H Ghorashi
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 17003 |
|---|---|
| NOME | H Ghorashi |
| PRENOMES | H |
| SOBRENOME | Ghorashi |
| ASSINATURA | GHORASHI H |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0157-7525 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 45 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 384 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 44 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1997 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
Introduction
This chapter advances a comprehensive framework for transformative, critically engaged migration scholarship that responds to escalating global inequalities, anti-migration exclusions, and epistemic injustice. It traces how mainstream migration and refugee studies have long reproduced colonial, methodological nationalism and deficit-based representations of migrants and situates the rise of reflexive, justice-oriented scholarship as a necessary c…
Higher Education Champions and Reciprocal Community Partnership
Academics globally have been called to investigate and contribute to addressing growing structural inequality, social exclusion, and disconnection. In recent decades, critically engaged research with a social justice orientation has emerged, aiming to bridge scholarly inquiry with community accountability. Within this context, two interconnected areas have gained prominence in academia: diversifying curricula and forming meaningful partnerships w…
Urban solidarities in late modern times
Late modern urban spaces marked by heterogeneity, forced proximity, intersecting layers of difference and normalised structures of inequality and marginalisation, require rethinking the conditions for an urban ethics of solidarity. Such an ethics of solidarity needs to go beyond notions of large collective movements based on shared values or claims and beyond demarcated communities. We explore the role of personal connections centred on meaningfu…
Decolonizing the integration discourse through embedded narratives
This article shows the colonial legacy and nationalistic foundation of Dutch integration policy and discourse. I begin by discussing the integration discourse's implications for research and the exclusionary practices towards researchers of colour in Dutch academia. I argue for the importance of epistemic multiplicity and, in particular, the insider-outsider position of marginalized communities and scholars of colour as essential forms of knowled…
Theorizing as a Liberatory Practice? The Emancipatory Promise of Knowledge Co‐Creation With (Forced) Migrants
This thematic issue consists of empirical and theoretical contributions from South Africa, the United States, and the Netherlands that address how academic theorizing is co‐created by and co‐creates processes of emancipation and transformation for differently positioned and impacted individuals and collectivities. We invited knowledge co‐creators (both inside and outside academia) aiming to improve social inclusion and justice for refugees/forced…
Agency in Silence
Following the so‐called refugee crisis, unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs) from Eritrea were portrayed negatively in Europe. Although such portrayals are often amplified by media and policy discourses, the main reasons for this negative view were a lack of understanding of URMs’ subjectivities, the institutional silencing process they face in their everyday lives, and the ways they show agency in such precarity. This article addresses institutio…
Het belang van een insider-outsider perspectief
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
How liminality enhances conviviality through multilingual co-creations
This article explores the multilingual creativity of young refugees in the Netherlands and the social contexts and situations in which it develops. Because these young refugees form an under-researched group, the authors build on different discipline-based studies on (young migrants') multilingualism, super-diversity, conviviality, liminality and networks. The authors start with the collection of personal network data including languages used wit…
Exilic (Art) Narratives of Queer Refugees Challenging Dominant Hegemonies
Within the Dutch hegemonic discourse, the "migrant other" is portrayed as almost incompatible with "national culture" while it is simultaneously pressured to assimilate. This creates paradoxes for the queer refugee participants in this study. When these refugees assimilate, they risk reinforcing the dominant discourse considering their group as the "backward other". When they do not assimilate, they are considered not "properly" Dutch. This paper…
Conflicting Experiences With Welcoming Encounters
Personal networks can be both enabling and constraining in inclusion practices. This study focuses on the contribution of a particular neighborhood initiative for refugees in Amsterdam. Earlier studies have shown that in the specific context of the Netherlands’ welfare state, institutional or citizen initiatives can constrain the actual inclusion of refugees. These studies argue that good intentions do not necessarily lead to inclusion because hi…
Normalising Power and Engaged Narrative Methodology
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the discourse of othering of non-Western migrants has been growing in many European societies. And since 2015, refugees have become a quite visible component in this discourse. Although, for decades, the dominant image of refugees has been constructed as people 'at risk', new competing images of refugee men 'as risk' have recently gained ground. For refugee women, however, the image of being victims and 'a…
Taking racism beyond Dutch innocence
Explicit racism’s increased presence in Dutch public space did not lead to public recognition of the existence of structural forms of racism in the Netherlands until recently. Previously, I argued this denial was historically rooted in the construction of the Dutch self-image as charitable and open versus the framing of migrants as “weak”, “disadvantaged” others who need help from the majority group. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement changed …
Failed Promise of Equality
Iranians are considered the most successful refugee group in the Netherlands in terms of integration. However, their path towards inclusion is not without struggles. This paper highlights organizational and societal limiting factors that are often forgotten in research and policy on refugees’ integration in the job market and on inclusion in general. The data presented are based on 20 years of research on narratives from Iranian refugees – mostly…
The resilience potential of different refugee reception approaches taken during the 'refugee crisis' in Amsterdam
The so-called refugee crisis in 2015/2016 created opportunities for faith-based organizations, community initiatives, volunteers and refugees to get actively involved in refugee reception in Amsterdam. This study investigated the resilience potential of three refugee reception approaches that were taken during that transformative period: those of a semi-governmental organization (COA), a faith-based organization (The Salvation Army) and a communi…
Transcending the gender binary
This qualitative study discusses the experienced identity of gender non-binary young adults. Despite growing positive discourse in the Netherlands toward gender minorities, in practice this group still faces exclusion and stigmatization of their identity. This article draws from Butler’s (Citation2004, Citation2011) conceptions of deconstructing the hegemonic gender binary and heteronormativity. It explores the layered experiences of gender non-b…
Contested Belonging
The Ability to Deal With Difference
Based on sixteen semi-structured interviews, this article examines how second-generation Turkish-Dutch education professionals experience their professional position in the ethnically homogeneous upper echelons of the Dutch education sector. The analysis shows that second-generation education professionals, being newcomers to higher-level positions in the sector, have to engage with diverse cultural repertoires at work. Instead of being stuck in-…
Dancing with ‘The Other’
Due to the so-called refugee crisis and the Netherlands’ development into a ‘participation society’, refugee reception there has recently shifted its focus to early and fast participation. In this context, numerous community initiatives have emerged to support refugee reception and integration. Compared to earlier restrictive approaches, refugee reception through active engagement of newcomers in community initiatives seems to promise a more incl…
Commentary
Since the early 2000s there has been an undeniable global escalation of negative othering discourses concerning migrants and refugees. The fixation on ethnic difference in these discourses blinds us toward possible sources of connection. To unsettle this essentialist discourse of othering, we need to consider practices that denormalise the taken-for-granted taxonomies of the Self and the Other at their cores and rethink conditions for connection.…
Unexpected agency on the threshold
Several studies have described the condition of asylum seekers as being on the threshold or in-between structures. Victor Turner's concept of liminality and Agamben's state of exception have been used extensively to analyse this condition, mostly to show the negative implications of the ambiguous legal (non-) status. This article argues that the condition of liminality provides an intensified doubleness of impossibility and possibility for action…
Grootse dromen, uitgekomen
Big dreams, did they come true? Opportunities and obstacles in the school trajectories of unaccompanied refugee minors While many unaccompanied minors deal with their precarious situation by focusing on school success, there is a lack of knowledge about the diversity of factors that hinder and stimulate their life trajectories, including their school career. This article focuses on the long term school trajectories of unaccompanied minors who wer…
Pleidooi voor een gelaagde benadering van vluchtelingenproblematiek
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
Identification Paradoxes and Multiple Belongings
In a time identified by many as one of “multicultural backlash,” we can observe a growing negative discourse on the integration of migrants with Islamic backgrounds in most European countries. Criticisms are rooted in the assumptions that cultural and religious differences are the source of social problems and that these migrants are unwilling to integrate. The aim of this article is threefold. First, it criticizes the linear and simplistic assum…
Caught between norm and difference
Purpose In this study the authors show how discursive spaces both enable and constrain the inclusion of first-generation refugees. For this purpose the authors analyzed a triptych of narratives from first-generation refugees, employers, and mediators (mediating between organizations and job-seeking refugees). The authors adopted a critical studies approach, paying particular attention to the ways in which meanings are embedded within the normaliz…
Biographies and the doubleness of inclusion and exclusion
Integration is often considered to be comprised of different dimensions which can influence each other in a linear fashion. For instance, if one becomes more proficient in the host country’s language, one’s labor market participation should also increase. In the Netherlands, this assumption has led to a plethora of policies (like mandatory integration courses) having targeted especially ‘Muslim’ women of Moroccan and Turkish descent, who are perc…
Agents of Change or Passive Victims
This paper explores the impact of a regulated society such as the Netherlands on the lives of refugees in general and on those of Iranian women refugees in particular. Two periods are distinguished in regard to Dutch asylum policies: the 1980s and post-1990. For the 1980s when refugee reception was less restricted, I use empirical material collected between 1995 and 2000. The women I interviewed during this period were leftist activists involved …
From Absolute Invisibility to Extreme Visibility
After years of invisibility, the position of migrant women from Islamic countries now forms the core of the Dutch discourse on integration and emancipation. This article presents the downside of this visibility by showing that it is situated within a growing culturalist discourse. In addition to being culturalist, this discourse focuses on the shortcomings of migrants and is flavoured with a touch of new realism in its argument that it is a right…
Giving Silence a Chance
In order to capture refugees’ experiences and narratives it is necessary to create space within research to be able to notice the untold within the interviews. This article focuses on the ways that Iranian women refugees (in the Netherlands and the United States) narrate their experiences of the past and the present or stay silent when the experiences are too difficult to talk about. Including the moments of silence within the process of analysin…
Negotiating belonging beyond rootedness
In the era of late or "liquid modernity", we can observe the re-emergence of solid categories in the form of nationalistic sentiments and cultural contrasts. The growing culturalist discourse in most European societies is an example of the reification of cultural difference. Within this discourse, it is posited that the most "natural" link for migrants is to their countries of origin. This discourse suggests that generations of migrants living in…
Unexpected agency on the threshold
Several studies have described the condition of asylum seekers as being on the threshold or in-between structures. Victor Turner's concept of liminality and Agamben's state of exception have been used extensively to analyse this condition, mostly to show the negative implications of the ambiguous legal (non-) status. This article argues that the condition of liminality provides an intensified doubleness of impossibility and possibility for action…
How dual is transnational identity? A debate on dual positioning of diaspora organizations
Within the social sciences, most studies of transnationalism take the approach that migrants experience a duality between place of origin and place of residence. In that kind of approach, transnationalism refers to a sense of in‐betweenness caused by this duality. The aim of this paper is to show how the activities of an Iranian diaspora organization in Southern California (NIPOC) may seem essentialist at first but can be considered transnational…
Reviving agency
The path of social inclusion has proven difficult for minority groups in the European context. In this article, we focus on the inclusion of refugees, particularly in the labor market, and show how the difficulties they faced were related to dominant discourses on migration. Uncovering the hegemonic assumptions within these discourses is crucial in order to enable a rethinking of diversity issues and inclusion. We addressed this through an interv…
Failed Promise of Equality
Iranians are considered the most successful refugee group in the Netherlands in terms of integration. However, their path towards inclusion is not without struggles. This paper highlights organizational and societal limiting factors that are often forgotten in research and policy on refugees’ integration in the job market and on inclusion in general. The data presented are based on 20 years of research on narratives from Iranian refugees – mostly…
Dancing with ‘The Other’
Due to the so-called refugee crisis and the Netherlands’ development into a ‘participation society’, refugee reception there has recently shifted its focus to early and fast participation. In this context, numerous community initiatives have emerged to support refugee reception and integration. Compared to earlier restrictive approaches, refugee reception through active engagement of newcomers in community initiatives seems to promise a more incl…
The 'Iranian Diaspora' and the New Media
This article looks at the shifting position of the 'Iranian diaspora' in relation to Iran as it is influenced by online and offline transnational networks. In the 1980s the exilic identity of a large part of the Iranian diaspora was the core factor in establishing an extended, yet exclusive form of transnational network. Since then, the patterns of identity within this community have shifted towards a more inclusive network as a result of those t…
Caught between norm and difference
Purpose In this study the authors show how discursive spaces both enable and constrain the inclusion of first-generation refugees. For this purpose the authors analyzed a triptych of narratives from first-generation refugees, employers, and mediators (mediating between organizations and job-seeking refugees). The authors adopted a critical studies approach, paying particular attention to the ways in which meanings are embedded within the normaliz…
The Normality and Materiality of the Dominant Discourse
This article explores the narratives of the volunteers working inside Dutch asylum seeker centers (AZCs). The objective was to explore the challenges and coping strategies of these volunteers, who face contradictory processes: being engaged to improve the condition of asylum seekers in the context of growing antimigrant/antirefugee sentiment in The Netherlands, dominant exclusionary discourse, and the difficult material conditions in AZCs. The an…
The resilience potential of different refugee reception approaches taken during the 'refugee crisis' in Amsterdam
The so-called refugee crisis in 2015/2016 created opportunities for faith-based organizations, community initiatives, volunteers and refugees to get actively involved in refugee reception in Amsterdam. This study investigated the resilience potential of three refugee reception approaches that were taken during that transformative period: those of a semi-governmental organization (COA), a faith-based organization (The Salvation Army) and a communi…
Discrimination of Second-Generation Professionals in Leadership Positions
This article, based on interviews from the Dutch Pathways to Success Project, investigates how Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch second-generation professionals in leadership positions experience and deal with subtle discrimination at work. We argue that subtle discrimination in organizations remains a reality for second-generation professionals in leadership positions. Because organizations are penetrated by power processes in society at large, t…
Taking racism beyond Dutch innocence
Explicit racism’s increased presence in Dutch public space did not lead to public recognition of the existence of structural forms of racism in the Netherlands until recently. Previously, I argued this denial was historically rooted in the construction of the Dutch self-image as charitable and open versus the framing of migrants as “weak”, “disadvantaged” others who need help from the majority group. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement changed …
Female narratives of ‘new’ citizens’ belonging(s) and identities in Europe
Public discourses on citizenship, identity and nationality, which link geographical borders and the political boundaries of a community, are infused with tensions and contradictions. This paper illustrates how these tensions are interwoven with multilayered notions of home, belonging, migration, citizenship and individual's 'longing just to be', focusing on the Dutch and the British context. The narratives of a number of Dutch and British women, …
Normalising Power and Engaged Narrative Methodology
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the discourse of othering of non-Western migrants has been growing in many European societies. And since 2015, refugees have become a quite visible component in this discourse. Although, for decades, the dominant image of refugees has been constructed as people 'at risk', new competing images of refugee men 'as risk' have recently gained ground. For refugee women, however, the image of being victims and 'a…
Transcending the gender binary
This qualitative study discusses the experienced identity of gender non-binary young adults. Despite growing positive discourse in the Netherlands toward gender minorities, in practice this group still faces exclusion and stigmatization of their identity. This article draws from Butler’s (Citation2004, Citation2011) conceptions of deconstructing the hegemonic gender binary and heteronormativity. It explores the layered experiences of gender non-b…
Biographies and the doubleness of inclusion and exclusion
Integration is often considered to be comprised of different dimensions which can influence each other in a linear fashion. For instance, if one becomes more proficient in the host country’s language, one’s labor market participation should also increase. In the Netherlands, this assumption has led to a plethora of policies (like mandatory integration courses) having targeted especially ‘Muslim’ women of Moroccan and Turkish descent, who are perc…
Shifting and Conflicting Identities
Item does not contain fulltext
Conflicting Experiences With Welcoming Encounters
Personal networks can be both enabling and constraining in inclusion practices. This study focuses on the contribution of a particular neighborhood initiative for refugees in Amsterdam. Earlier studies have shown that in the specific context of the Netherlands’ welfare state, institutional or citizen initiatives can constrain the actual inclusion of refugees. These studies argue that good intentions do not necessarily lead to inclusion because hi…
Decolonizing the integration discourse through embedded narratives
This article shows the colonial legacy and nationalistic foundation of Dutch integration policy and discourse. I begin by discussing the integration discourse's implications for research and the exclusionary practices towards researchers of colour in Dutch academia. I argue for the importance of epistemic multiplicity and, in particular, the insider-outsider position of marginalized communities and scholars of colour as essential forms of knowled…
Commentary
Since the early 2000s there has been an undeniable global escalation of negative othering discourses concerning migrants and refugees. The fixation on ethnic difference in these discourses blinds us toward possible sources of connection. To unsettle this essentialist discourse of othering, we need to consider practices that denormalise the taken-for-granted taxonomies of the Self and the Other at their cores and rethink conditions for connection.…
Identification Paradoxes and Multiple Belongings
In a time identified by many as one of “multicultural backlash,” we can observe a growing negative discourse on the integration of migrants with Islamic backgrounds in most European countries. Criticisms are rooted in the assumptions that cultural and religious differences are the source of social problems and that these migrants are unwilling to integrate. The aim of this article is threefold. First, it criticizes the linear and simplistic assum…
Paradoxes of transnational space and local activism
The Iranian revolution of 1979 promised to bring freedom and equality, but as soon as one group gained power, it turned out to be oppressive of both its political opposition and women. This resulted in the formation of a large Iranian diaspora bound together by its hatred for the Iranian regime. Years of suppression in the 1980s in Iran resulted in a deep gap between Iranians living inside and outside Iran. During the 1990s, however, cross-border…
Shifting and Conflicting Identities
Item does not contain fulltext
How dual is transnational identity? A debate on dual positioning of diaspora organizations
Within the social sciences, most studies of transnationalism take the approach that migrants experience a duality between place of origin and place of residence. In that kind of approach, transnationalism refers to a sense of in‐betweenness caused by this duality. The aim of this paper is to show how the activities of an Iranian diaspora organization in Southern California (NIPOC) may seem essentialist at first but can be considered transnational…
When the Boundaries are Blurred
This article focuses on the ways that the author’s somewhat in-between position as both an outsider/researcher and an insider/ex-political Iranian activist now in exile has contributed to the process of research on Iranian women exiles in the Netherlands and the United States. Feminist attention on life stories as a method, and feminist anthropologists’ attention to particularity, involvement and reflexivity give the author the space, and inspire…
Agents of Change or Passive Victims
This paper explores the impact of a regulated society such as the Netherlands on the lives of refugees in general and on those of Iranian women refugees in particular. Two periods are distinguished in regard to Dutch asylum policies: the 1980s and post-1990. For the 1980s when refugee reception was less restricted, I use empirical material collected between 1995 and 2000. The women I interviewed during this period were leftist activists involved …
“When is my Dutch good enough?” Experiences of refugee women with Dutch labour organizations
Paradoxes of transnational space and local activism
The Iranian revolution of 1979 promised to bring freedom and equality, but as soon as one group gained power, it turned out to be oppressive of both its political opposition and women. This resulted in the formation of a large Iranian diaspora bound together by its hatred for the Iranian regime. Years of suppression in the 1980s in Iran resulted in a deep gap between Iranians living inside and outside Iran. During the 1990s, however, cross-border…
Giving Silence a Chance
In order to capture refugees’ experiences and narratives it is necessary to create space within research to be able to notice the untold within the interviews. This article focuses on the ways that Iranian women refugees (in the Netherlands and the United States) narrate their experiences of the past and the present or stay silent when the experiences are too difficult to talk about. Including the moments of silence within the process of analysin…
The Paradoxes of Cultural Diversity within Organizations
Beyond Complicity
The 'Iranian Diaspora' and the New Media
This article looks at the shifting position of the 'Iranian diaspora' in relation to Iran as it is influenced by online and offline transnational networks. In the 1980s the exilic identity of a large part of the Iranian diaspora was the core factor in establishing an extended, yet exclusive form of transnational network. Since then, the patterns of identity within this community have shifted towards a more inclusive network as a result of those t…
Dutchness” and the migrant “other
Peter Jan Margry and Herman Roodenburg, eds., Reframing Dutch culture: Between otherness and authenticity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, 291 pp., ISBN 978-0-754-64705-8 (hardcover). Ian Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam: Liberal Europe, Islam, and the limits of tolerance. New York: Penguin Books, 2006, 288 pp., ISBN 978-0-143-11236-5 (paperback
From Absolute Invisibility to Extreme Visibility
After years of invisibility, the position of migrant women from Islamic countries now forms the core of the Dutch discourse on integration and emancipation. This article presents the downside of this visibility by showing that it is situated within a growing culturalist discourse. In addition to being culturalist, this discourse focuses on the shortcomings of migrants and is flavoured with a touch of new realism in its argument that it is a right…
Female narratives of ‘new’ citizens’ belonging(s) and identities in Europe
Public discourses on citizenship, identity and nationality, which link geographical borders and the political boundaries of a community, are infused with tensions and contradictions. This paper illustrates how these tensions are interwoven with multilayered notions of home, belonging, migration, citizenship and individual's 'longing just to be', focusing on the Dutch and the British context. The narratives of a number of Dutch and British women, …
Reviving agency
The path of social inclusion has proven difficult for minority groups in the European context. In this article, we focus on the inclusion of refugees, particularly in the labor market, and show how the difficulties they faced were related to dominant discourses on migration. Uncovering the hegemonic assumptions within these discourses is crucial in order to enable a rethinking of diversity issues and inclusion. We addressed this through an interv…
Muslims in the West and the Challenges of Belonging
Journal Article Muslims in the West and the Challenges of Belonging Get access Muslims in the West and the Challenges of Belonging. Edited by Fethi Manousri and Vince Marotta. Victoria, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 2010. 252pp. $39.99 paper; e-book available. Halleh Ghorashi Halleh Ghorashi VU University AmsterdamAmsterdam, The Netherlands [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal …
Bringing polyphony one step further
M uslim Diaspora in the West
The members of the Muslim diaspora have become the most visible minority group in most western countries, attracting negative attention. Parallel to this growing animosity, a dominant pattern can be observed among many within the Muslim diaspora of choosing Islam as both a source of inspiration and an exclusive basis of identification. The dominance of Islam in a negative as well as a positive sense in the west reifies otherness and limits the ca…
Discrimination of Second-Generation Professionals in Leadership Positions
This article, based on interviews from the Dutch Pathways to Success Project, investigates how Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch second-generation professionals in leadership positions experience and deal with subtle discrimination at work. We argue that subtle discrimination in organizations remains a reality for second-generation professionals in leadership positions. Because organizations are penetrated by power processes in society at large, t…
The Normality and Materiality of the Dominant Discourse
This article explores the narratives of the volunteers working inside Dutch asylum seeker centers (AZCs). The objective was to explore the challenges and coping strategies of these volunteers, who face contradictory processes: being engaged to improve the condition of asylum seekers in the context of growing antimigrant/antirefugee sentiment in The Netherlands, dominant exclusionary discourse, and the difficult material conditions in AZCs. The an…
Grootse dromen, uitgekomen
Big dreams, did they come true? Opportunities and obstacles in the school trajectories of unaccompanied refugee minors While many unaccompanied minors deal with their precarious situation by focusing on school success, there is a lack of knowledge about the diversity of factors that hinder and stimulate their life trajectories, including their school career. This article focuses on the long term school trajectories of unaccompanied minors who wer…
Pleidooi voor een gelaagde benadering van vluchtelingenproblematiek
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
Identification Paradoxes and Multiple Belongings
In a time identified by many as one of “multicultural backlash,” we can observe a growing negative discourse on the integration of migrants with Islamic backgrounds in most European countries. Criticisms are rooted in the assumptions that cultural and religious differences are the source of social problems and that these migrants are unwilling to integrate. The aim of this article is threefold. First, it criticizes the linear and simplistic assum…
Caught between norm and difference
Purpose In this study the authors show how discursive spaces both enable and constrain the inclusion of first-generation refugees. For this purpose the authors analyzed a triptych of narratives from first-generation refugees, employers, and mediators (mediating between organizations and job-seeking refugees). The authors adopted a critical studies approach, paying particular attention to the ways in which meanings are embedded within the normaliz…
Biographies and the doubleness of inclusion and exclusion
Integration is often considered to be comprised of different dimensions which can influence each other in a linear fashion. For instance, if one becomes more proficient in the host country’s language, one’s labor market participation should also increase. In the Netherlands, this assumption has led to a plethora of policies (like mandatory integration courses) having targeted especially ‘Muslim’ women of Moroccan and Turkish descent, who are perc…
Negotiating belonging beyond rootedness
In the era of late or "liquid modernity", we can observe the re-emergence of solid categories in the form of nationalistic sentiments and cultural contrasts. The growing culturalist discourse in most European societies is an example of the reification of cultural difference. Within this discourse, it is posited that the most "natural" link for migrants is to their countries of origin. This discourse suggests that generations of migrants living in…
Sociology (42 obras) · Political science (36 obras) · Gender Studies (27 obras) · Law (26 obras) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (25 obras) · Refugee (18 obras) · Gender Studies (16 obras) · Narrative (16 obras) · Social science (15 obras) · Law (14 obras)