Flavia Cangià
Biographic Data
| ID | 72621 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Flavia Cangià |
| GIVEN NAMES | Flavia |
| FAMILY NAME | Cangià |
| SIGNATURE | CANGIÀ F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Neuchâtel |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0830-4477 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Rooted digitalism
This article examines how a specific group of professional remote workers (laptop/knowledge workers in Europe) negotiate mobility and immobility through remote work across the life course. It draws on two case studies conducted between 2020 and 2022: remote working trends in the Swiss IT sector and the South-working phenomenon in Italy, through which professionals returned, often to Southern Italy, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. I introd…
Rescue Routes
This article explores dogs’ mobilities in the context of canine adoption and rescue. Drawing on an autoethnographic account of adopting a Romanian dog and on my involvement in dog rescue in Switzerland, it examines how canine adoption is not a linear or purely logistical process but a form of interspecies im/mobility governed by intersecting regimes of mobility and categorization. The article highlights the complex nature of animal rescue routes …
South-Working
This article explores the experiences of professionals who, prompted by the pandemic, returned to their hometowns in Italy while continuing to work remotely, a trend known as 'South-Working'. I explore how the pandemic changed these individuals' usual mobility routines and led them to return home and reconsider life priorities, all while leveraging digital remote work and new mobility strategies. I draw upon ethnographic fieldwork, including onli…
Immobile subjectivities
This article puts forward the concept of immobile subjectivities to understand the ambivalence marking the condition of existential immobility in migration. I look at the experiences of two migrant women in Switzerland—a refugee and the partner of a mobile professional—who each face the predicaments of mobility and yet continue to aspire to a career in the face of uncertain and unstable work. The trajectories of migrants who, like these two women…
Gender and the career trajectories of highly skilled Syrian refugees in Switzerland
This article looks at the role of gender relations and norms in the (re)making of career trajectories of highly skilled Syrian refugees in Switzerland. We explore how refugees encounter gender regimes while making sense of their present work situation vis-à-vis their career plans. We draw upon a qualitative study conducted with 27 highly skilled Syrian refugees in Switzerland. How do refugees encounter different gender regimes in Switzerland? Wha…
From ‘digital nomadism’ to ‘rooted digitalism
This article explores the interplay between digital work and mobility through a look at the career trajectories, remote work practices and im/mobilities of professionals in the information technology (IT) sector. We draw upon a qualitative study conducted with IT professionals who work remotely for Swiss or Swiss-based international companies. IT professionals have been pioneers in practising virtual work long before the outbreak of the COVID-19 …
Skills on the move
This article explores how highly skilled migrants make sense of and subjectively validate their skills when in search of employment in a new country. With the use of a transnational perspective, we suggest that in the context of migration, skills can only be properly understood if we consider the multiple locations and events in people's life trajectories. In addition to foregrounding the spatial context, we also explore skills through a temporal…
(Im)mobilities, waiting and professional aspirations
This article contributes to emerging research on the dynamics of mobility and immobility in forced migration through a special focus on the experience of waiting in refugees’ professional life. Wide research across the social sciences explores the dynamic relationship between migration control systems and migrants’ experiences of time through the analytical lens of “waiting”. However, it missed considering how the experience of waiting impinges o…
(Im)Mobile imagination. On trailing, feeling stuck and imagining work on-the-move
Emerging research focuses on the role of time in the context of mobility and explores the conditions of ‘wait’ and ‘stuckness’ as conceptual tools for understanding the tempos and socio-cultural implications of mobile experiences. This paper contributes to this research by exploring these conditions in the context of work and geographical mobility, with a special focus on people who migrate and follow their working partners in international profe…
Exploring the interplay between (im)mobility and imagination
Time and family on the move
Under conditions of global economy, geographical mobility becomes an important aspect of the working lives for a wider range of professionals. At times, these people move with their families. The relocation to a new country can entail changes for the whole family, in particular for the partner, who can experience a more pronounced alteration of work-family relations. Especially for dual career couples, with both partners employed before migration…
Switzerland doesn’t want me” Work, precarity and emotions for mobile professionals’ partners
A wide range of professions demands mobility as a requisite for “excellence”, success and “good performance”. At the same time, more precarious and flexible conditions, ranging from unemployment, to temporary, free-lance and self-employed occupations, now characterize the mobile trajectories of a large number of professionals and their partners. What is the emotional cost of these conditions in mobility? How do mobile professionals’ partners feel…
Family, Boundaries and Transformation. The International Mobility of Professionals and Their Families
Two dominant images of migrant professionals, also known as “expats”, have long been common, in the social sciences: on the one hand, they were described as super-mobile individuals, who easily move between places with no time frame in mind, with the openness to engage with diversity; on the other hand, more recent studies challenged the idea of “expat” cosmopolitanism, and investigated the boundaries constituted by these people in the course of …
When "expatriation" is a matter of family. Opportunities, barriers and intimacies in international mobility
This special issue aims at understanding “expatriate” mobility with a special focus on the role of family and intimacy, and brings together different case-studies, built through different theoretical perspectives. These allow approaching “expatriate” mobile families along two main lines: as part of the making of life trajectories, and as these are shaped by, and are shaping, professional trajectories. This editorial highlights the contributions o…
A sociocultural approach to mobile families
This paper proposes a sociocultural perspective of mobility, of which migration is only one case, with a focus on mobile families. Consistent with mobility studies, sociocultural psychology of the lifecourse proposes to study both the sociocultural conditions of mobility, and the perspective of mobile people. In addition, in this article, we consider interrelated lives in mobility. We discuss the specific case of one family documented as part of …
Precarity, Imagination, and the Mobile Life of the 'Trailing Spouse
This article investigates the experiences of mobility and work transition for some "trailing spouses" following their partners in professional overseas assignments. It draws upon in-depth interviews conducted in Switzerland both with female and male accompanying spouses, in order to illustrate some aspects characterizing the subjective experience of precarity for these people living a mobile life, when career trajectories and occupational identit…
Childhoods as political projects
Recent studies in the social sciences have focused the attention on the role of children in cultural politics, in particular on children’s experiences in nationalism, as well as on their participation in inter-ethnic relations. In line with this research, this study aims to investigate the relationship between childhood and political action and to conceptualize “childhood” as a contested political notion. More specifically, it discusses variation…
Emotions and symbolic boundaries. Reflections on youths' views about migration in Italy
Emotions can play a significant role in the way individuals learn about, adopt or reject the conceptual distinctions that categorize people and groups along different lines of belonging. In particular, in the experience of personal and others' migration, individuals can be confronted with a variety of emotions, and can refer to various emotion categories in order to make sense of the possible differences and similarities between themselves and ot…
Written Emotional Disclosure and Boundary Making. Minority Children Writing About Discrimination
The present paper explores how “written emotional disclosure”, in particular writing about personal feelings and thoughts concerning discriminatory events, can represent an important opportunity for children to engage in the transformation of categorical boundaries through complex cognitive and emotional processes. In particular, the paper explores from a comparative perspective: 1) how minority and migrant children express their opinions about p…
The Hindu Rights Action Force and the Definition of the 'Indian Community' in Malaysia
The Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) started in 2006 as a coalition of non-governmental organizations and various individuals struggling for the preservation and protection of Hindus' rights in Malaysia. Although the coalition began as a religious movement, it ended up widening the scope of its mandate so as to include various demands for social and economic rights. The present paper describes some representations of the 'Indian community' as …
Images of Edo
In contemporary Japan, people labeled as "burakumin" ('hamlet people') are commonly described as the descendants of Tokugawa-era outcasts of Japan, who were engaged in special occupations (e.g., leather industry, meat packing, street entertainment, drum making) and compelled to live in separate areas. Despite the heterogeneity of these populations, determination of "buraku origin" (buraku shusshin) has remained fixed over time and is based on one…
Children of Kinegawa' and the transformation of the 'buraku identity' in Japan
The present article explores the way children engaged with the buraku issue in Japan shape the collective discourses concerning the 'buraku minority identity', and re-design the 'Otherness', through being rooted in non-ethnic and universal standards, such as local attachment, socioeconomic values, community and family-based relationships. The author illustrates this by introducing the various social fields in which children participate in the rep…
Precarity, Imagination, and the Mobile Life of the 'Trailing Spouse
This article investigates the experiences of mobility and work transition for some "trailing spouses" following their partners in professional overseas assignments. It draws upon in-depth interviews conducted in Switzerland both with female and male accompanying spouses, in order to illustrate some aspects characterizing the subjective experience of precarity for these people living a mobile life, when career trajectories and occupational identit…
(Im)mobilities, waiting and professional aspirations
This article contributes to emerging research on the dynamics of mobility and immobility in forced migration through a special focus on the experience of waiting in refugees’ professional life. Wide research across the social sciences explores the dynamic relationship between migration control systems and migrants’ experiences of time through the analytical lens of “waiting”. However, it missed considering how the experience of waiting impinges o…
Time and family on the move
Under conditions of global economy, geographical mobility becomes an important aspect of the working lives for a wider range of professionals. At times, these people move with their families. The relocation to a new country can entail changes for the whole family, in particular for the partner, who can experience a more pronounced alteration of work-family relations. Especially for dual career couples, with both partners employed before migration…
A sociocultural approach to mobile families
This paper proposes a sociocultural perspective of mobility, of which migration is only one case, with a focus on mobile families. Consistent with mobility studies, sociocultural psychology of the lifecourse proposes to study both the sociocultural conditions of mobility, and the perspective of mobile people. In addition, in this article, we consider interrelated lives in mobility. We discuss the specific case of one family documented as part of …
Skills on the move
This article explores how highly skilled migrants make sense of and subjectively validate their skills when in search of employment in a new country. With the use of a transnational perspective, we suggest that in the context of migration, skills can only be properly understood if we consider the multiple locations and events in people's life trajectories. In addition to foregrounding the spatial context, we also explore skills through a temporal…
From ‘digital nomadism’ to ‘rooted digitalism
This article explores the interplay between digital work and mobility through a look at the career trajectories, remote work practices and im/mobilities of professionals in the information technology (IT) sector. We draw upon a qualitative study conducted with IT professionals who work remotely for Swiss or Swiss-based international companies. IT professionals have been pioneers in practising virtual work long before the outbreak of the COVID-19 …
Emotions and symbolic boundaries. Reflections on youths' views about migration in Italy
Emotions can play a significant role in the way individuals learn about, adopt or reject the conceptual distinctions that categorize people and groups along different lines of belonging. In particular, in the experience of personal and others' migration, individuals can be confronted with a variety of emotions, and can refer to various emotion categories in order to make sense of the possible differences and similarities between themselves and ot…
Children of Kinegawa' and the transformation of the 'buraku identity' in Japan
The present article explores the way children engaged with the buraku issue in Japan shape the collective discourses concerning the 'buraku minority identity', and re-design the 'Otherness', through being rooted in non-ethnic and universal standards, such as local attachment, socioeconomic values, community and family-based relationships. The author illustrates this by introducing the various social fields in which children participate in the rep…
Written Emotional Disclosure and Boundary Making. Minority Children Writing About Discrimination
The present paper explores how “written emotional disclosure”, in particular writing about personal feelings and thoughts concerning discriminatory events, can represent an important opportunity for children to engage in the transformation of categorical boundaries through complex cognitive and emotional processes. In particular, the paper explores from a comparative perspective: 1) how minority and migrant children express their opinions about p…
Images of Edo
In contemporary Japan, people labeled as "burakumin" ('hamlet people') are commonly described as the descendants of Tokugawa-era outcasts of Japan, who were engaged in special occupations (e.g., leather industry, meat packing, street entertainment, drum making) and compelled to live in separate areas. Despite the heterogeneity of these populations, determination of "buraku origin" (buraku shusshin) has remained fixed over time and is based on one…
The Hindu Rights Action Force and the Definition of the 'Indian Community' in Malaysia
The Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) started in 2006 as a coalition of non-governmental organizations and various individuals struggling for the preservation and protection of Hindus' rights in Malaysia. Although the coalition began as a religious movement, it ended up widening the scope of its mandate so as to include various demands for social and economic rights. The present paper describes some representations of the 'Indian community' as …
Children of Kinegawa' and the transformation of the 'buraku identity' in Japan
The present article explores the way children engaged with the buraku issue in Japan shape the collective discourses concerning the 'buraku minority identity', and re-design the 'Otherness', through being rooted in non-ethnic and universal standards, such as local attachment, socioeconomic values, community and family-based relationships. The author illustrates this by introducing the various social fields in which children participate in the rep…
Images of Edo
In contemporary Japan, people labeled as "burakumin" ('hamlet people') are commonly described as the descendants of Tokugawa-era outcasts of Japan, who were engaged in special occupations (e.g., leather industry, meat packing, street entertainment, drum making) and compelled to live in separate areas. Despite the heterogeneity of these populations, determination of "buraku origin" (buraku shusshin) has remained fixed over time and is based on one…
Written Emotional Disclosure and Boundary Making. Minority Children Writing About Discrimination
The present paper explores how “written emotional disclosure”, in particular writing about personal feelings and thoughts concerning discriminatory events, can represent an important opportunity for children to engage in the transformation of categorical boundaries through complex cognitive and emotional processes. In particular, the paper explores from a comparative perspective: 1) how minority and migrant children express their opinions about p…
The Hindu Rights Action Force and the Definition of the 'Indian Community' in Malaysia
The Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) started in 2006 as a coalition of non-governmental organizations and various individuals struggling for the preservation and protection of Hindus' rights in Malaysia. Although the coalition began as a religious movement, it ended up widening the scope of its mandate so as to include various demands for social and economic rights. The present paper describes some representations of the 'Indian community' as …
Childhoods as political projects
Recent studies in the social sciences have focused the attention on the role of children in cultural politics, in particular on children’s experiences in nationalism, as well as on their participation in inter-ethnic relations. In line with this research, this study aims to investigate the relationship between childhood and political action and to conceptualize “childhood” as a contested political notion. More specifically, it discusses variation…
Emotions and symbolic boundaries. Reflections on youths' views about migration in Italy
Emotions can play a significant role in the way individuals learn about, adopt or reject the conceptual distinctions that categorize people and groups along different lines of belonging. In particular, in the experience of personal and others' migration, individuals can be confronted with a variety of emotions, and can refer to various emotion categories in order to make sense of the possible differences and similarities between themselves and ot…
Family, Boundaries and Transformation. The International Mobility of Professionals and Their Families
Two dominant images of migrant professionals, also known as “expats”, have long been common, in the social sciences: on the one hand, they were described as super-mobile individuals, who easily move between places with no time frame in mind, with the openness to engage with diversity; on the other hand, more recent studies challenged the idea of “expat” cosmopolitanism, and investigated the boundaries constituted by these people in the course of …
When "expatriation" is a matter of family. Opportunities, barriers and intimacies in international mobility
This special issue aims at understanding “expatriate” mobility with a special focus on the role of family and intimacy, and brings together different case-studies, built through different theoretical perspectives. These allow approaching “expatriate” mobile families along two main lines: as part of the making of life trajectories, and as these are shaped by, and are shaping, professional trajectories. This editorial highlights the contributions o…
A sociocultural approach to mobile families
This paper proposes a sociocultural perspective of mobility, of which migration is only one case, with a focus on mobile families. Consistent with mobility studies, sociocultural psychology of the lifecourse proposes to study both the sociocultural conditions of mobility, and the perspective of mobile people. In addition, in this article, we consider interrelated lives in mobility. We discuss the specific case of one family documented as part of …
Precarity, Imagination, and the Mobile Life of the 'Trailing Spouse
This article investigates the experiences of mobility and work transition for some "trailing spouses" following their partners in professional overseas assignments. It draws upon in-depth interviews conducted in Switzerland both with female and male accompanying spouses, in order to illustrate some aspects characterizing the subjective experience of precarity for these people living a mobile life, when career trajectories and occupational identit…
Switzerland doesn’t want me” Work, precarity and emotions for mobile professionals’ partners
A wide range of professions demands mobility as a requisite for “excellence”, success and “good performance”. At the same time, more precarious and flexible conditions, ranging from unemployment, to temporary, free-lance and self-employed occupations, now characterize the mobile trajectories of a large number of professionals and their partners. What is the emotional cost of these conditions in mobility? How do mobile professionals’ partners feel…
(Im)Mobile imagination. On trailing, feeling stuck and imagining work on-the-move
Emerging research focuses on the role of time in the context of mobility and explores the conditions of ‘wait’ and ‘stuckness’ as conceptual tools for understanding the tempos and socio-cultural implications of mobile experiences. This paper contributes to this research by exploring these conditions in the context of work and geographical mobility, with a special focus on people who migrate and follow their working partners in international profe…
Exploring the interplay between (im)mobility and imagination
Time and family on the move
Under conditions of global economy, geographical mobility becomes an important aspect of the working lives for a wider range of professionals. At times, these people move with their families. The relocation to a new country can entail changes for the whole family, in particular for the partner, who can experience a more pronounced alteration of work-family relations. Especially for dual career couples, with both partners employed before migration…
Skills on the move
This article explores how highly skilled migrants make sense of and subjectively validate their skills when in search of employment in a new country. With the use of a transnational perspective, we suggest that in the context of migration, skills can only be properly understood if we consider the multiple locations and events in people's life trajectories. In addition to foregrounding the spatial context, we also explore skills through a temporal…
(Im)mobilities, waiting and professional aspirations
This article contributes to emerging research on the dynamics of mobility and immobility in forced migration through a special focus on the experience of waiting in refugees’ professional life. Wide research across the social sciences explores the dynamic relationship between migration control systems and migrants’ experiences of time through the analytical lens of “waiting”. However, it missed considering how the experience of waiting impinges o…
Gender and the career trajectories of highly skilled Syrian refugees in Switzerland
This article looks at the role of gender relations and norms in the (re)making of career trajectories of highly skilled Syrian refugees in Switzerland. We explore how refugees encounter gender regimes while making sense of their present work situation vis-à-vis their career plans. We draw upon a qualitative study conducted with 27 highly skilled Syrian refugees in Switzerland. How do refugees encounter different gender regimes in Switzerland? Wha…
From ‘digital nomadism’ to ‘rooted digitalism
This article explores the interplay between digital work and mobility through a look at the career trajectories, remote work practices and im/mobilities of professionals in the information technology (IT) sector. We draw upon a qualitative study conducted with IT professionals who work remotely for Swiss or Swiss-based international companies. IT professionals have been pioneers in practising virtual work long before the outbreak of the COVID-19 …
Immobile subjectivities
This article puts forward the concept of immobile subjectivities to understand the ambivalence marking the condition of existential immobility in migration. I look at the experiences of two migrant women in Switzerland—a refugee and the partner of a mobile professional—who each face the predicaments of mobility and yet continue to aspire to a career in the face of uncertain and unstable work. The trajectories of migrants who, like these two women…
South-Working
This article explores the experiences of professionals who, prompted by the pandemic, returned to their hometowns in Italy while continuing to work remotely, a trend known as 'South-Working'. I explore how the pandemic changed these individuals' usual mobility routines and led them to return home and reconsider life priorities, all while leveraging digital remote work and new mobility strategies. I draw upon ethnographic fieldwork, including onli…
Rescue Routes
This article explores dogs’ mobilities in the context of canine adoption and rescue. Drawing on an autoethnographic account of adopting a Romanian dog and on my involvement in dog rescue in Switzerland, it examines how canine adoption is not a linear or purely logistical process but a form of interspecies im/mobility governed by intersecting regimes of mobility and categorization. The article highlights the complex nature of animal rescue routes …
Rooted digitalism
This article examines how a specific group of professional remote workers (laptop/knowledge workers in Europe) negotiate mobility and immobility through remote work across the life course. It draws on two case studies conducted between 2020 and 2022: remote working trends in the Swiss IT sector and the South-working phenomenon in Italy, through which professionals returned, often to Southern Italy, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. I introd…
Sociology (19 works) · Political science (14 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Anthropology (7 works) · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Social science (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works)