Paper short abstract:

The paper examines processes of integration and transnational activities of people who have migrated from the Philippines to Iceland. In my analysis I focus on migrants’ agency as well as structures of inclusion and exclusion.

Paper long abstract:

The prominence of research on transnational relations, multiple identities and anti-essentialist approaches have challenged anthropological research on ethnicity, migration and multicultural society. This occurs in the context of rising politics against multiculturalism in Europe. My analysis focuses on the relationship between individual transnational activities and integration based on research among people who have migrated to Iceland from the Philippines in the last two decades. While working mostly in low paid jobs in Iceland, most of them participate in family life in their countries of origin based on solidarity, obligations and reciprocity. The transnational practises of sending remittances and keeping in touch with family "back home" shape the meanings of both places. The paper will take people's agency and diverse experiences into account as well as the larger structures that limit their activities, such as the changing labour market in Europe that increasingly excludes those coming from outside Europe.

Paper short abstract:

Through stories of female migrants from the former Soviet Union, processes of multiple belonging and subject positions at the intersection of gender, class and ethnicity, are presented. Both inclusion and exclusion of migrants and mutually competitive discourses in EU migration policy are analysed through a lens of their transnational activities.

Paper long abstract:

The contribution will, through the analysis of life stories of women from the former Soviet Union in Slovenia, present their conceptualisations of 'home', ethnic and cultural belonging. Processes of multiple belonging and identity formation, traced in the stories, point to the complexity and fluidity of migrant subjectivities and reveal multiple subject positions at the intersection of gender, class and ethnicity. In this respect, ethnic and cultural belongings are themselves fluid, and context-dependent as neither the 'country of origin' nor the 'new society' can be understood as homogenous, static entities. However, transnational movement causes contradictory processes that pertain to both inclusion and exclusion of migrants and contain mutually competitive discourses: the idea of human rights and equal treatment of all individuals; and the exclusion from different rights (for instance, social and employment rights, inability to gain dual citizenship, privileging the 'classical marriage' model) and racisms (for example, the 'sexualised' images of women from the former Soviet Union as exotic dancers and prostitutes, the construction of the 'Eastern female') experienced by migrants. I will trace such a contradiction in EU discourses, which both promote freedom and openness and create new stratifications by severely restricting transnational movement of third-country nationals across the EU. The paper will reveal the heterogeneity and diversity of individual experiences and argue that heterogeneity of migrants might be a crucial starting point for devising integration policies which should address different migrants' needs and experiences and their relation to the country of origin through various transnational practices.

Paper short abstract:

Addressing of issues such as multiple identities, national and ethnic identities, memory, sense of belonging and transnational families I seek to explore the identities and every day life of elderly women with Ingrian background in the context of the post-Soviet cultural transformation, migration to Finland and transnational experiences.

Paper long abstract:

The collapse of the Soviet system followed by the difficult cultural transformation together with ethnic mobility and transnational migration, which have specifically increased on both sides of the Finnish-Russian border in 1990s, have had an impact on identity formation process, inter- generational relation and family forms in the Finnish-Russian borderland. This paper focuses on the Ingrian Finns case, an ethnic group which was subjected to the discriminative Soviet policy having been significantly affecting the people's every day life and identities. This paper is documentary based, and contains the in-depth-interviews of elderly women with Ingrian background. Some of the women have moved to Finland, while others have stayed in Russian Karelia (Petrozavodsk). Addressing of issues such as multiple identities, national and ethnic identities, memory and sense of belonging I seek to explore these women's identity formation and reconstruction process in the context of the post-Soviet cultural transformation and migration to Finland. As all the women are involved in transnational families across the Finnish-Russian border I also aimed at the examination of their role in those, and the effect of transnational experiences upon their identities.

Paper short abstract:

The Systems of Mutual Assistance among the Africans in Moscow is important to undestand and research because these systems in large part form of social and cultural adaptive process Africans in Russia. Four systems of mutual assistance have been singled out for the research; all the kinds of assistance were studied: practical, information, psychological.

Paper long abstract:

Four systems of mutual assistance have been singled out for the research:

• the assistance the African newcomers get from their relatives that remain in home countries;

• the assistance the already well-adapted in Moscow Africans provide to their relatives in home countries;

• the assistance the well-adapted Moscow Africans provide to their recently arrived compatriots;

• the assistance the African newcomers get from Russians.

All the kinds of assistance were studied: practical (financial support, accommodation, etc.), information (sharing the

knowledge necessary for successful interaction with the immigration services, university administration, etc.),

psychological (support in hardships, spending leisure time together, etc.).

It was also important for us to find out the factors affecting the assistance providing and their strength. The most

significant among them are as follows:

• the degree of kin and affinity closeness;

• gender;

• ethnic origin;

• religion;

• country of origin.

The methods employed are questionnaire interrogation and interview, well-elaborated and recognized as highly valid

in contemporary social anthropology.

The significance of the research is determined not by its academic importance only but by its possible and desirable

practical outcomes as well: Its results can be used for improving the Moscow Africans' position what will no doubt be

beneficial for the Russian society as a whole.

Paper short abstract:

There is a significant difference between the previous waves of Polish migrants and the outflow of people from Poland after the EU expansion. Information technologies enable post-accession migrants to participate actively in an ongoing dialogue with those who stayed in the home country.This paper discusses an electronic newspaper forum as an example of transnational space of participation in a recreated civil society.

Paper long abstract:

There is a significant difference between the previous waves of Polish migrants and the massive outflow of people from Poland after the EU expansion. Information technologies enable post-accession migrants to participate actively in an ongoing dialogue with those who stayed in the home country about, among others, various social issues related to the process of the post-communist transformation. This paper discusses an electronic newspaper forum as an example of transnational space of participation in a recreated civil society.

Recently there has been an on-going debate in the Polish media about a possible return of the post-04 migrants. Newspapers and magazines emphasise the economic (very strong Polish currency) as well as the political arguments (change of a government for the more liberal one) in order to explain that a mass return might happen.

Both migrants and 'non-migrants' make comments on the issues and they post their views on internet forums of a number of e-papers. Anchoring the study in narrative and discourse analyses, I shall investigate topics and lines of argumentation of forum participants. I shall also describe the differences and similarities between "non-migrants'" and migrants' entries. In doing so I hope to shed a light on the role of such internet sites as translocal platforms of a new form of involvement in a public sphere.

The data come from approximately 350 entries on an internet forum triggered by newspaper reports and articles in the electronic version of the 'Gazeta Wyborcza' between January and March 2008.

Paper short abstract:

Arising from my research in the transnational milieu of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), this paper discusses a multi-faceted understanding of group identity and cohesion; One that explains the minutiae of mutuality as well as alterity in understanding social groups.

Paper long abstract:

Three key issues arise from my research in the transnational milieu of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI): 1) how mutuality is maintained at a distance; 2) how mutuality between FoEI activists is constituted; 3) how attention to the specific dynamics of mutuality is critical to understanding group cohesion. FoEI is a long-standing international federation of environmental non-governmental organisations. It is made up of activists who participate in FoEI from their respective homes all around the world and identify themselves as belonging to what they call the "FoE family". Mutuality at a distance is based on shared work and daily communication done by telephone and over the Internet. In practice these media 'fold' the geographical distance between the activists. However, an exploration of FoEI annual meetings shows that this mutuality largely depends on certain face-to-face practices carried out during these events. In fact, these annual meetings can be understood as rituals that establish new activists' initial sense of mutuality and reinforce existing relations. The practices of communion and communicative action within these rituals provide concrete insights into the constitution of mutuality. These findings challenge notions of identity as defined primarily through alterity. In particular, the activists' experiences of mutuality at a distance highlight processes where alterity is only one of the many aspects involved in the way their group coheres. Consequently, what is called for is a more multi-faceted understanding of group identity and cohesion; One that explains the minutiae of mutuality as well as alterity in understanding social groups.

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Paper short abstract:

International migration flows belong to the global processes. Experiences of contemporary migrants are shaped not only by the involvement in cross-border mobility but also (post) modern transformations in society. Taking the case of Poles living in Iceland I am going to discuss the shifting notions of national identity, community and kinship.

Paper long abstract:

International migration flows belong to the global processes. Experiences of contemporary migrants are shaped not only by the involvement in cross-border mobility but also (post) modern transformations in society. Their identities, modes of belonging, family patterns, associations and networking are as much influenced by migration as so-called global culture in which migrants participate.

Taking the case of Poles living in Iceland I am going to discuss the shifting notions of national identity, community and kinship. I will present different linkages Polish migrants establish with the sending country. However, contrary to findings from other scholarly works, sustained contacts Poles keep with place of origin does not necessarily lead to establishing transnational community. I suggest then, that transnationalism in migration studies should not be reduced to the various practices migrants pursue across the borders, but more as a condition and potential for emergence transnational social spaces.

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to deal with the nowadays life of ‘Cambodian refugees’ in France. A critic's attitude forces us to problematize the ‘victim’ category, by focusing on the memories’ socialization which this population elaborate in the multicultural French society. By stressing on the naturalization we aim to complexify this collective identity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is about a fieldwork with Cambodian refugees in Ile de France. More in particular it is focused, and identifies, Cambodian refugees which are passed through the French asylum dispositive. By following the critical anthropological perspective in refugees studies, aim of the ethnography is questioning the self-reduction which laws and subjectivity experts make, by constructing a refugee which is cultural and ethnical fixed.

Existential anthropology will be useful to approach refugees' experiences and memories in their social dimension. This forces us dealing with relations between the first and second generation, and face the silences which the 'survivors' deserve to their children in everyday interactions and growth. Silences which seem not to deal with the work which this diaspora make, consisting in a transnational activity of claiming recovery. It's by the articulation of this two expressions of the genocidal violence, which can help us to problematize the 'survivor' category. The enejeux is positioning their experiences, here and now, in the arriving national-state; this implies face the particular citizenship which French multicultural society promote. Anthropology, as the critique of the common sense, should so investigate how the self-evidences of a belonging are changed and perceived by those citizens; how the agency is mold, in the social and domestic, space by 'khmer' and 'french' cosmological references.

Focusing on the passage, this people chose, by refugees status to naturalization, ask us to reconsider analytic categories, and the interpretative violence into which social sciences can incur.