Caroline Nagel
Biographic Data
| ID | 85605 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Caroline Nagel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Caroline |
| FAMILY NAME | Nagel |
| SIGNATURE | NAGEL C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of South Carolina |
| ORCID | 0009-0000-0152-5800 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 59 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 672 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
‘God’s bringing people to us’
Refugee resettlement agencies in the United States have long relied upon volunteers to do the ‘work of welcome’. In the Southeastern United States, white-dominated evangelical Protestant churches were an important source of volunteers for co-sponsorship programmes created during the Biden administration amid surging refugee admissions. Drawing on qualitative research in South Carolina, this paper examines how evangelical volunteers were drawn to …
Going Rogue
The US refugee resettlement system revolves around the idea of self-sufficiency. Resettlement volunteers have an important role in enforcing refugee compliance with self-sufficiency mandates. Yet self-sufficiency narratives may also conflict with volunteers’ desire to provide welcome and care. Drawing on interviews and participant-observation with volunteers in South Carolina (USA), this paper describes instances of volunteers “going rogue”—that …
Climbing a paper mountain
Political Geography and the urgency of holding space for open and critical inquiry
Withdrawn
The Publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published in Political Geography, 116 (2025) 103268, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103268 . The duplicate article has therefore been withdrawn. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/article-withdrawal
Making spaces for debate in the digital age
Withdrawal notice to 'Making spaces for debate in the digital age' [Political Geography, 117 (2025) 103266]
The Publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published in Political Geography, 116 (2025) 103268, http://10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103268 . The duplicate article has therefore been withdrawn. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/article-withdrawal
Immigration policy in the second Trump administration
Donald Trump's three presidential campaigns have centred on promises to stop unauthorised immigration, whether by 'building the wall' or by enacting the largest mass deportation in American history. To deliver on these promises, Trump has appointed Stephen Miller-an anti-immigration hardliner who was responsible for the first Trump administration's draconian border policies - to a key White House position. Trump is often described as breaking fro…
The next four years
In this introductory essay, we reflect on the significance of the re-election of Donald Trump to the presidency in the United States, and we provide some context for interpreting Trump's second term. Two of Trump's early policy moves-the release of billions of gallons of water from reservoirs in California and the granting of refugee status to Afrikaners-portend four years of politics based on alternative facts, conspiracy theories, and racial gr…
Political Geography in Practice
Care, continuity, and meaningful change
Introduction to the virtual forum
Global Migration
This new, fully updated edition of Global Migration provides students with a thorough and grounded understanding of multiple dimensions of migration, including labour markets, citizenship, border control, integration and identity. Written by two geographers, the book incorporates insights from across the social sciences and is accessible to students in many disciplines. Providing a useful and timely introduction to migration, the textbook address…
Navigating the “Refugee Ecosystem” in Research at Home
In this article, we reflect upon our varied relationships—as friends, advocates, mentors, and researchers—with refugee resettlement agencies and volunteers in Columbia, South Carolina. We describe the organizational networks that support refugee resettlement in our city as a "refugee ecosystem"—a term that captures the overlapping relationships of interdependency, symbiosis, and sometimes competition among refugee activists, advocates, and servic…
To forty more years of Political Geography
Religion, politics, and publics in Lynn Staeheli's work
Doing missions right
Virtual Forum Introduction
Virtual forum introduction
Making time in 2020
At Political Geography, the editorial team's annual editorial offers a chance to reflect on the previous year and to consider new directions being taken both at the journal and in the wider sub-discipline. But reflecting on a year such as 2020 presents several challenges, not least because, individually and collectively, our sense of time has become distorted and disoriented
Christian Short-Term Missions
Thousands of affluent, white, young Americans travel overseas each year on mission trips organised by Christian churches and organisations. Like secular study-abroad and gap-year programmes, contemporary short-term missions (STMs) are informed by liberal cosmopolitan discourses that elevate affinities to ‘humanity’ and ‘the world’ above attachments to nation and locality. Also like secular overseas programmes, STMs aspire to transform young peopl…
Political geography in and for 2020
Making and breaking boundaries in times of transition
Populism, immigration and the Trump phenomenon in the U.S
Refugees in Extended Exile
This book argues that the international refugee regime and its ‘temporary’ humanitarian interventions have failed. Most refugees across the global live in ‘protracted’ conditions that extend from years to decades, without legal status that allows them to work and establish a home. It is contended that they become largely invisible to people based in the global North, and cease to remain fully human subjects with access to their political lives. S…
Dreaming the ordinary
This paper introduces the concept of ‘ordinary’ to analyze citizenship’s complexities. Ordinary is often taken to mean standard or routine, but it also invokes order and authority. Conceptualizing citizenship as ordinary trains our attention on the ways in which the spatiality of laws and social norms are entwined with daily life. The idea of ordinariness fuses legal structures, normative orders and the experiences of individuals, social groups a…
Integration and the negotiation of 'here' and 'there
Immigrant-receiving societies are increasingly emphasizing the need for immigrants to integrate into mainstream life. In Britain, this trend has manifested itself in 'social cohesion' discourses and policies. Discussions about social cohesion have often focused on the residential patterns of immigrant and minority groups in British cities, with the assumption that residential patterns are an indication of social integration. Integration, however,…
Constructing difference and sameness
Contemporary migration has spurred reconsideration of the theoretical concepts used to explain immigrant-host society relationships. Traditional conceptions of assimilation have been an important topic of debate. Some urban sociologists question whether timeworn assimilation models 'fit' contemporary circumstances. Others challenge assimilation theories on a more fundamental level, abandoning notions of 'group adaptation' and focusing instead on …
Citizenship, identity and transnational migration
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the changing relationships between identities, citizenship and the state in the context of globalisation. We first examine the ways in which scholars discuss changes in the ways in which citizenship and political identity are expressed in the context of international migration. We argue that much of the discussion of transnationalism and diaspora cling to an assumption that citizenship remains an important—tho…
Making Publics
As groups struggle to gain visibility and voice in the public sphere and as new publics form, they may expand the sense of inclusiveness within a polity, but these new publics may also rub against broader, hegemonic ideals of 'the' public sphere. This paper utilises the concept of 'regimes of publicity' to explore how marginalised groups are included in the public. Regimes of publicity are the prevailing system of laws, practices, and relations t…
Topographies of Home and Citizenship
Home and citizenship carry contradictory and ambiguous meanings for immigrants as they negotiate lives 'here' and 'there'. We use the concept of topography to analyze the ways in which activists in the Arab-American community draw connections between homes in the United States and in the Middle East. In intensive interviews, we ask activists about how their understanding of home influences their activism and positioning as citizens within the Uni…
Skilled migration in global cities from `Other' perspectives
Geopolitics by another name
International Donors, NGOs, and the Geopolitics of Youth Citizenship in Contemporary Lebanon
In the aftermath of 9/11, Western states have increasingly used the promotion of democracy and civil society as a means of effecting geopolitical aims in the Middle East. Democracy promotion has involved extensive financial support of local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who work to instill (neo)liberal-democratic values and norms among populations that are seen to be lacking in these. This article, in examining the production of citizensh…
Under the Radar”
This article examines the limits of welcome that Christian communities of faith in the U.S. South extend to recent immigrants. We argue that churches are political spaces in which pastors and lay members weigh faith-based conceptions of hospitality against law-and-order discourses and in which notions of universal membership confront racialized immigration politics. Drawing on sixty interviews with pastors and lay ministers in thirty-five churche…
Introduction
In his 1998 book We Are All Multiculturalists Now, American sociologist Nathan Glazer argued, not without some regret, that multiculturalism had won the ‘culture wars’ in the United States, overtur
We're Just Like the Irish
This paper examines narratives of assimilation and belonging as activists attempt to position Arab-Americans as citizens and full members of the American polity. In interviews with activists, the experience of the Irish as immigrants and citizens was often invoked as the paradigmatic example of how immigrants are incorporated as citizens—an example that activists promoted as one that Arabs would follow. By invoking the Irish experience, activists…
Immigration, places of worship and the politics of citizenship in the US South
This article considers the ways in which places of worship serve as sites of citizenship politics in immigrant‐receiving liberal democracies. We approach citizenship in terms of the social practices and everyday spaces through which individuals and groups negotiate the terms of societal membership. Places of worship are both the objects of political debates about immigrant assimilability and citizenship, and sites of political agency in which imm…
Deserving Welcome? Immigrants, Christian Faith Communities, and the Contentious Politics of Belonging in the US South
This article examines articulations of merit and deservingness in relation to immigrants in the US South. In a context of pronounced anti-immigrant sentiment, scholars have rightfully focused on state practices that marginalize immigrants. Yet xenophobia and exclusion are but one set of responses to immigrants. Societies also construct immigrants as meritorious figures: hard workers, entrepreneurs, and upholders of family values. The figure of th…
Rethinking Security
In this article, we analyse the experience of securitization from the perspective of Arab–American and British Arab activists. Based on interviews with over 100 activists in both countries, we explore the ways in which Arab immigrant communities have experienced the enhanced security measures taken by governments. Our respondents describe the ways in which these measures have increased feelings of fear and insecurity within their communities. The…
Nature, environmentalism, and the politics of citizenship in post-civil war Lebanon
More than 20 years after its devastating civil war (1975–1990), Lebanon has seen a burgeoning of environmental activism and discourse. Contemporary environmentalism is articulated largely by Western-educated activists, many of them working in the Western donor–financed non-governmental organization sector. Like romantic nationalists and urban reformers of the late 19th century, these activists view access to green space and nature as promoting pa…
Migration, Diasporas, and Transnationalism
ICT and geographies of British Arab and Arab American activism
Current literature on migrant transnationalism highlights the role of new information and communication technologies (ICT) in facilitating lives that are situated simultaneously 'here' and 'there'. Yet discussions of transnationalism and ICT obscure many complexities because of the tendency to focus on migrants' connections with 'homeland'. In this article, we consider more broadly the spatiality of migrant activism and the different ways that IC…
Whose awakening is it? Youth and the geopolitics of civic engagement in the ‘Arab Awakening’
The ‘Arab Awakening’ in 2011 witnessed a series of uprisings that had many different influences and motivations, but that collectively unsettled governing and rule in the region. Amongst the influences on the uprisings are geopolitical interests and strategies on the part of international organisations and programmes that promote civic engagement and citizenship on the part of young people in the region. These programmes had multiple goals, inclu…
Muslim Political Activism or Political Activism by Muslims? Secular and Religious Identities Amongst Muslim Arab Activists in the United States and United Kingdom
Scholarship on Muslim political mobilisation in the West has developed as an important counterpoint to public discourse, which has tended to cast Muslims as a threat to social cohesion, liberal democracy, and national security. But even as scholarly literature has shed light on civic participation among Muslims, it has sidelined the diversity of political identities and values that motivate them. Most, if not all, Muslims in the West find their i…
Navigating the “Refugee Ecosystem” in Research at Home
In this article, we reflect upon our varied relationships—as friends, advocates, mentors, and researchers—with refugee resettlement agencies and volunteers in Columbia, South Carolina. We describe the organizational networks that support refugee resettlement in our city as a "refugee ecosystem"—a term that captures the overlapping relationships of interdependency, symbiosis, and sometimes competition among refugee activists, advocates, and servic…
Brexit, race and migration
This timely series of interventions scrutinises the centrality of race and migration to the 2016 Brexit campaign, vote and its aftermath. It brings together five individual pieces, with an accompanying introduction, which interrogate different facets of how race, migration and Brexit interconnect: an examination of the so-called left behinds and the fundamental intersections between geography, race and class at the heart of Brexit motivations and…
Immigration policy in the second Trump administration
Donald Trump's three presidential campaigns have centred on promises to stop unauthorised immigration, whether by 'building the wall' or by enacting the largest mass deportation in American history. To deliver on these promises, Trump has appointed Stephen Miller-an anti-immigration hardliner who was responsible for the first Trump administration's draconian border policies - to a key White House position. Trump is often described as breaking fro…
Virtual forum introduction
The legacies of the U.S. Civil Rights Act, fifty years on
Farm Laborers and the “New Urban Politics”
This paper examines the provision of services to farm labor as an extension of the “new urban politics.” The new urban politics have focused on the position of cities in the emerging global economy and the efforts of elite agents in cities to manipulate that position. The issues involved in service provision, however, blend the scale and economic development questions currently at the center of debate in urban political analyses with questions of…
The Age of Migration
Hidden minorities and the politics of 'race'
This paper uses a case study of activists in London's Arab communities to address the marginalisation of certain groups in academic analyses of 'race' and ethnicity. Theorisation of 'race' has become increasingly sophisticated, emphasising the fluidity of racial identities and the contextual specificity of racial ideologies and racialised practices. Yet very few empirical analyses of 'race' stray from the rigid categories of 'race' and ethnicity …
Hidden minorities and the politics of ‘race’
This paper uses a case study of activists in London's Arab communities to address the marginalisation of certain groups in academic analyses of 'race' and ethnicity. Theorisation of 'race' has become increasingly sophisticated, emphasising the fluidity of racial identities and the contextual specificity of racial ideologies and racialised practices. Yet very few empirical analyses of 'race' stray from the rigid categories of 'race' and ethnicity …
Migration, Diasporas, and Transnationalism
Geopolitics by another name
Constructing difference and sameness
Contemporary migration has spurred reconsideration of the theoretical concepts used to explain immigrant-host society relationships. Traditional conceptions of assimilation have been an important topic of debate. Some urban sociologists question whether timeworn assimilation models 'fit' contemporary circumstances. Others challenge assimilation theories on a more fundamental level, abandoning notions of 'group adaptation' and focusing instead on …
Citizenship, identity and transnational migration
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the changing relationships between identities, citizenship and the state in the context of globalisation. We first examine the ways in which scholars discuss changes in the ways in which citizenship and political identity are expressed in the context of international migration. We argue that much of the discussion of transnationalism and diaspora cling to an assumption that citizenship remains an important—tho…
Skilled migration in global cities from `Other' perspectives
We're Just Like the Irish
This paper examines narratives of assimilation and belonging as activists attempt to position Arab-Americans as citizens and full members of the American polity. In interviews with activists, the experience of the Irish as immigrants and citizens was often invoked as the paradigmatic example of how immigrants are incorporated as citizens—an example that activists promoted as one that Arabs would follow. By invoking the Irish experience, activists…
Topographies of Home and Citizenship
Home and citizenship carry contradictory and ambiguous meanings for immigrants as they negotiate lives 'here' and 'there'. We use the concept of topography to analyze the ways in which activists in the Arab-American community draw connections between homes in the United States and in the Middle East. In intensive interviews, we ask activists about how their understanding of home influences their activism and positioning as citizens within the Uni…
Rethinking Security
In this article, we analyse the experience of securitization from the perspective of Arab–American and British Arab activists. Based on interviews with over 100 activists in both countries, we explore the ways in which Arab immigrant communities have experienced the enhanced security measures taken by governments. Our respondents describe the ways in which these measures have increased feelings of fear and insecurity within their communities. The…
Integration and the negotiation of 'here' and 'there
Immigrant-receiving societies are increasingly emphasizing the need for immigrants to integrate into mainstream life. In Britain, this trend has manifested itself in 'social cohesion' discourses and policies. Discussions about social cohesion have often focused on the residential patterns of immigrant and minority groups in British cities, with the assumption that residential patterns are an indication of social integration. Integration, however,…
Making Publics
As groups struggle to gain visibility and voice in the public sphere and as new publics form, they may expand the sense of inclusiveness within a polity, but these new publics may also rub against broader, hegemonic ideals of 'the' public sphere. This paper utilises the concept of 'regimes of publicity' to explore how marginalised groups are included in the public. Regimes of publicity are the prevailing system of laws, practices, and relations t…
Introduction
In his 1998 book We Are All Multiculturalists Now, American sociologist Nathan Glazer argued, not without some regret, that multiculturalism had won the ‘culture wars’ in the United States, overtur
ICT and geographies of British Arab and Arab American activism
Current literature on migrant transnationalism highlights the role of new information and communication technologies (ICT) in facilitating lives that are situated simultaneously 'here' and 'there'. Yet discussions of transnationalism and ICT obscure many complexities because of the tendency to focus on migrants' connections with 'homeland'. In this article, we consider more broadly the spatiality of migrant activism and the different ways that IC…
Reading Peter Hopkins' The Issue of Masculine Identities for British Muslims After 9/11
Muslim Political Activism or Political Activism by Muslims? Secular and Religious Identities Amongst Muslim Arab Activists in the United States and United Kingdom
Scholarship on Muslim political mobilisation in the West has developed as an important counterpoint to public discourse, which has tended to cast Muslims as a threat to social cohesion, liberal democracy, and national security. But even as scholarly literature has shed light on civic participation among Muslims, it has sidelined the diversity of political identities and values that motivate them. Most, if not all, Muslims in the West find their i…
Dreaming the ordinary
This paper introduces the concept of ‘ordinary’ to analyze citizenship’s complexities. Ordinary is often taken to mean standard or routine, but it also invokes order and authority. Conceptualizing citizenship as ordinary trains our attention on the ways in which the spatiality of laws and social norms are entwined with daily life. The idea of ordinariness fuses legal structures, normative orders and the experiences of individuals, social groups a…
Immigration, places of worship and the politics of citizenship in the US South
This article considers the ways in which places of worship serve as sites of citizenship politics in immigrant‐receiving liberal democracies. We approach citizenship in terms of the social practices and everyday spaces through which individuals and groups negotiate the terms of societal membership. Places of worship are both the objects of political debates about immigrant assimilability and citizenship, and sites of political agency in which imm…
Whose awakening is it? Youth and the geopolitics of civic engagement in the ‘Arab Awakening’
The ‘Arab Awakening’ in 2011 witnessed a series of uprisings that had many different influences and motivations, but that collectively unsettled governing and rule in the region. Amongst the influences on the uprisings are geopolitical interests and strategies on the part of international organisations and programmes that promote civic engagement and citizenship on the part of young people in the region. These programmes had multiple goals, inclu…
Reconfiguring Belonging in the Suburban US South
In the past few decades, a diverse body of scholarship has complicated the image of American suburbs as spaces of white, middle-class homogeneity. Revisionist suburban histories and accounts of African American and immigrant suburbanization have drawn attention to the longstanding presence of non-white others in US suburbs. Yet despite diversification, white privilege remains deeply entrenched in suburbia. This article explores the shifting chara…
Under the Radar”
This article examines the limits of welcome that Christian communities of faith in the U.S. South extend to recent immigrants. We argue that churches are political spaces in which pastors and lay members weigh faith-based conceptions of hospitality against law-and-order discourses and in which notions of universal membership confront racialized immigration politics. Drawing on sixty interviews with pastors and lay ministers in thirty-five churche…
Model immigrants and undesirable aliens
The legacies of the U.S. Civil Rights Act, fifty years on
Political science (49 works) · Sociology (45 works) · Law (43 works) · Politics (36 works) · Gender Studies (27 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (24 works) · Immigration (21 works) · Law (21 works) · Political economy (20 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (16 works)