Caring Multiculturalism : Local Immigrant Policies and Narratives of Integration in Malmö, Birmingham and Bologna

Western European states are faced by societies with increasing ethnic, cultural and religious diversity as a result of migration flows. Advocates of multiculturalism have tried to address these potential challenges by advocating the accommodation of minorities within the recipient society. This study argues that the normative and practical measures suggested by multiculturalists tend to be de-contextualised and rest on a static understanding of identity formation and of culture. The dissertation aims to develop an explicitly transformative approach to multiculturalism. This approach is called “caring multiculturalism”. First, the author outlines a theoretical and normative framework which focuses on the possibilities to achieve social and cognitive change. Then, this framework is tested by evidence from three empirical cases which are analysed comparatively. Specifically, the empirical study looks at the institutional and narrative opportunities provided by the municipalities of Malmö in Sweden, Birmingham in Britain, and Bologna in Italy, to adopt caring multiculturalism. First, the analysis examines the mechanisms of political participation provided to migrants by each municipality in order to gauge the extent to which migrants are formally included in the recipient society. Second, it studies the narratives expressed by public actors and in policy documents. It examines each municipality’s immigrant policies and assesses how migrants’ integration is narratively constructed and how migrants are constructed in relation to the majority society. This examination of the institutional and narratives opportunities supplied by the municipalities to include migrants in the polity is the body of evidence for assessing if, and in what ways, caring multiculturalism can be adopted in the cases. Finally, the dissertation considers which factors favour the adoption of caring multiculturalism, and which ones constrain it, in the light of the empirical analysis

Political participation and dual identification among migrants

This article contributes to understanding how collective identification as well as institutional factors affects migrants’ democratic engagement. In particular, it analyses variations in patterns of voting behaviour at local elections among migrants living in two municipalities: Malmö (Sweden) and Ealing (London, UK). Empirically, the article compares the responses of Somalis and Poles (N: 68) with regard to (i) their democratic participation in the society of residence and (ii) their perceived identification with their in-group and with Sweden and the UK, respectively. Using narrative analysis to understand the impact of collective identification and of the political context on migrants’ voting behaviour, the article will show that favourable institutional and discursive structures of opportunities can formally enable migrants to democratically engage with the society they live in. However, political opportunity structures are not enough to mobilise migrant groups. A dual identification with the recipient society and their in-group promotes a sense of entitlement to political rights and positively affects participation in local elections

Policy actors' narrative constructions of migrants' integration in Malmö and Bologna

Governments have policies explicitly directed at the integration of migrants. This article addresses how policymakers and politicians privilege certain constructions of the social relationship between migrants and the majority society (expressed through narratives of ‘integration’), while making it seem as if they were presenting facts in their policies. These constructions provide the justifications for adopting a direction in policy-making over other alternatives. This article sets to analyse comparatively how policy actors in two urban contexts construct migrants' integration through policy narratives and how, within this, they evaluate migrants as ‘integrated’ and ‘non-integrated’. Through narrative analysis, the article sheds light on how migrants are positioned by political institutions within the normative order of the society in which they live. Furthermore, it shows that local policy-making is shaped by national citizenship regimes, models of steering, welfare regimes and stories about the nation and its people

Transgender Kathoey Socially Imagining Relationships with Western Men in Thailand: Aspirations for Gender Affirmation, Upward Social Mobility, and Family Acceptance

This article studies the aspirations and experiences of kathoey (Thai male-to-female trans* people) from poor rural Isan in enduring cross-border relationships with Western men. Drawing from biographical life stories, we try to unpack the cultural script through which partnering a Western man is seen as a plausible pathway for a better kathoey life in Thailand. We study the opportunities such partnering presents for achieving goals of gender affirmation, social advancement, and re-gaining merit within family relations. In the face of significant discriminatory barriers, kathoey in our study managed to build lives that they saw as self-validating, materially successful, and significantly conferring gender recognition. They understood their relationships as socially and personally much more than access to financial resources and drew important sources of emotional support, especially for gender validation from them. Western men were seen as more dedicated to partnering, caring, and being publicly seen in social settings (including family), compared to Thai

Young Somalis’ social identity in Sweden and Britain. The interplay of group dynamics, socio-political environments, and transnational ties in social identification processes

In this article, we aim to contribute to the literature on social identification among migrants and minorities by offering a theoretical framework that accounts for the interplay of socio-psychological factors, local and transnational group dynamics, and the socio-political environment in which migrants live. This approach enables us to analyse not only the political significance of identity, but also the psychology of identity formation. Drawing upon qualitative data, we analyse how young Somalis (N: 43) living in the municipalities of Malmö (Sweden) and Ealing (United Kingdom) construct and negotiate their ethnic social identities in relation to: Somali elders living in the same city; Somalis in Somalia and in the diaspora; and the British/Swedish majority society. We show that, to secure a positive self-identity vis-à-vis these referent groups, young Somalis engage in psychological strategies of separation; social competition; and social creativity. The socio-political environment in which they are embedded influences which strategy they adopt

Reification and the refugee: using a counterposing dialogical analysis to unlock a frozen category

Thousands of individuals each year seek refugee status and the question of who can be accepted requires politicians within democracies to seek a public mandate. Unlike other socio-political categories individuals cannot self-identify as refugee; the category must be bureaucratically conferred. Therefore sustained humanitarian public concern is vital to the acceptance of refugees. This article sets parameters on this public concern. It examines how public narratives reify the refugee category. Showing how this reification constrains the citizenship, integration and opportunities of individuals, now safe, yet continually categorized in everyday public discourse as refugee. Interviews, focus groups (Study 1) and ethnography (Study 2) were conducted in Sweden and the United Kingdom (N = 57). The article introduces a counterposing dialogical analysis where public positioning of refugees is counterposed against dialogue by “refugees” anticipating their positioning. The analysis uncovers an hegemonic social representation of humanitarianism indexing “the refugee” as the passive recipient of help framed by a public narrative diachronically frozen in the initial act of flight. Three objectifying reification processes stabilize the category. “Refugees” in turn employ counter-positional tactics of distancing, compensation and future-orientation. The limited success of these tactics suggest the need to scale up such tactics to collective-level communication strategies. Success of communication strategies requires questioning the underlying function humanitarian-talk serves in creating a sense of European identity. Together these strategies could re-work the temporal features of the refugee category facilitating a repositioning and enabling the emergence of post-refugee narratives

Transgender Kathoey and gay men using tourist-zone scenes as ‘social opportunities’ for nonheteronormative living in Thailand

This article studies life-trajectories of a specific generation of Kathoey and gay men, born into rural poverty in Northeastern Isaan 30–50 years ago, based on biographical accounts. Subjects are male-to-female transgender Kathoey and cisgendered (masculine-identified or gender-normative) gay men. A ‘sustainable nonheteronormative life’ is one providing sufficient resources of recognition for validating gender identity (Kathoey) or sexuality (gay men), and wealth to be economically viable. How did they strive to make spaces for nonheteronormative living when confronted by ‘blocked’ social opportunities of double discrimination based on transphobia (Kathoey) and homophobia (gay men), and class/status? The research unpacks which strong barriers of discrimination confronted them at distinct life-stages, and their agency and strategies to challenge these. Family, work and place are investigated as core social factors influentially defining a person’s positioning and life-chances, while shaping their pathway through social space over time. The empirical study reconstructs subjects’ lived experiences in distinct life-stages: village childhood; early postmigration city experiences; building lives in tourist-zone scenes; and reaching back ‘home’. The main finding is that tourist-zone scenes present new social opportunities that enable a few to transform their social and geographical displacement away from mainstream heteronormative society into an asset and achieve ‘success’. Tourist-zones transgress dominant (hetero)norms and values, but provide social infrastructures, communities and countercultural norms that support specific forms of nonheteronormative living, albeit dependent on foreign men. By migrating to tourist-zones, subjects stepped out of mainstream society, but over time drew on resources to build new social pathways towards living nonheteronormatively

Multiculturalism

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'The power of narratives and the limitations of peace education programs' [Review] Phillip L. Hammack (2011) Narrative and the politics of identity: the cultural psychology of Israeli and Palestinian youth

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