Making and unmaking global citizenship: lived experiences of precarious migration

Resilience has proved to be a versatile notion to explain why people are not defeated by hardship and adversity, yet so far, we know little of how it might apply to communities and cultures in low to middle income countries. This paper aims to explore the notion of resilience in cross-cultural context through considering the lived experience of internal migration. A sample of 30 participants with experience of migration was recruited from a low-income slum dwelling neighbourhood in the city of Pune, India. These individuals participated in biographical narrative interviews in which they were encouraged to talk about their experience of migration, their adaptation to life in their new environment and making new lives for themselves. Participants referred to a variety of intra-individual and external factors that sustained their resilience, including acceptance of their circumstances, the importance of memory, hope for their children's futures as well as kindness from family friends and community members and aspects of the physical environment which were conducive to an improvement in their lives. By analogy with the widely used term 'idioms of distress', we advocate attention to the locally nuanced and culturally inflected 'idioms of resilience' or 'eudaemonic idioms' which are of crucial importance as migration and movement become ever more prominent in discussions of human problems. The nature and extent of people's coping abilities, their aspirations and strategies for tackling adversity, their idioms of resilience and eudaemonic repertoires merit attention so that services can genuinely support their adjustment and progress in their new-found circumstances.

Introduction The term ‘resilience’ is on everyone’s lips - from politicians to community service providers to the seemingly endless supply of self-help gurus. The concept is undergoing a renaissance of sorts in contemporary Western society; but why resilience now? One possible explanation is that individuals and their communities are experiencing increased and intensified levels of adversity and hardship, necessitating the accumulation and deployment of ‘more resilience’. Whilst a strong argument could made that this is in fact the case, it would seem that the capacity to survive and thrive has been a feature of human survival and growth long before we had a name for it. Rather than an inherent characteristic, trait or set of behaviours of particularly ‘resilient’ individuals or groups, resilience has come to be viewed more as a common and everyday capacity, expressed and expressible by all people. Having researched the concept for some time now, we believe that we are only marginally closer to understanding this captivating but ultimately elusive concept. What we are fairly certain of is that resilience is more than basic survival but less than an invulnerability to adversity, resting somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Given the increasing prevalence of populations affected by war and other disasters, we are certain however that efforts to better understand the accumulative dynamics of resilience, are now, more than ever, a vital area of public and academic concern. In our contemporary world, the concept of resilience is coming to represent a vital conceptual tool for responding to the complex challenges emerging from broad scale movements in climate change, rural and urban migration patterns, pollution, economic integration and other consequences of globalisation. In this article, the phenomenon of human resilience is defined as the cumulative build-up of both particular kinds of knowledge, skills and capabilities as well as positive affects such as hope, which sediment over time as transpersonal capacities for self-preservation and ongoing growth (Wilson). Although the accumulation of positive affect is crucial to the formation of resilience, the ability to re-imagine and utilise negative affects, events and environmental limitations, as productive cultural resources, is a reciprocal and under-researched aspect of the phenomenon. In short, we argue that resilience is the protective shield, which capacitates individuals and communities to at least deal with, and at best, overcome potential challenges, while also facilitating the realisation of hoped-for objects and outcomes. Closely tied to the formation of resilience is the lived experience of hope and hoping practices, with an important feature of resilience related to the future-oriented dimensions of hope (Parse). Yet it is important to note that the accumulation of hope, as with resilience, is not headed towards some state of invulnerability to adversity; as presumed to exist in the foundational period of psychological research on the construct (Garmezy; Werner and Smith; Werner). In contrast, we argue that the positive affective experience of hopefulness provides individuals and communities with a means of enduring the present, while the future-oriented dimensions of hope offer them an instrument for imagining a better future to come (Wilson). Given the complex, elusive and non-uniform nature of resilience, it is important to consider the continued relevance of the resilience concept. For example, is resilience too narrow a term to describe and explain the multiple capacities, strategies and resources required to survive and thrive in today’s world? Furthermore, why do some individuals and communities mobilise and respond to a crisis; and why do some collapse? In a related discussion, Ungar (Constructionist) posed the question, “Why keep the term resilience?” Terms like resilience, even strengths, empowerment and health, are a counterpoint to notions of disease and disorder that have made us look at people as glasses half empty rather than half full. Resilience reminds us that children survive and thrive in a myriad of ways, and that understanding the etiology of health is as, or more, important than studying the etiology of disease. (Ungar, Constructionist 91) This productive orientation towards health, creativity and meaning-making demonstrates the continued conceptual and existential relevance of resilience, and why it will remain a critical subject of inquiry now and into the future. Early Psychological Studies of Resilience Definitions of resilience vary considerably across disciplines and time, and according to the theoretical context or group under investigation (Harvey and Delfabro). During the 1970s and early 1980s, the developmental literature on resilience focused primarily on the “personal qualities” of “resilient children” exposed to adverse life circumstances (Garmezy Vulnerability; Masten; Rutter; Werner). From this narrow and largely individualistic viewpoint, resilience was defined as an innate “self-righting mechanism” (Werner and Smith 202). Writing from within the psychological tradition, Masten argued that the early research on resilience (Garmezy Vulnerability; Werner and Smith) regularly implied that resilient children were special or remarkable by virtue of their invulnerability to adversity. As research into resilience progressed, researchers began to acknowledge the ordinariness or everydayness of resilience-related phenomena. Furthermore, that “resilience may often derive from factors external to the child” (Luthar; Cicchetti and Becker 544). Besides the personal attributes of children, researchers within the psychological sciences also began to explore the effects of family dynamics and impacts of the broader social environment in the development of resilience. Rather than identifying which child, family or environmental factors were resilient or resilience producing, they turned their attention to how these underlying protective mechanisms facilitated positive resilience outcomes. As research evolved, resilience as an absolute or unchanging attribute made way for more relational and dynamic conceptualisations. As Luthar et al noted, “it became clear that positive adaptation despite exposure to adversity involves a developmental progression, such that new vulnerabilities and/or strengths often emerge with changing life circumstances” (543-44). Accordingly, resilience came to be viewed as a dynamic process, involving positive adaptations within contexts of adversity (Luthar et al. 543). Although closer to the operational definition of resilience argued for here, there remain a number of definitional concerns and theoretical limitations of the psychological approach; in particular, the limitation of positive adaptation to the context of significant adversity. In doing so, this definition fails to account for the subjective experience and culturally located understandings of ‘health’, ‘adversity’ and ‘adaptation’ so crucial to the formation of resilience. Our major criticism of the psychodynamic approach to resilience relates to the construction of a false dichotomy between “resilient” and “non-resilient” individuals. This dichotomy is perpetuated by psychological approaches that view resilience as a distinct construct, specific to “resilient” individuals. In combating this assumption, Ungar maintained that this bifurcation could be replaced by an understanding of mental health “as residing in all individuals even when significant impairment is present” (Thicker 352). We tend to agree. In terms of economic resilience, we must also be alert to similar false binaries that place the first and low-income world into simple, apposite positions of coping or not-coping, ‘having’ or ‘not-having’ resilience. There is evidence to indicate, for example, that emerging economies fared somewhat better than high-income nations during the global financial crisis (GFC). According to Frankel and Saravelos, several low-income nations attained better rates of gross domestic product GDP, though the impacts on the respective populations were found to be equally hard (Lane and Milesi-Ferretti). While the reasons for this are broad and complex, a study by Kose and Prasad found that a broad set of policy tools had been developed that allowed for greater flexibility in responding to the crisis. Positive Affect Despite Adversity An emphasis on deficit, suffering and pathology among marginalised populations such as refugees and young people has detracted from culturally located strengths. As Te Riele explained, marginalised young people residing in conditions of adversity are often identified within “at-risk” discourses. These social support frameworks have tended to highlight pathologies and antisocial behaviours rather than cultural competencies. This attitude towards marginalised “at risk” young people has been perpetuated by psychotherapeutic discourse that has tended to focus on the relief of suffering and treatment of individual pathologies (Davidson and Shahar). By focusing on pain avoidance and temporary relief, we may be missing opportunities to better understand the productive role of ‘negative’ affects and bodily sensations in alerting us to underlying conditions, in need of attention or change. A similar deficit approach is undertaken through education – particularly civics – where young people are treated as ‘citizens in waiting’ (Collin). From this perspective, citizenship is something that young people are expected to ‘grow into’, and until that point, are seen as lacking any political agency or ability to respond to adversity (Holdsworth). Although a certain amount of internal discomfort is required to promote change, Davidson and Shahar noted that clinical psychotherapists still “for the most part, envision an eventual state of happiness – both for our patients and for ourselves, described as f

People move inside and between states as part of globalisation in the twenty-first century, looking for jobs, a family, and an education, fleeing violence, persecution, terrorism, and human rights violations, and coping with climate change, economic hardship, and natural disasters.1 This increased global migration has been a significant milestone in South Africa's post-apartheid transition. The opening of borders has led to an increase in women migrating across Africa, changing historically male-dominated immigration patterns. Muslim women now account for a fraction of the global migration flux. However, few studies have focused on Malawian women's migration experiences, highlighting the need for more research on women in post-apartheid South Africa. This study focuses on Malawian immigrants in post-apartheid South Africa, specifically Chewa and Yawo women. It examines their migration reasons, challenges, and assimilation of Muslim identities. The study highlights opportunities, socio-economic, and cultural obstacles faced by these women, providing a nuanced gendered history. Participants were chosen using snowball and purposive sampling. The study utilised gender, social history, oral history, and transnationalism theory to investigate thirty women's lived experiences and migration patterns. It found that gender dynamics significantly impact migration patterns and experiences in host societies. Women from Chewa and Yawo tribes were found to be more prone to abuse and exploitation than men. International migration often leads to social isolation and abusive relationships for women, highlighting power imbalances. Male immigrants earn higher wages than females, while female migrants send more money home. Chewa and Yawo Muslim women can use their strength to flee and show agency in their host country, potentially causing envy among conventional hosts. This usually leads to xenophobic attacks on foreigners. Hence, the study explores women's agency in migration, highlighting their struggles and aiming to shape their lives. It contributes to the historiography of migration in Africa and South Africa, and the scholarship on the "feminisation of migration." It is also a study about resilience, Africa in Islam, longitudinal experiences of communities, Pan-Africanist worlds, the persistence of memories, and the fluidity of culture, the regional history of Durban and first-generation migrants and labour practices. This dissertation is a trans-disciplinary study with history as the fulcrum. This study is crucial for understanding gender, memory, and African oral history, particularly for women immigrants. It highlights women's active participation in migration, coping strategies, and absorption into host societies. This dissertation covers essential aspects of post-Apartheid South Africa's immigration history. Iqoqa Abantu baphansi phezulu behla benyuka phakathi kwamazwe njengendlela kaqoqazwe ekhulwini leminyaka namashumi amabili nanye, bethungatha imisebenzi, imindeni kanye nemfundo, bebalekela udlame, ukunqunywa, ubunqolobi kanye nokunyathelwa kwamalungelo, ukushintsha kwesimo sezulu, ubunzima bezomnotho kanye nezinhlekelele zemvelo. Ukwanda kokufuduka ngobuqoqazwe kube yigxathu elibalulekile eNingizimu Afrikha emuva koguquko kwahamba ingcindezelo. Ukuvulwa kwemingcele kuholele ekwandeni kofuduko kwabantu besifazane a-Afrikha yonkana, kwashintsha umlando wofuduko obugcwele amadoda. Abesifazane bamaSulumane nabo bayabalwa kuqoqazwe wokufuduka. Nokho, izifundo ezimbalwa esezenziwe zigxile kubafazi baseMalawi mayela nesendlalelo sokufuduka, kugqamisa isidingo solunye ucwaningo ngabantu besifazane emva kwegcindezelo eNingizimu Afrikha. Impokophelo yalesisifundo imayelana nofuduko lwabaseMalawi emuva kwengcidezelo eNingizimu Afrikha ikakhulukazi abafazi bamaChewa nabamaYawo. Ihlola izizathu zokufuduka, izinselelo kanye nokulutha ubuzwe. Lesi sifundo siqhakambisa amathuba, ezomnotho kanye nemigoqwano yamasiko abhekene nabesifazane, kunikezwa izincazelo ezahlukene ngomlando wobulili. Ababamba iqhaza bakhethwa ngokuba kusetshenziswe isampula ye-snowball kanye nesampula ehlosiwe. Ucwaningo lwasebenzisa ubulili, umlando ngokwenhlalo, umlando ngobuciko bomlomo kanye nenjulalwazi ye-transnationlism ukuphenya izendlalelo zabantu besifazane abanga-30 kanye nokhondolo lokufuduka. Ithole ukuthi ubulili ngokwehlukana kuba nesisindo ngokubalulekile okhondolweni lokufuduka kanye nesendlalelo emiphakathini esingethe. Abesifazana ohlangeni lwamaChewa kanye namaYawo kwatholakala ukuhlukumezeka okuningi kanye nokuxhashazwa kunamadoda. Ufuduko ngokwezizwe luvamise ukuholela ezimweni zenhlalo ezikhishwa inyumbazana kanye nobudlelwane obunodlame kubantu besifazane, obugqamisa ukungalingani kwamandla. Abesilisa abazifiki baholelwa kangcono kunabesifazane, ngalowomzuzu abesifazane abangabafuduki bathumela imali eningi emakhaya. Ababesifazane abangamalungu enkolo yamaSulumani bangawasebenzisa amandla abo ukubaleka ukuze batshengise inhlangano esingethe kulelozwe, lokhu kunamathuba okudala ukungaphathi kwabasingethe. Lokhu kuholela esimweni sodlame ngokuhlasela abahambi. Ucwaningo luhlola izinhlangano zabesifazana zokufuduka, ezigqamisa owazo umzabalazo ohlose ukulolonga izimpilo zabo. Ifaka isandla kumlando wokufuduka kwabantu e-Afrikha naseNingizimu Afrikha, kanye nomfundaze "wokufuduka kwabantu besifazane." Kubuye kube isifundo ngokuzimisela, i-Afrikha kumaSulumani, isendlalelo eside ngemiphakathi, egxile kubu-Afrikha emhlabeni, izinkumbulo eziqhubekayo kanye nokuthamba kwamasiko, umlando wesifunda saseThekwini kanye nesizukulwane sokuqala sabafuduki nokukwenziwa okuthinta abasebenzi. Lolu cwaningo luyisifundo esinemixhantela olusekelwe umlando. Lolucwaningo lubalulekile ukuqonda ubulili, inkumbulo kanye nomlando wase-Afrikha ngomlomo, ikakhulukazi abesifazane abangabafuduki. Kugqamisa ukubamba iqhaza kwabesifazane odabeni lokufuduka, baqhamuke namaqhinga kanye nokugwinywa imiphakathi ebasingethe. Lomqulu ufaka izingxenye ezibalulekile ngomlando waseNingizimu Afrikha ngokufuduka emva kwengcindezelo.

This volume focuses on processes, motivations, policies, and practices that influence international migration, the experiences of migrating and settling in a new country, and how these intertwined facets are influenced by intersectional factors and ecological systems and settings. Chapter contributions are by international and interdisciplinary scholars, academics, and researchers from Africa, Australia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. This broad catchment area permitted the volume to examine and interrogate some immigration policies as well as undertake a timely capture of migration and transnational experiences from recent different migratory hotspots in some parts of the world. The volume also captures a broad spectrum of immigrant experiences not necessarily affected or pushed out of countries of origin by political turmoil but by other socioeconomic-cultural factors. Different vectors of social categories are interwoven and mutually reinforcing in migration experiences; the volume examines how transnationality, arising from migration, affects immigrants’ perceived pre- and post-migration expectations and lived experiences in varied spheres including family dynamics, access to services and programs, employment, coping with immigrant and refugee labels, and other related legal and policy-influenced spheres. The volume provides a holistic picture of migration and settlement processes as well as insight and debates on racialization, discrimination, social inequalities, and attendant global remedial processes including equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) approaches that appeal to a general academic audience, undergraduate and graduate students, migration scholars and researchers, policymakers, service providers, politicians, organizational development experts, lawmakers, and legal scholars.

Refugees’ Dreams of the Past, Projected into the Future

Despite the recent significance children's geographies have been afforded within many geographical subdisciplines, their experiences of migration have received relatively little attention. However, children do migrate and their migration is often distinct from that of entire households. In this paper we explore children's migration in southern Africa within the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, focusing in particular on the impacts of moving house on children's sociospatial experiences. Migration has consequences for several areas of children's lives, and the nature of those consequences is shaped by the context within which migration takes place. In southern Africa AIDS is an unavoidable aspect of the sociospatial context, but the impact it has on children varies. This exemplar has wider implications for two areas of geographical research. First, in the paper we advocate the importance of including children's experiences of migration within culturally informed studies of migration. Second, there is a need for research in children's geographies to extend beyond the microlevel. We advocate a refocusing of research beyond children's static relationship to environments to also encompass children's transient geographies in discussions of their life experiences.

Migrant health: a global responsibility

This thesis examines subjective experiences of Polish women migrants in the UK. Since the Accession 8 (A8) of the European Union in 2004 the United Kingdom has experienced one of the largest migration movements from the new member states. Post 2004 the UK has been a common destination for Polish migrants. Currently Polish women migrants in the UK outnumber their male counterparts. Substantial scholarship on the Polish A8 migration to the UK has been undertaken, nonetheless personal experiences of Polish women migrants are still in need of further research. The aim of this thesis is to fill this gap and offer new insights on everyday lived experiences of migration through the eyes of the migrant herself. Combining autoethnography, life story interviews conducted with different generational cohorts of Polish women and fictional texts on mobility as well as secondary data, this thesis explores the complexities of everyday experience of migration in relation to migrants’ social identities, gender, notions of home and belonging as well as legacies of the post-socialist past. Migrant stories in this thesis are linked with experiences and meanings of migration, but also migrants’ feelings and imaginations, opinions, views, and memories. The thesis purposes a multi-layered, polyvocal and complex reflection on subjective experiences of migration. Thus, offers an account of everyday migration experiences which is personal, local and political therefore aware of both discourse and larger socio-cultural and geopolitical panorama, whilst highlighting its dynamic, fluid and complex character.

Women and Migration(s) II draws together contributions from scholars and artists showcasing the breadth of intersectional experiences of migration, from diaspora to internal displacement. Building on conversations initiated in Women and Migration: Responses in Art and History, this edited volume features a range of written styles, from memoir to artists’ statements to journalistic and critical essays. The collection shows how women’s experiences of migration have been articulated through art, film, poetry and even food. This varied approach aims to aid understanding of the lived experiences of home, loss, family, belonging, isolation, borders and identity—issues salient both in experiences of migration and in the epochal times in which we find ourselves today. These are stories of trauma and fear, but also stories of the strength, perseverance, hope and even joy of women surviving their own moments of disorientation, disenfranchisement and dislocation. This collection engages with current issues in an effort to deepen understanding, encourage ongoing reflection and build a more just future. It will appeal to artists and scholars of the humanities, social sciences, and public policy, as well as general readers with an interest in women’s experiences of migration.

Transnationalism is generally acknowledged as a positive agentic force in the literature describing the transnational experiences of older migrants who stretch their lives between global North and global South. What has been less explored is the extent to which migration policies influence the lived experiences of older migrants travelling from global North to global South, particularly for first-generation migrants who could be viewed as ‘returning’ to their home country. Although the number of older Filipino migrants in Australia is increasing, existing research on older Filipino migrants in Australia has been rather limited. Through the examination of data collected from fieldwork and interviews, this research aims to bridge this gap by examining the lived experiences of older Filipino migrants who stretch their lives across Australia and the Philippines. This research finds that, instead of framing their transnational lives as an agentic response, older Filipino migrants in Australia frame their transnational existence in terms of ‘curtailed dreams’, resulting in an experience that is not widely explored in the existing literature. This research, therefore, calls for a more critical examination of transnational experiences of older migrants who live in a single social field between global North and global South.

Some of the most potent analyses of past and present migratory crises, whether prompted by political, ethnic, or religious persecution, war, environmental catastrophe, or economic dispossession, have been produced through the visual arts. Privileged artistic subjectivity should never be conflated with that of a destitute migrant or refugee; however, artists themselves have often wished, chosen, or been forced to migrate to begin diasporic lives elsewhere. In this movement, they cross regional, national, continental, as well as cultural borders.1 Some have been able to return home; of course, their migratory experiences impact the questions raised and the work they produce upon homecoming. Drawing mostly on my research on Lusophone Africa—Angola, in particular—as well as on European diasporic spaces such as Portugal, I shall attend to the concrete ways in which African artists have critically examined a "fortress" Europe that is in denial of its colonial past.2 I shall also attend to an "archipelagic" Africa, which, despite efforts otherwise, is still marked by patterns of mobility (or the desire for it) inherited from colonialism. Despite the formal end of European colonialism on the continent, both Europe and Africa remain spaces of entrenched coloniality, to whose deconstruction cultural and artistic critical discourse has decisively, while also often limitedly, contributed. I shall later elaborate on these ideas through the lens of artworks by Edson Chagas (Angola, b. 1977), Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola, b. 1979), and Mónica de Miranda (Portugal, b. 1976).Working from a variety of personal backgrounds against all sorts of essentialism, African and Afrodiasporic artists have addressed the historical and contemporary complexities of migration, identity, and belonging (see Gilroy 1993). Most notably, artists have produced work informed by the violence of the colonial encounter and its postand neocolonial aftermaths. The migratory artist necessarily negotiates disparate, even contradictory, experiences of belonging, from which an ethical and political positioning may arise. That is to say, through migration, a sense of shared, communal dwelling in the world can emerge: one that is comfortable with a mobile and future-oriented inhabiting of routes across geographies, histories, and cultures, rather than anxious to delineate origins and roots, borders and frontiers (Clifford 1997; see also Glissant 1997, Mbembe 2016, 2010). Of course, such a critical cosmopolitanism, potentially born from the migratory loss of home, can only truly occur when experienced by more than just a few privileged subjects. This situation requires our relentless examination of the systemic limits that global capitalism imposes on a politics and ethics of migration. One focus, of course, should be on the African continent, ridden as it has been by European colonial and neocolonial oppression, predation, and extraction for the benefit of Western and Eastern corporations and African elites (see Ferguson 2006). Another crucial focus should be on Europe, conveniently oblivious of its past colonial conquests and erecting itself ever more in the guise of a fortress, against the delusional danger of an annihilating invasion by black bodies that quickly turn into drowned black corpses at its Mediterranean gates.The multiple complexities of migration have been significantly analysed by Angolan artists. Angola was occupied by the Portuguese for five centuries and indelibly marked by the transatlantic trade of enslaved people to the Americas. The violent history of hinterland settlement began with the so-called pacification campaigns following the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 and continued thereafter with postabolition forced labor (legal until the 1960s), among many other forms of exploitation (see Monteiro 2018). Angola endured thirteen years of liberation warfare culminating in independence (1961–1975)), and then twenty-seven years of civil war that took place both within and beyond the geopolitics of the Cold War (1975–2002).3 Following the end of socialism, the country has gone through a process of economic liberalization, first from the late 1980s to the early 1990s and increasingly since the end of the civil war in 2002. The period of accelerated growth in the 2000s was marked by the consolidation of an oil-financed oligarchic and kleptocratic capitalism, making the country totally dependent on oil revenues (Soares de Oliveira 2015). The decrease in oil prices from 2014 onwards has caused a severe economic and financial crisis, from which the country is still trying to recover. Migration experienced by Angolans, including artists, has been variously determined by these colonial and postcolonial histories— notably, by the long civil war for the younger generation, born after 1975.4 The ways in which migration is examined in these artists' works reflect the historical and contemporary condition of Africa in a globalized world. After broadly looking at how this generation has diversely lived through migration in between postcolonial Angola, Portugal, and beyond, I shall analyse how these themes unfold concretely in some of their artworks.The departure from Angola to study and/or work abroad, an experience shared by most Angolan artists born after 1975, was strongly motivated by the civil war. Men looked to avoid conscription through migration, but the majority found no escape from the war. Its effects were felt in many ways across all levels of Angolan society, and those families with the diasporic connections and economic capacity to send their sons and daughters abroad did not hesitate to do so. These were mostly, although not exclusively, urban, Luanda-based families with ties to the ruling party, the MPLA. The migratory trajectories of these Angolan artists—to Portugal, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, France, Monaco, Cuba, Brazil, Zimbabwe, South Africa, the United States, etc.—and the multiple ways in which migrations have necessarily impacted their work disturb any fixed, stable, and essentialist sense of Africanness. At the same time, however, their practice suggests that the African continent in general, and Angola in particular, constitute a central place from, of, and to which they speak. In fact, since the end of the civil war, some of the artists living in the diaspora have returned to Angola (Edson Chagas, Binelde Hyrcan, Keyezua, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Ana Silva), while others remain connected to the country from abroad (Yonamine, Délio Jasse, Ihosvanny, Januário Jano, Alida Rodrigues), and others have yet to exhibit their work there (Alice Marcelino).This generation includes artists of Angolan descent who, although not born in the country, have inherited their families' memories and experiences. The familial and personal histories of Grada Kilomba, Mónica de Miranda, and Francisco Vidal exemplify the ways in which the broader political, economic, social, and cultural entanglements between Portugal, Angola, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Cape Verde (not to mention Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, Portugal's other former colonial holdings) produced colonial and postcolonial migratory routes (back) to, and cultural and racial diasporic formations in, the former metropole. While these artists are Portuguese by birth, their cultural identities between Europe and Africa, Portugal and Angola, reflect a European postcolonial condition where cultural lives necessarily preclude any homogenous concepts of identity and nation. To further—and positively—complicate this state of things, all three have lived their own migratory experiences: Vidal in New York and Luanda, Miranda in London (and both now live in Lisbon), and Kilomba in Berlin (where she still lives).The Portuguese diasporic context excludes black and other racialized subjects (including migrants, nationals, and those who, although born in Portugal, are not Portuguese due to the primacy of the ius sanguinis over the ius soli of the nationality law),5 and even more so black women, who remain structurally and institutionally barred from a full political, economic, social, and cultural citizenship. These artists' works, alongside those of the Angola-born artists who exhibit regularly in Portugal, disseminate the still invaluable lessons of an identity politics that might elsewhere be perceived as somewhat outdated or excessively divisive. Portugal was the last of the European nations to abandon its African colonies, only doing so because a bloody and unwinnable war—waged in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique (1961–1974)—culminated in the Carnation Revolution's overthrow of the Estado Novo dictatorial regime (1926–1974). Portugal has since cultivated both amnesia around the inconvenient truths of colonial violence and exploitation and nostalgia for the lost glory of the so-called discoveries and the empire. Such amnesia and nostalgia have been repackaged as benevolent and fraternal Portuguese influence around the world, notably in the formerly colonized African countries, through the political-, economic- and cultural-diplomacy project of lusofonia.6 If a political decolonization took place in 1974–1975, epistemic, psychic, and institutional ones did not. Without confounding a privileged diasporic subject with a destitute and racialized national, migrant, or refugee, and without falling into the dangerous traps of essentialism, a politics and ethics of migration in Portugal must be deeply attuned to the urgency of intersectional antiracist, feminist, and anticapitalist struggles.7 Despite the specificity of each context, such struggles, particularly the feminist and anticapitalist, remain similarly urgent in Angola.Artists such as Edson Chagas, Kiluanji Kia Henda, and Mónica de Miranda, among others, have raised pressing issues around migration, identity, and difference in powerfully inventive ways between Angola and Portugal, Africa and Europe. In Found Not Taken (2008-ongoing) (Fig. 1), Edson Chagas's performative actions of walking, finding, and relocating abandoned banal objects to be photographed against the backdrop of urban façades in cities he has inhabited—London; Newport, Wales; Luanda—intend to critically reflect on increasingly global patterns of mediatized and waste-producing mass consumption (or its desire) (see Balona de Oliveira 2015a, 2016, 2017a, 2018a). Chagas proposes alternative, slowed-down relationships to urban space through a sort of relational "retrieval" and rearrangement in space of objects that mass consumption has discarded. As the title of the series indicates, the objects are found, but not taken, acquired, or consumed—except as images—and are, instead, repositioned and reactivated by an artistic recycling of sorts. They become the photographer's fellow travellers for a while, always to be returned to (a renewed spatial relation to) the city. Found Not Taken has a personal, biographical quality which, if not obvious, is nonetheless relevant. It is marked by the experience of displacement and estrangement, first in London and Newport, and afterwards in Luanda, where the long experience of migration and the changes found in the postwar, fast-growing, increasingly gentrified urban landscape prevented any easy and immediate sense of homecoming. Migration and isolation, the urban experience of commuting amid the crowds in London and Newport, and the continued search for a lost familiarity upon his return to Angola are at the core of Chagas's cartographic and archival impulses.8But Chagas gathers transient catalogues and lived encyclopaedias by walking across several sorts of borders. When Found Not Taken was exhibited in the context of Luanda, Encyclopedic City (Fig. 2)—the exhibition curated by Beyond Entropy, which won the Golden Lion for the Angolan Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013—Chagas's performative-photographic encyclopaedia of Luanda "occupied" Venice's Palazzo Enciclopedico, the overarching theme of that year's biennial and title of the main exhibition curated by Massimiliano Gioni (2013), and, more literally, the Palazzo Cini, amid its collection of Renaissance masterpieces.9 This northward movement of occupation recalled and symbolically countered Europe's centuries-old exploitation and stereotypical representation of Africans and the ways in which Eurocentric historical and artistic narratives, including those of Venice and the biennial, have oten omitted, while appropriating, African knowledge and practice. But Chagas and Beyond Entropy made Luanda circulate further: Visitors were invited to take away the photographs, printed as posters and stacked in sculptural sets of varying heights placed on wooden pallets on the floor, in order to make their own version of the catalogue and disseminate the exhibition within and beyond the urban space of Venice. The way the images circulated contained a suggestion of dislocation and movement different from those of capital and commodities and reminiscent of the process of their making.10The several geographic coordinates of Chagas's affective cartography, between South and North, Africa and Europe, migratory displacements and the embrace of an active, unhomely process of unbelonging as the inevitable but also positive outcome of the migratory experience—one which reveals clearly the mythic, unreal nature of supposedly stable identities and circumscribed origins (see Bhabha 1994)—is also evident in Tipo Passe (2012–2014) (Fig. 3) (Balona de Oliveira 2015b & 2017b). Here, the artist presents us with his own version of a possible collection of large-scale passportlike photos of African global citizens (or Afropolitans, in line with Mbembe 2010). The faces of these potential travellers are "identified" by several types of traditional African masks, with all sorts of forms, colors, patterns, and provenances in the African continent, sometimes disrupting national borders (and evincing how artificially they were drawn at the Berlin Conference), and by the hybrid, mixed-origin names (both African and European) given in the titles. These passportlike images can only subvert the logic of defining origins and circumscribing borders that is inherent to the identification documents for which they are usually intended. Here, too, Chagas proposes another type of displacement of bodies and objects in space, both within and beyond the African continent. These travellers' mixed names and ethnicities, as well as their fluid genders and sexualities, are reminiscent of Stuart Hall's important reminder that the question of identity and of its multiple "positionalities" can only be conceived as an endless, always unfinished conversation between being and becoming (Hall 1990; Akomfrah 2012, 2013).Nevertheless, however ethicopolitical the migratory experience might ultimately become, and despite the very commoditization of the globalized art world itself, Chagas's work also continually reminds us that, as Homi Bhabha noted more than twenty years ago in words that continue to resonate powerfully today, one must not lose sight of the fact that "the globe shrinks for those who own it," whereas "for the displaced or the dispossessed, the migrant or refugee, no distance is more awesome than the few feet across borders or frontiers" (1992: 88). This warning is also the driving force behind some of Kiluanji Kia Henda's works, such as the earlier project Self-Portrait as a White Man (2010), comprising The Great Italian Nude (Fig. 4) and The Merchant of Venice (Fig. 5), and the more recent The Island of Venus (2018). Prompted by the migratory crisis in the Mediterranean, in both installations the artist examines European racism and xenophobia historically, that is, as aftermaths of colonialism and slavery. Whereas such an ongoing crisis underlies the former project, it comes decisively to the fore in the latter, almost a decade later.Self-Portrait as a White Man was conceived in the framework of a residency in Venice, during which Kia Henda investigated the fundamental role that enslaved Africans have historically played in the very construction of the city and its accumulation of wealth. Kia Henda also explores the discursive obliteration of this black presence by Europe's pervasive whitewashing of its colonial and enslaving history, despite the many traces left in artistic representation (such as the black Moors often sculpted as the carriers of all sorts of weights in European art). The historical omission, in turn, culminates in the very physical incarceration, deportation, and all kinds of deadly eradication inherent in securitized and criminalizing migratory policies, based on closing borders and access to citizenship and nationality to those coming from the African countries that Europe once colonized. The installation traces the historical ambivalence at the heart of Europe's concomitant fascination for and exploitation and erasure of African wealth and knowledge, while at the same time addressing the ways in which, as a consequence of the colonial encounter, the West has itself become an object of always alienating and frustrated desire for the majority of Africans. The work also critically addresses the unresolved tension between the disposable lives and deaths of the dispossessed African migrants who can hardly cross the Mediterranean by boat (see Mbembe 2003), and the luxurious lives of the rich African elites who fly to Venice in their private jets. This tension is encapsulated in the artist's own experience of taking an Angolan friend's jet ride from Lisbon back to Venice in order to continue his residency project in collaboration with poor Malian and Senegalese immigrants (Kia Henda 2018: 102).Inspired by, while at the same time countering, Manet's white Olympia (where Laure's female blackness is kept in the background), The Great Italian Nude depicts a naked black male body posing regally on a couch with a sultan-like black Venetian mask on his face. Kia Henda's model is his Angolan friend Orlando Sérgio who, according to the artist, was the first black actor to perform, in Portugal, the role of Othello in Shakespeare's early seventeenth-century play Othello, The Moor of Venice (Kia Henda 2018: 102). In Kia Henda's majestic seaside Venetian and somewhat similarly to Manet's and this both the African who Venetian and the so-called of to enslaved who were most often the black Moors that the artist at the in Venice (Kia Henda 2018: Drawing on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, a late play with a around in of and Kia Henda's Merchant was for his by a Senegalese who made a living in of the at the Palazzo the of of African in Europe while to all those who Venice's with of their own the artist invited to for the first time the space of the and with his in his as the due of one of its the historical of enslaved to the contemporary of Kia Henda reminds us that it is Europe that is in by the of the three of and and Shakespeare's line that that is not of Venice the work includes three which the artist to elaborate on the displacement of the dispossessed in of and the of a in European in one through the from and ones by photos in one at a with a for the of the destitute African in a decade at a time when the ongoing migratory crisis in the Mediterranean heights and was by Kia Henda exhibited Island of Venus (Fig. at in Lisbon (Kia Henda & 2018). black floor, an made of concrete construction was by of in concrete of in a of on of which an of white and history and is and for the of many and of only a the black of in the of and drowned black powerfully reminiscent of the deadly of the enslaving The also the to the black access to migrant lives and deaths on photos that were on an These black and recalled Europe's to its historical and contemporary for such crises, as well as the to the visual of a while the mediatized exploitation of African Such were also the through which one to a by the Angolan traditional who for their in in the and in the of some of its by is a for the of one of Kia Henda the of colonialism to the neocolonial and oligarchic of the with the also the of the and the war construction of now due to the Europe's that of a continent that has not its of its to an of European all often into a the of Europe to Portugal, a diasporic for so many Angolans, I these on the and of migration with Mónica de (Fig. a work a across urban of it traces the contemporary landscape of which was as a against potential from to and, several was as the Lisbon in since War it was in although some the other more physical of this construction Lisbon and its from the remain in place and, to have from in this line a of the and almost as by those in as the of the has urban space, both and after the Carnation of destitute from the African countries formerly colonized by Portugal and from of the the spaces this into the early these have been by the for and by and of (where there has been which have and alienating turn, by the and the (see The by the artist and of some of the whose have been these in over time, and across space, historically, and and, the of their ongoing decade in the and installation South (Fig. Miranda these to the urban of this that the of the line from the us of black a a and a and a a Europe, which do not the past and the it also at the often histories of the African who in the liberation the black of postcolonial in of Lisbon the artist has and with and with since Here, the in a version and includes in Portuguese that, of the of the broader historical the construction of this the of and Portugal and the War of the escape of the Portuguese to in and the with the who their after the in in the that in Portugal in independence in and independence of in the civil war between and of and the In this version of the the of and the of past and present and and personal history that was at work in the conversation in the to the the work depicts the landscape of a a of the in one long comprising several images (Balona de Oliveira Its title spatial and not only the photographed turn, the dislocation across the but also the as well as the histories of the and the country, and of own the of the urban in these over the and project more than a decade of research collaboration with and has an archival both political and it to the fact that such ongoing a of the of and other racialized (and in particular, their as and to the nation. behind the as born from an and to the colonial The work of must be similarly

This qualitative study explores the role of religious practices on the migration process and the U.S. lived experiences of Latina/o immigrants. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 Latino/a immigrant adults living in a southern state of the United States. Interviews focused on participants’ migration experiences, religious constructs, and stress responses. Results revealed that religious practices provided strength, well-being, and positive life outlook during the migration process. After migration, religious practices also assisted participants in creating a sense of community/family, as well as provided financial and social support during difficult times. Recommendations for future interdisciplinary research and for practitioners are discussed for individuals working with Latinx and immigrant populations.

Asylum-seekers nowadays undertake multiple journeys before reaching a country of resettlement. In Southeast Asia, several countries are playing important roles as transit locations. This paper focuses on Thailand, which serves as a major transit point for Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers who hope to move to resettlement countries through irregular channels. Drawing on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations from 2018 to 2019, this paper examines the Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers’ migration experiences in Bangkok, and how they plan their onward migration and utilise connection networks. Moving beyond traditional pull-push approach that standardises reasons to flee, this research uses asylum-seeking habitus as a conceptual lens to explore the interactive process between structure (economic and cultural) and asylum-seekers, and individual/communal interpretations of such structural environment that trigger onward migration aspirations of asylum-seekers in a transit country. In Bangkok, because lived experiences do not meet personal and/or familial expectations, insecurity prevails following news from others in their networks, which then triggers onward migratory disposition among Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers. Asylum-seeking habitus as a conceptual lens provides a useful approach in assisting us in understanding asylum-seekers’ vision of autonomy by investigating their changing perceptions of security at different stages of the journey.

This paper recounts the lived experiences of internal migrants in the Russian Federation, specifically those who have moved from the Republic of Kalmykia in the country’s southwest to the capital of Moscow. Recounting exposure to racism and xenophobia, challenges in the housing and employment markets, and negotiating an evolving city, informants offer grounded interpretations of migration within contemporary Russia. In part, the conversations that inform this paper focus on the everyday experiences of Kalmyk migrants in Russia and in turn aim to fill a gap in the existing academic literature on internal migration in Russia. Most migration in Russia is internal, yet we know relatively little about the diverse nature of the experiences of these migrants at their destinations.

This article examines the ways in which gender, motherhood, and ethnicity shape the lived experiences of South and Southeast Asian mothers in Hong Kong. Through in-depth interviews with 54 mothers, we examine, what we term, ‘dialectical social imaginaries’ to understand how these mothers imagine their social surroundings and navigate challenges in this multicultural city, where traditional and progressive gender expectations coexist alongside ethnic diversity and discrimination. ‘Dialectical social imaginaries’ capture how individuals envision living together and interacting with different cultures, highlighting the tensions between following established norms and striving for change. The findings identify three types of ‘dialectical social imaginaries’, which are dialectical in that they swing between conformance to gender norms and transformation, between silence and resistance, and between distancing and belonging. Analyzing the reproductive and creative dimensions of these social imaginaries reveals diverse and often opposing forces of gendered expectations and cultures, demonstrating how socio-cultural forces facilitate and/or restrict individuals’ experiences of migration. This study contributes new insights to gender and migration studies by providing an analysis of the dialectic between social reproduction and transformation, and that of self/other entanglements. It highlights the conceptual utility of ‘dialectical social imaginaries’ for future sociological understandings of gender, migration, and culture.