Felicitas Hillmann - Trajectories and Imaginaries in Migration

Trajectories and Imaginaries in Migration

This book draws attention to the various factors that characterize migrant flows and mobilities, calling into question familiar concepts such as push and pull, migration as a life project and sociocultural integration. It highlights processes such as flexible migrant routes, temporary and return migration, mental aspects of migration processes and transnationalism, which are organised around the themes of shaping trajectories, frictions in space and the migrant imaginative framework. It brings together work from scholars from Europe and beyond, with the contributions collected emphasizing the social processes and the narrations that underpin the migratory process, which can be seen as the soft side of migration. Too often, this side is neglected when the governance of migration is discussed. The novel ideas expressed here also help to overcome the mechanistic view of migration as a push-pull event. Thus, the book suggests a different understanding of migration and mobility as relational, non-linear and fluid social processes, characterized by instability in migrant life trajectories. Emphasizing the flexibility of migrants and migration and advocating the importance of emotionally charged, individual perceptions as central to migrant decision-making, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, politics and geography with interests in migration and diaspora studies.

Felicitas Hillmann is head of the Research Unit Regeneration of Cities at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space, Germany and holds a professorship on Urban Transformation in International Perspective at Technische Universitt in Berlin, Germany.

Ton van Naerssen is an associate member of the Nijmegen Centre for Border Research (NCBR) at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Ernst Spaan is an assistant professor at Radboud Institute for Health Sciences, and an affiliated lecturer in courses on international migration and development at the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Cover image: Felicitas Hillmann, taken at San Raffaele, Campo La Coronata, Genoa, 2016.

Studies in Migration and Diaspora

Studies in Migration and Diaspora is a series designed to showcase the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of research in this important field. Volumes in the series cover local, national and global issues and engage with both historical and contemporary events. The books will appeal to scholars, students and all those engaged in the study of migration and diaspora. Amongst the topics covered are minority ethnic relations, transnational movements and the cultural, social and political implications of moving from over there, to over here.

Series Editor:

Anne J. Kershen, Queen Mary University of London, UK

The Politics of Integration

Law, Race and Literature in Post-war Britain and France

Chloe A. Gill-Khan

Islamophobia and Everyday Multiculturalism in Australia

Randa Abdel-Fattah

Gender, Work and Migration

Agency in Gendered Labour Settings

Megha Amrith and Nina Sahraoui

Growing Up Muslim in Europe and the United States

Edited by Mehdi Bozorgmehr and Philip Kasinitz

Trajectories and Imaginaries in Migration

The Migrant Actor in Transnational Space

Edited by Felicitas Hillmann, Ton van Naerssen and Ernst Spaan

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/sociology/series/ASHSER1049

Trajectories and Imaginaries in Migration

The Migrant Actor in Transnational Space

Edited by Felicitas Hillmann, Ton van Naerssen and Ernst Spaan

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2019 selection and editorial matter, Felicitas Hillmann, Ton van Naerssen and Ernst Spaan; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Felicitas Hillmann, Ton van Naerssen and Ernst Spaan to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Contents

Felicitas Hillmann and Ton van Naerssen

Joris Schapendonk

Usha Ziegelmayer and Ernst Spaan

Ding Yuan and Ching Lin Pang

Maybritt Jill Alpes

Giulia Borri

Gery Nijenhuis

David Kyle, Saara Koikkalainen and Tanaya Dutta Gupta

Lothar Smith, Martin van der Velde and Ton van Naerssen

Richard Mallett and Jessica Hagen-Zanker

Maggi Leung and Rika Theo

Ton van Naerssen and Felicitas Hillmann

Figures

Tables

Boxes