Session 2: Development of Communities
7th Global Conference
Monday 12th March – Wednesday 14th March 2012
Prague, Czech Republic
The Struggle of Becoming Citizens
Synnøve Bendixsen
Uni Rokkan Centre, Bergen, Norway
The landscape of Oslo changed this spring: within few weeks three tents camps were set up at church properties by asylum seekers and irregular migrants from Iran, Ethiopia and Palestine. This forms part of a longer array of activities by irregular migrants in Norway, which includes hunger strikes, demonstrations, petitions and asylum march.
This paper will examine the tent camps, alongside other public interventions, as moments of “becoming political”, in which irregularized migrants “constitute themselves as political agents under new terms, taking different positions in the social space than those in which they were previously positioned” (Isin, 2002, pp. 275–76). By questioning the political, they makes visible that the political tradition is based on that some human beings are illegal, and that categories such as immigrants and irregulars are articulated against citizens (ibid.). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I look at how irregular migrants, policed as illegitimate outsiders, are attempting to obtain political and social rights. How, if at all, do they in this process reconfigure ideas about citizenship?
Inspired by the works of Engin F. Isin and Aihwa Ong on citizenship I discuss how irregularized migrants resist being reduced to “illegals” or “criminals” and rather attempt to constitute themselves as in need of protection and worthy of citizenship. By examining the performative side of their citizenship struggle, I ask whether they in this process contribute to transforming the meaning of citizenship – or whether they, in the process of mobilizing against the system which defines them as noncitizens – simultaneously enforce established presumptions of what a potential and worthy citizen is?
Negotiating “Bulgarianness” in e-migration. The Cases of Bulgarian Communities in Spain and Greece
Magdalena Slavkova
Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria
One of the important ongoing trends in post-socialist Bulgaria is the enhanced migration of the population outside the borders of the country. The labor emigration began after the fall of Socialism and contributed to the development of new forms of actions and thinking in people. It involved representatives of different ethnic communities (Bulgarians and Roma/Gypsies). Greece and Spain became the most preferred European Mediterranean destinations for work abroad.
In this paper I shall deal with the various aspects of the lives of Bulgarian citizens who currently live in Spain and in Greece and the new signification of “Bulgarianness” generated by this transnational movement. Bulgarian communities in Spain and in Greece are heterogeneous and are formed of various ethnic groups of Bulgarians, Turks and Gypsies. As a result of the development of the Bulgarian communities abroad Sunday schools have been created. The communities need to establish its own structures by which could cooperate successfully with the community members and the institutions in the host and home countries. The schools are far more comprehensive in their public commitments and develop various strategies to demonstrate their affiliation to the motherland and to incorporate the Bulgarian citizens with different ethnic belonging (Bulgarians and Gypsies) into their causes. There are in Spain more than 25 Sunday Schools and more than 5 Sunday Schools in Greece carrying out cultural and educational activities. There are two principal trends whenever we speak about the cultural and educational activities of the Bulgarians in Spain and Greece – the strife for association and the processes of segmentation.
The main aim of the paper is to present the level of participation of the members from different ethnic communities from Bulgaria in Greece and in Spain in the activities, launched by the schools in order to highlight how they negotiate their identities abroad. So, the main research questions are whether the multidimensional structure of the identity of different groups gains new dimensions in e-migration and how they negotiate their ‘’Bulgarianness’?
The paper presents the results of ethnographic fieldwork among Bulgarians and different Romani groups in Spain in 2009 and among Bulgarians and Rudari (Romanian speaking Gypsies from Bulgaria) in Greece in 2011. While interpreting the ethnographic materials gathered during the fieldwork, I will focus on the development of the community/ies abroad.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Postnationalism and its Discontents: Moral Panic and the Development of Muslimophobia in the US and Europe
Saeed Khan
Department of Classical & Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Wayne State University, USA
Postnationalism is a phenomenon that has assumed considerable currency in the United States and in Europe, the former contending with globalization, a global economy and the enervation of American power in light of emerging economic and political competitors. For the latter, the shift from the national to the post-national by way of consolidation of nations into the European Union has not been as smooth a transition as perhaps perceived, with social, political and economic pressures abound. A common consequence on both sides of the Atlantic has been the emergence of moral panic, whereby dominant society has become insecure about its own identity, as new modalities of identity construction are required to reconcile new demographic, cultural and political realities. In both cases, the Muslim community within its area has been perceived as an illegitimate and pernicious threat to its respective dominant cultural stability. This anti-Muslim attitude, Muslimophobia, is less about the perceived threat posed by Muslim than it reflects the anxiety harbored by dominant society in facing a challenge to previously defined and essentialized identity markers.
This paper analyzes moral panic in postnational societies, such as Europe, and those affected by increasing postnational tropes, such as the United States, and its consequences to communities that are defined to reside outside dominant society modalities. In addition, this paper will focus on issues of agency, both of dominant society in its attempt to reclaim its own narrative in light of shifting borders, boundaries and postnational notions of identity, and those of subaltern, migrant communities, in particular, the Muslim community in both the United States and Europe. Finally, this paper will offer potential approaches in creating models of social and cultural inclusion and integration, developing a new, hybridized identity that resides outside existing and conventional lines of demarcation.
Entries (RSS)