of the transit estates and integration villages. In examining these cases, I have drawn attention to the concept of policy ambiguity and to the way it influences the strategies of the actors involved in the camp governance and, therefore, their different trajectories of persistent temporariness. Although, in Italy, ambiguity facilitated the persistence of the Roma camps, in recent years a new form of resistance has turned policy ambiguity into an opportunity for political mobilisation

Seeking Asylum. Women's Experiences of Home Office Decision Making, Destitution and Mental Health Issue

This report was composed by a network of asylum seeker-led NGOs in the West Midlands, in collaboration with Refugee Rights Europe and TRP Solicitors. The report was originally written as a contribution to the United Nations CEDAW Committee, during its reporting and monitoring process of the United Kingdom’s fulfillment of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The aim of our CEDAW shadow report was to ensure the representation of the voices of women who may not be visible to the bureaucrats who write the official CEDAW State party report. In February 2019, we released a longer, and lightly edited, version of the same report, to ensure an even wider reach of asylum-seeking women’s voices – which are far too seldom heard or considered

From Vulnerability to Trust

This article examines the complex and ambivalent nature of the encounters between British volunteers and refugees within the 2015 Refugees Welcome movement. The 72 interviews we conducted with volunteers active in different charities and informal networks reveal the significance of the logic of trust in these encounters. We show that although participants often base their engagement on claims that disrupt dominant narratives about border controls, they also tend to endorse and reproduce bordering processes based on the perceived trustworthiness of refugees and, sometimes, exclude some groups from their support. Taking insights from the literature on encounters and critical humanitarianism, our article highlights from a theoretical and empirical perspective how “ordinary participants” in the refugee support sector can subvert humanitarian borders, but also participate in the construction of new types of borders based on domopolitics. More generally, the article aims to highlight civil society’s voluntary participation in the governance of migration

Home, Migration, and Roma People in Europe

Roma people in Europe still suffer from severe housing deprivation compared to the general population. Nevertheless, reducing Roma housing to loss and exclusion risks concealing the strategic and creative dimension of residential micro-practices enacted by Roma themselves, who instead mobilise various resources at national and transnational levels. Moving from these premises, this chapter captures the complexity of the literature on Roma housing by focusing on three main issues. First, it engages with critical scholarship deconstructing stereotyped understandings which commonly shape policy approaches and public opinion on Roma populations and mobility. Secondly, we focus on the different forms of housing segregation in Europe, with specific attention to the spatial device of the camp. Then, we turn to actor-centred perspectives, thoroughly discussing the transnational residential strategies and homemaking practices enacted by Roma migrants. In conclusion, we reflect on emerging avenues of academic and activist research foregrounding intersectionality through feminist perspectives and the nexus with housing rights movements

Between Charity and Protest. The Politicisation of Refugee Support Volunteers

This article examines how refugee support volunteers based in Britain and in France negotiate the boundaries between charity (or humanitarian) action and social activism since the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’. Scholarly literature has often separated charity and humanitarian action from social activism, as the former is seen as lacking the goal of social and political change that characterises the latter. The set of 147 in-depth interviews we conducted in different British and French refugee support charities and networks reveals the complex relationship between charity and protest. Through the focus on the moral dilemmas that participants encounter throughout their experience in the field, this article aims to highlight the ambivalences of their engagement as well as its transformative potential. Our analysis shows how participants develop new cognitive frames, emotions and interpersonal relations that transform their engagement and lead them to link charity/humanitarian action with broader objectives of social and political change. More generally, our analysis highlights the processes through which participants construct political narratives that aim to challenge state-driven policies and discourses of “migration management”. This article aims to contribute to the reflection about the informal character of the forms of participation analysed in this special issue, through the focus on the moral dilemmas and the “quiet” and “unexceptional” politics of volunteering

Final Report "Exploring the Frames of Altruistic Action":A comparative analysis of volunteers' engagement in British and French pro-asylum charities (Jan 2017-Dec 2019)

Over the last decades, in a context in which the living conditions of asylum seekers and refugees are becoming increasingly difficult, many charities have dedicated themselves to the support of these groups across Europe. A large part of the activities of these organisations depends on the involvement of volunteers who participate in altruistic actions such as: legal aid, advice and support in terms of access to services (housing, schools, welfare, etc.), language or educational support (in particular children's support), fundraising, therapeutic or moral support. This study focuses on the case of the volunteers engaged in the support of asylum seekers and refugees in order to explore questions which remain underexplored in the literature on collective action. This research project seeks to analyse what motivates volunteers to engage with charities that support asylum seekers and refugees, as well as how they define their engagement and reflect upon their experience. In particular, the study wants to analyse whether and how these actors distinguish between altruistic action and social or political protest. In doing so, it seeks to explore how the frontiers between different forms of engagement in society are constructed and negotiated. Looking at immigration and asylum politics 'from below', it also aims to analyse how public debates and policies on these issues are reflected in the forms of engagement in support of asylum seekers and refugees. The project is based on a comparative approach and on qualitative research methods: we will interview 140 volunteers with different profiles and who are active in two contrasted contexts (Britain and France). We will also interview key representatives of the main pro-asylum charities active in these two countries, and we will analyse press reports and charities' archives. We will undertake this empirical research in the cities of London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Paris, Lyon, and in the region of Lille-Calais. This will allow us to develop an in-depth analysis of why and how people engage in altruistic action in support of asylum seekers and refugees. This will also enable us to analyse whether differences in terms of the life trajectories and personal values of volunteers, of organisational cultures of pro-asylum charities, of national cultures of volunteering, of relations between civil society actors and public authorities, as well as of immigration and asylum politics lead individuals to define their engagement in different ways. This approach and these methods will give us new data and perspectives on the ways ideas that relate to altruism, solidarity, humanity, care, or compassion are constructed and experienced. They will also enable us to develop original perspectives on the consequences in civil society of policies and public debates in the field of immigration and asylum. This research is timely in a context of intense debates and rapid policy changes on immigration and asylum, both at the national and EU levels. It is also timely in a context of funding shortages to civil society organisations