Publication details
Rethinking the Concept of Inclusion/Exclusion of Migrants: Ways of Belonging and Non-belonging in Transnational Social Fields
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| Year of publication | 2009 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | The concepts of inclusion and integration are significant parts of both academic and public discourses on migration. These terms and their utilization are rooted in the image of migration as a permanent unidirectional movement between territorially bounded nation-state societies. The transnational perspective points to a variety of migrants' social worlds transcending the borders of nation states and plurality of migrants' belongings and it challenges such a conceptualization of inclusion/exclusion of migrating individuals and groups. This paper discusses the re-conceptualization of the process of inclusion/exclusion of migrants in transnational social fields. It brings attention to the ways of belonging and non-belonging of the migrants to the multiple communities both "here" and "there" and the ways their belongings are contested and transformed. It argues that the frame of belonging is an important empirical question to avoid normative assumptions about migrants' integration into the receiving nation-state container society. Moreover, the transnational perspective raises the question of the link between behavioural participation of the migrants in various social systems both "here" and "there" and a sense of belonging to various civic communities. |
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