Relationships between diasporas and their countries of origin have attracted vivid interests of academics and policy makers. Such relationships are often analysed with a focus on diaspora activities and their impact. There are many case studies of diaspora groups’ engagements with their home country, including different channels through which they are carried out. Prominent forms of diaspora involvement include hometown associations (Mercer et al., 2008), remittance sending (Lindley, 2009) and the transfer of social, cultural and political ideas and artefacts (Levitt, 1998; Vertovec, 1999). Most studies, however, do not answer why people coalesce into diasporas, how they frame their relationship with their country of origin and why and how members of diaspora communities choose to engage in homeland-oriented activities. Peoples’ agency and motivation to engage with their country of origin seem to be taken as a given.

Was ist zu diesem Thema bereits bekannt? Asyl bietet Geflüchteten rechtlichen Schutz vor Gewalt und Verfolgung. Ob Asyl auch eine Grundlage für Gewaltfreiheit und einen lebenswerten Alltag schafft, bleibt fraglich. Wie wird eine neue Perspektive eingebracht? Mittels theoretischer Ansätze der sozialwissenschaftlichen Gewaltforschung beleuchtet dieser Beitrag das Zusammenspiel von Asyl, Schutz und Gewalt. Was sind die Auswirkungen für die Praxis? Um zu verstehen, wie Gewalt das Leben anerkannter Geflüchteter prägt, ist es wichtig, deren Geschichten zu hören. Dies gelingt nur durch sorgfältigen Beziehungsaufbau und eine akzeptierende wertschätzende Haltung.

This article examines agency unfolding in the relationships that Afghan migrants and return migrants maintain with Afghanistan. Based on qualitative case studies of Afghan diaspora groups in Germany and the UK and Afghan return migrants in Kabul, we focus on how people engage with and position themselves in relation to Afghanistan. Drawing on Emirbayer and Mische’s tri-dimensional concept of agency in combination with Vigh’s idea of social navigation, we approach affective relations and forms of practical (transnational) engagement as expressions of agency. Research on migrants and return migrants is seldom brought together. However, exploring the types of engagement of these two groups with Afghanistan is telling for three reasons. First, it enables us to identify parallels and differences in the way Afghan migrants and return migrants relate to Afghanistan. Secondly, we uncover how ideas of change vary in different settings and under different socio-political conditions. Thirdly, we demonstrate that ties between people and place are not innate but an expression of agency and self-positioning. These in turn are contingent on individual characteristics and the context in which people are embedded. Compared to policy-oriented discussions on the migration-development nexus and on forms and outcomes of migrant engagements, our study yields a more nuanced understanding of entanglements between agency and engagement among Afghan migrants and return migrants.

The literature increasingly recognises the importance of gender in defining the boundaries between national societies and migrants. But little is still known about the history and changes of mechanisms that shape the role of gender as category of difference. Based on a critical case study of Switzerland, this article examines how gender is implicated in the politics of migrant admission and incorporation and underlying notions of ‘the other’. Drawing on theories of boundary work, we show that gendered representations of migrants are mobilised by different actors to advance their claims and calls for certain forms of immigration control and migrant integration. Since the late 19th century, gendered representations of Swiss nationals and migrant others shift from classical gender ideas to culturalised post-colonial interpretations of gender roles and, most recently, to normative ideas of gender equality. As part of these changes, migrant women moved from the periphery to the core of public and political attention. Concomitantly, categories of difference shift from the intersection of gender and social class to an intersection of gender, culture and ethnicity. Local particularities of Switzerland – the idea of ‘overforeignisation’ and the system of direct democracy – play a significant role in shaping categories. But Switzerland’s embeddedness in transnational fields emerges as equally important. The article expands on recent research and illuminates how changing dynamics of categorisation and othering facilitate the construction of nations and national identities in a transnationalised world.

Recent debates in migration studies target the non-reflexive use of categories that derive from nation-state- and ethnicity-centred epistemologies. However, what a category is and how categorization works remain undertheorized. Our paper addresses this gap. Through a qualitative study on experiences of Othering among migrant descendants in Zurich (CH) and Edinburgh (UK), we scrutinize the perspectival, political, and performative nature of categories. We show how the persons informing our study were highly reflexive when using the category migrant descendant: They contested, negotiated, and navigated it in multiple ways. Although this specific category is firmly embedded in the “national order of things”, it ultimately proved to be inclusive. We argue that reflexivity in the field can not only create space for the often-muted voices of research participants, but also helps to overcome important pitfalls that derive from issues of legitimacy, representation, and power relations in scientific knowledge production.

This articleasks how borders and boundaries manifest themselves in understandings of integration. Drawing on qualitative interviews with migrant descendants living in Zürich, Switzerland, it investigates how understandings of integration are experienced, interpreted, appropriated and modified, in relation to either the self or others. I employ de Certeau’s theory of the practice of everyday life to establish how borders and boundaries are reflected in individual meaning-making, perceptions of self and other andthe ways in which people situate themselves in society. I demonstrate not only that the interplay between borders and boundaries informs specific aspects of migration governance such as integration policies, but also that people employ tactics based on enunciations of integration to act upon the social position they are allocated as a result of ascribed, racialised markers of difference.

Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit den Auswirkungen ambivalenter Männlichkeitskonstruktionen auf die Lebensrealitäten und Handlungsstrategien von afghanischen Geflüchteten in Deutschland und der Schweiz. Wir zeigen, wie Argwohn, Ausgrenzungserfahrungen und rechtliche Prekarität in der Aufnahmegesellschaft in Kombination mit Verantwortungsgefühlen gegenüber Familienmitgliedern ein vergeschlechtlichtes Spannungsfeld für männliche Geflüchtete erzeugen. Dieses ergibt sich aus widersprüchlichen Handlungsimperativen der europäischen Migrationspolitik, prekärem rechtlichem Status und unerfüllten Erwartungen der Familie gegenüber und setzt männliche Geflüchtete einem geschlechtsspezifischen Risiko doppelter Marginalisierung aus.

In recent years, there have been repeated calls to refocus studies of diasporic engagements, especially their conceptual underpinnings, underlying assumptions and units of analysis. Based on a qualitative case study of Afghan diasporic groups in Britain and Germany, I propose a refined approach to such engagements. I combine the distinction between different spheres of engagement with key concepts from relational sociology. Afghans in both countries participate in a plethora of transnational engagements, which vary according to the extent of their orientation towards the public or private sphere. At the same time, clearly delineated groups of people undertake engagements observed in different spheres, which different aims and objectives drive. Although informants' attachments to their home country are important, they are not the only basis on which they act. My conceptual angle seeks to inspire critical, nuanced and theoretically rich research on diasporas as social actors and transnational civic engagement in a wider sense.

In recent years, scholarly interest in boundaries and boundary work, on the one hand, and borders and bordering, on the other, has flourished across disciplines. Notwithstanding the close relationship between the two concepts, “borders” and “boundaries” have largely been subject to separate scholarly debates or sometimes treated as synonymous. These trends point to an important lack of conceptual and analytical clarity as to what borders and boundaries are and are not, what distinguishes them from each other and how they relate to each other. This Special Issue tackles this conceptual gap by bringing the two fields of studies together: we argue that boundaries/boundary work and borders/bordering should be treated as interrelated rather than distinct phenomena. Boundaries produce similarities and differences that affect the enforcement, performance and materialisation of borders, which themselves contribute to the reproduction of boundaries. Borders and boundaries are entangled, but they promote different forms and experiences of inclusion and exclusion. In this introduction, we elaborate the two concepts separately before examining possible ways to link them theoretically. Finally, we argue that an intersectional perspective makes it possible to establish how the interplay of different social categories affects the articulations and repercussions of borders and boundaries. The contributions in this Special Issue address this issue from multiple perspectives that reflect a variety of disciplines and theoretical backgrounds and are informed by different case studies in Europe and beyond.

Wann und wo kann ich ehrlich, wahrhaftig und komplett ich selbst sein? Die Frage nach Safe Spaces steht aktuell hoch im Kurs. Es wäre an der Zeit, das Thema visionär zu denken. Dazu ist die Idee einer Caring Society enorm hilfreich.

Auch nach einem positiven Asylentscheid bleibt der Alltag von Geflüchteten durch Erfahrungen von Unsicherheit und Gewalt geprägt. Dies hat schwere Auswirkungen auf ihre mentale Gesundheit. Um dem entgegenzuwirken, bräuchte es die Anerkennung weiterer Schutzbedürfnisse.

This paper engages with the violent conditions deriving from neoliberal trends in European migration and asylum governance. We explore how continuous precarity, in conjunction with an integration imperative, affects the lives of recently arrived Afghan refugees in Germany and Switzerland. Drawing on critical engagements with the politics of integration and theories of violence, we argue that, in both European countries, Afghans are increasingly forced to earn their right to remain on the basis of labour-market performance instead of obtaining humanitarian protection. Based on qualitative interview data, we show that persons with a precarious legal status are urged to fulfil neoliberal integration requirements to avoid being deported to their country of citizenship. Employing the “continuum of violence” as an analytical entry point, we specify how the interplay and consequences of structural and cultural violence manifest in the way those affected navigate precarious living conditions and uncertain futures in receiving countries.