This book examines the effects of international migration on the shaping of national and gender identities of Spanish women who migrated to the UK between the 1940s and the 1990s from different socio-economic, educational backgrounds and generations. It explores the dynamics between the power of social institutions and women's agency in shaping their identities in two different countries: Spain and the UK. In looking at individuals' formation of identities, the complexity of the social sites of different social classes, educational attainments and generations, is illuminated. This study looks at how gender and nation are appropriated in women's accounts and how representations of gender and nation relate to other significant social phenomena. Differences in empirical realities are mirrored in respondents' accounts. In examining their lives, this study shows the tension between the power of institutions, which were created under particular historical, economic and social conditions, and women's appropriation of institutional discourses in their identities. This book argues throughout that while it is important not to ignore the power of political and economic forces and history as contributors to women's formation of identities, it is at least as important to think of identity as an individual appropriation and creation of individual meanings.
Fifty years of large-scale immigration has brought significant ethnic, racial, and religious diversity to North America and Western Europe, but has also prompted hostile backlashes. In Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity, a distinguished multidisciplinary group of scholars examine whether and how immigrants and their offspring have been included in the prevailing national identity in the societies where they now live and to what extent they remain perpetual foreigners in the eyes of the long-established native-born. What specific social forces in each country account for the barriers immigrants and their children face, and how do anxieties about immigrant integration and national identity differ on the two sides of the Atlantic? Western European countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have witnessed a significant increase in Muslim immigrants, which has given rise to nativist groups that question their belonging. Contributors Thomas Faist and Christian Ulbricht discuss how German politicians have implicitly compared the purported “backward” values of Muslim immigrants with the German idea of Leitkultur, or a society that values civil liberties and human rights, reinforcing the symbolic exclusion of Muslim immigrants. Similarly, Marieke Slootman and Jan Willem Duyvendak find that in the Netherlands, the conception of citizenship has shifted to focus less on political rights and duties and more on cultural norms and values. In this context, Turkish and Moroccan Muslim immigrants face increasing pressure to adopt “Dutch” culture, yet are simultaneously portrayed as having regressive views on gender and sexuality that make them unable to assimilate. Religion is less of a barrier to immigrants’ inclusion in the United States, where instead undocumented status drives much of the political and social marginalization of immigrants. As Mary C. Waters and Philip Kasinitz note, undocumented immigrants in the United States. are ineligible for the services and freedoms that citizens take for granted and often live in fear of detention and deportation. Yet, as Irene Bloemraad points out, Americans’ conception of national identity expanded to be more inclusive of immigrants and their children with political mobilization and changes in law, institutions, and culture in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. Canadians’ views also dramatically expanded in recent decades, with multiculturalism now an important part of their national identity, in contrast to Europeans’ fear that diversity undermines national solidarity. With immigration to North America and Western Europe a continuing reality, each region will have to confront anti-immigrant sentiments that create barriers for and threaten the inclusion of newcomers. Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity investigates the multifaceted connections among immigration, belonging, and citizenship, and provides new ways of thinking about national identity.
This book takes an intimate look at the lives of British migrants in Sitges, an affluent coastal tourist town in Northern Spain and investigates ideas of gender, sexuality, and national identity as they are brought to life through the voices of British lifestyle migrants. Situating Sitges as a specifically affluent and "middle-class" location representing a particular form of "lifestyle migration," this rich and detailed study explores how the experiences of British migrants re-inscribe culturally specific understandings of the relationship between space, place, culture and identity. What ultimately emerges is an account of the complex structural constraints of identity, as British migrants find themselves stuck within the stereotype of badly-behaved Brits Abroad and entangled in highly conservative conceptualisations of gender and sexuality, that leave them unable to live the kind of cosmopolitan lifestyles that they so purposefully sought. This is a fascinating study suitable for researchers in gender and sexuality studies, tourism, sociology, and anthropology.
Imagining Home: Gender, Race and National Identity, 1945-1964 is a powerful examination of ideas and images of home in Britain during a period of national decline and loss of imperial power. Exploring the legacy of empire in imaginings of the nation during a period of decolonization after 1945, it is has become one of the outstanding books about the relationship between gender, race and national identity. Analyzing the role of colonialism and racism in shaping ideas of motherhood, employment and domesticity, it brilliantly traces the way in which Englishness became associated with domestic order and the very idea of home became white, exploring themes that reverberate strongly today as arguments around gender, race and feminism occupy the headlines. Drawing extensively on oral history and life-writing of politicians, journalists, churchmen, health professionals, novelists and film-makers, Wendy Webster examines the multiple meanings of home to women in narratives of belonging and unbelonging. Its focus on the complex interrelationships of white and black women's lives and identities offers a compelling new perspective on this period. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Preface by the author.
A polyphonic collection of voices of migrant women artists in Israel that reflects their individual and collective experiences of migration and in particular, the gendered aspects of uprooting and re-grounding in a steadily expanding transnational reality of the ethno-national state.
This book is the product of a collaborative effort involving partners from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America who were funded by the International Development Research Centre Programme on Women and Migration (2006-2011). The International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam spearheaded a project intended to distill and refine the research findings, connecting them to broader literatures and interdisciplinary themes. The book examines commonalities and differences in the operation of various structures of power (gender, class, race/ethnicity, generation) and their interactions within the institutional domains of intra-national and especially inter-national migration that produce context-specific forms of social injustice. Additional contributions have been included so as to cover issues of legal liminality and how the social construction of not only femininity but also masculinity affects all migrants and all women. The resulting set of 19 detailed, interconnected case studies makes a valuable contribution to reorienting our perceptions and values in the discussions and decision-making concerning migration, and to raising awareness of key issues in migrants’ rights. All chapters were anonymously peer-reviewed. This book resulted from a series of projects funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada.
Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 2,3, Maastricht University, course: Cultural Diversity and Gender in Global Perspective, language: English, abstract: Nowadays it is easy and cheap for Europeans to travel around the world and even to migrate to a new country. On these trips we can gather a lot of experiences and impressions from different cultures which can have an impact on our identities and values. But we don't need to travel far away to recognize that moving and migrating is possible and happening. Especially our western multicultural societies are attracting people from all over the world to work and live here. These migrants also gather experiences and maybe shift their values and build up a hybrid identity. But not all people want to give up their identity. They want to stay in line with the values of their home country. The question is, whether a hybrid identity can also be a national one, or if a conflict is unavoidable. In this paper I will argue, that there are tensions between the two types of identities. To show this, I will first explain multiculturalism and hybrid identities. By introducing nationalism and accordingly national identities in the second paragraph I will explain the points of conflict between the concepts. At the end there is a conclusion.
From its beginnings in the 1970s and 1980s, interest towards the topic of gender and migration has grown. Gender and Migration seeks to introduce the most relevant sociological theories of gender relations and migration that consider ongoing transnationalization processes, at the beginning of the third millennium. These include intersectionality, queer studies, social inequality theory and the theory of transnational migration and citizenship; all of which are brought together and illustrated by means of various empirical examples. With its explicit focus on the gendered structures of migration-sending and migration-receiving countries, Gender and Migration builds on the most current conceptual tool of gender studies—intersectionality—which calls for collective research on gender with analysis of class, ethnicity/race, sexuality, age and other axes of inequality in the context of transnational migration and mobility. The book also includes descriptions of a number of recommended films that illustrate transnational migrant masculinities and femininities within and outside of Europe. A refreshing attempt to bring in considerations of gender theory and sexual identity in the area of gender migration studies, this insightful volume will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as sociology, social anthropology, political science, intersectional studies and transnational migration.
This book is designed to introduce the latest advances in academic research of the identity, nationality and immigration issues in the 21th Century. The book is composed of several defining papers that are essentially associated with so- ciety, culture, national identity and immigration. The articles in the book draw attention to social and cultural issues related to nationalism produced and spread all around the World after the French Revolution The issue of national- ism brought about many related subjects which are not only identity and culture but also political and social movement including migration issues. The opinions in each articles reflect its authors’ own thoughts.
