Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture - Current Issue
Volume 15, Issue 1, 2024
- Articles
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Bureaucratic challenges that refugees encounter: Burden of being a refugee in a small city1
More LessThis study focuses on the encounter between bureaucrats and immigrants in immigration studies and the bureaucratization of immigrants’ daily life in a small city in Turkey; refugee identity is constructed by incorporating some of the local realities, different responses to migration, social encounters, living together, and the reflection of diversity in urban public spaces in everyday life, the sociology of the city or the migration history, gains different aspects and contents in encounters with local or urban bureaucracy. This identity, shaped as a burden, ineffectiveness and waiting, becomes essential in the immigrant’s self-definition.
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The convergence of higher education and digital technologies for the sexual and reproductive health of women refugees: A narrative review
Authors: Bhavika Sicka and Laura RayThis narrative review delineates the barriers that women refugees and asylum seekers face regarding their sexual and reproductive health (SRH), exploring how digital tools and higher education play transformative roles in facilitating information and communication pertaining to SRH. Further, this review explores the unique role that colleges and universities in the United States can play in leveraging digital technologies to support the healthcare needs of women migrants. The authors also lean into their own experiences as higher education teachers and practitioners to contextualize these findings and advocate for the health, rights and dignity of women and migrants. The article concludes that institutions of higher education (HEIs) are strategically positioned to provide services for and shape discourse surrounding women migrant SRH. By investing in and expanding online resources, counselling and telehealth services, multilingual literacy programmes and other support platforms, as well as by centring migrant and transnational epistemologies, HEIs in the United States can be key support systems for forced migrants, empowering these students to make informed choices about their bodies and sexualities, access vital care and thrive in their new communities. This narrative review recommends future research and practice at the intersections of refugee studies, digital technologies and higher education.
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Women’s health and digitalization in forced migration: Review of existing digital tools, challenges and opportunities
More LessForced migration is a significant global challenge affecting millions of people worldwide. Women and girls, in particular, face unique health risks during forced migration, including sexual and gender-based violence, pregnancy complications and limited access to healthcare services. This article examines the role of digital technologies in promoting health equity among female refugees and asylum seekers. It shows the potential of digitalization to address the unique health needs of women in forced migration contexts. Digitalization, including mobile health (mHealth) technologies and online platforms, can potentially improve women’s health outcomes in forced migration contexts. The article draws on extant literature, and digitalization was shown to improve health literacy among women forced to migrate; and also make access to health information and services easier. From the literature, themes, which include access to health information and inclusive design methodologies, were discussed in the context of the digitalization of women’s health in forced migration. Recommendations for interventions in this area were also proffered.
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Withering Refuge
More LessWithering Refuge is a film-article that audio-visually problematizes representations of displacement and the possibilities of refuge amidst environmental decline, developmental and extractive endeavours, in and around the Meheba Refugee Camp, Zambia.
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Untrustworthy social capital: Romanian migrant women’s online and offline diasporic networking in Rome
More LessDigital migration studies have shown great interest in researching digital media’s impact on strengthening migrants’ social capital, which is considered a central element that mitigates the disadvantages experienced after migration, facilitating upward social mobility. Nevertheless, research has often focused on men’s experiences and overlooked the role migrants’ cultural, economic and social resources play in proficiently using digital media to expand their social capital. This article aims to fill this gap. It investigates the online and offline diasporic networking strategies performed by Romanian women residing in Rome, focusing on a particular subgroup represented by ‘diasporic leaders’ as public figures within the Romanian diasporic community of Rome. This article untangles the relationship between migrant women’s positioning in the social field and their ability to mobilize online and offline resources to experience social upward mobility and/or protect their social status. It shows the impact that post-socialist social dynamics had on the quality of their relationships and how that inheritance influenced their digital practices for diasporic networking.
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Nuancing transnational movements: Reading vulnerability in on-screen representation of temporary labour migration
Authors: Heba Thankam Varghese and Aleena ManoharanJudith Butler observes that the organization of economic and social relationships, as well as the presence or absence of supportive infrastructures and social and political institutions, play a substantial role in shaping our vulnerability. In the age of globalization, we must adopt a nuanced approach to studying migration, which is informed by the diverse sociopolitical contexts of the phenomenon. Accordingly, an insightful evaluation of the migrant condition should be governed by a thorough understanding of the migrant’s legal, social and financial vulnerabilities, which can determine the possibilities of crisis (management) and security measures feasible in the immigrant environment. This article links the study of transnational movements with the socio-economic status of the migrant and the absence of essential sociopolitical infrastructures in the receiving country. While the former factor acts as the driving force behind economic migration, the two factors combinedly contribute to the migrants’ vulnerability in the new terrain and urge the subaltern migrants to affiliate with their homeland. This article analyses two Malayalam films depicting temporary labour migration, Take Off (2017) and C U Soon (2020), where the social and financial status of the individual predicate the migrant condition and determine the strategies of survival that s/he has access to. The article will be structured into three sections: the first section will look at the primary texts and examine the texts’ cogency in representing temporary labour migration. The second section will introduce the reader to the theoretical framework of vulnerability and precarity proposed by Judith Butler. Finally, the third section will discuss the primary texts in light of the theories discussed in the previous section and examine their ramifications on the bodily constitution of migrant life, thereby opening the possibility of adopting a revised approach to studying the phenomenon of migration.
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Transformative solidarity in contexts of mobility: Structural change and implication
More LessThrough an analysis of the work of select migrant shelters and community organizations in Mexico and the United States, this article examines mutual aid, solidarity and sanctuary projects that seek to transform structural conditions of injustice and inequality. It examines how different activist groups across the Mexico-US borders practise forms of solidarity that recognize the implication of both migrants and citizens in existing structures of violence and challenge hierarchies of power across difference. It also reflects on questions of positionality as a researcher and participant in these contexts of mobility. Structural transformation here is seen as an everyday practice, in the relationships that are built within the community organizations and with the local community, the changes that can be seen in the political agency of both migrants and locals through some of the projects, and in research practice itself. This work takes place both with and against the state, within a framework to advocate for the exercise of rights and for changes in legislation and policy that benefit migrants and the local community, but also building frameworks and horizons beyond the state.
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On digital crossings in Europe
Authors: Sandra Ponzanesi and Koen Leurs
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