15/01/2024
Please note the following books to be reviewed for the Nordic Journal of Migration Research (NJMR) 📣
Nordic Journal of Migration Research (NJMR) is a scholarly open access journal published by Nordic Migration Research (NMR) and the Society for the Study of Ethnic Relations and International Migration (ETMU). NJMR aims to promote and advance the circulation of the multidisciplinary study of ethnic relations and international migration that is conducted in the Nordic countries. The language of the journal is English.
We are looking for people to review the books listed below. Unfortunately, we are unable to pay our book reviewers, but you will receive a copy of the book. The book might come in electronic form (for some publishers, the time may be limited). Sometimes it is possible to receive the printed book after the review is published. The language of the review is English even if the book is in another language.
If you are interested, please send an e-mail to Mervi Leppäkorpi ([email protected]) in which you highlight with a few words your research background and suitability to do the review. Please include your postal address in the case that the publisher sends a hard copy of the book.
If you have another new book in your mind that you would like to review, please let us know.
Eick, Gianna Maria 2024. Welfare Chauvinism in Europe: How Education, Economy and Culture Shape Public Attitudes. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
The redistribution of welfare resources to migrants continues to polarise society. Not only politicians from the radical right but also from more mainstream parties are capitalising on the idea of ‘welfare for our kind’, or welfare chauvinism. In this innovative book, Gianna Maria Eick provides a comprehensive analysis of welfare chauvinism in Europe, skilfully exploring how it is shaped by education, economy and culture. Constructing an extensive overview of welfare chauvinism’s causes and consequences, Welfare Chauvinism in Europe sheds light on the multidimensionality of welfare chauvinist attitudes across countries, time, social policies, and different migrant groups. Eick unveils hidden nuances regarding welfare chauvinism that are frequently overlooked in current discourse, particularly concerning socioeconomic cleavages in Europe. Using high-quality data on public attitudes and macro-level conditions, this thought-provoking book investigates the common misperception that higher levels of education universally lead to more tolerant attitudes and argues that governments and welfare institutions play a crucial role in shaping public opinion.
https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/welfare-chauvinism-in-europe-9781803925523.html
Laine, Jussi P. (ed.) 2023. Assessing the Social Impact of Immigration in Europe: Renegotiating Remoteness. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Focusing on the social impact of migration, this book explores migration as an inevitable part of rural development and transition in light of the sharp political divides in European and national political arenas on the topic. It provides an innovative immigration impact assessment based on recently conducted empirical work to enhance local development in European rural and remote regions, looking to promote change in the perception of migration and related policies and practices.The book concentrates on third country nationals (TCNs), considering the spaces in which TCNs settle down as both the input and output of a process of collective production of places. Chapters analyse how the particular traits of rural and remote contexts interact with TCNs’ integration paths and impact, looking at how demographic trends, socio-economic dynamics and migration patterns to a specific region affect the opportunities, policy responses, societal attitudes and perceptions towards TCNs.
https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/assessing-the-social-impact-of-immigration-in-europe-9781803927688.html
Bryan, Catherine and Jeffers, Asha (eds.) 2023. The Daughters of Immigrants: A Multidisciplinary Study. Lanham: Rowman Littlefield.
This collection brings together established and emerging scholars from the humanities and the social sciences whose work considers the daughters of immigrants. By showcasing these varied perspectives, the collection draws meaningful connections across national and ethnic lines while attending to the particularities of specific histories, locations, and migration journeys. The multidisciplinary nature of this project highlights the relevance and usefulness of varied methodological and theoretical approaches for understanding the diverse lived experiences of the daughters of immigrants, as well as how those experiences are theorized and represented. While each chapter contains its own argument, assumes its own conceptual and disciplinary viewpoint, and tends to specific national and ethnic origins and sites of immigration, each offers meaningful insight into the gendered positionality of the daughters of immigrants as mediated by the complexities of migration, kinship, and culture. Taken together, these contributions point to the nuanced ways national, ethnic, and gendered identity function, and how those not always well served by how these identities are constituted understand and navigate forces beyond their control.
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781666941876/The-Daughters-of-Immigrants-A-Multidisciplinary-Study
Schimanski, Johan and Nyman, Jopi (eds.) 2023. Border Images, Border Narratives: The Political Aesthetics of Boundaries and Crossings. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
This interdisciplinary volume explores the role of images and narratives in different borderscapes. Written by experienced scholars in the field, Border images, border narratives provides fresh insight into how borders, borderscapes, and migration are imagined and narrated in public and private spheres. Offering new ways to approach the political aesthetics of the border and its ambiguities, this volume makes a valuable contribution to the methodological renewal of border studies and presents ways of discussing cultural representations of borders and related processes. Influenced by the thinking of philosopher Jacques Rancière, this timely volume argues that narrated and mediated images of borders and borderscapes are central to the political process, as they contribute to the public negotiation of borders and address issues such as the in/visiblity of migrants and the formation of alternative borderscapes. The contributions analyse narratives and images in literary texts, political and popular imagery, surveillance data, border art, and documentaries, as well as problems related to borderland identities, migration, and trauma. The case studies provide a highly comparative range of geographical contexts ranging from Northern Europe and Britain, via Mediterranean and Mexican-USA borderlands, to Chinese borderlands from the perspectives of critical theory, literary studies, social anthropology, media studies, and political geography.
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526171894/border-images-border-narratives/
Helms, Elissa and Pulkkinen, Tuija (eds.) 2023. Borders of Desire: Gender and Sexuality at the Eastern Borders of Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Borders of desire takes a novel approach to the study of borders: rather than seeing them only as obstacles to the fulfillment of human desires, this collection focuses on how borders can also be productive of desire. Based on long-term ethnographic engagement with sites along the eastern borders of Europe, particularly in the Baltics and the Balkans, the studies in this volume illuminate how gendered and sexualized desires are generated by the existence of borders and how they are imagined. As the chapters show, borders can create new desires expressed as aspirations, resentments, and actions including physical movements across borders for pleasure or work, or collective enactments of political ideals or resistance. The collection also shows how the persistent east/west symbolic border continues to act as a source of these desires in European political and social life.
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526165213/borders-of-desire/
Keskinen, Suvi, Aminkeng Atabong, Alemanji and Seikkula, Minna (eds.) 2023. Race, Bordering and Disobedient Knowledge: Activism and Everyday Struggles in Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Developing the concept of 'disobedient knowledge', this book provides new perspectives on activism and everyday struggles against racism and bordering. Drawing on empirical material from distinct contexts in Northern, Western and Southern Europe, the chapters explore how different kinds of (b)orders are challenged and possibly also maintained in everyday antiracism, activism and struggles against borders. The book examines resistance and disobedience in relation to borders, social orders, conventional practices and hegemonic discourses. It underscores the importance of studying racism and bordering as intertwined phenomena. With a focus on the historical layers of resistance, disobedient practices and ways of building shared struggles, the book provides invaluable knowledge about postcolonial Europe and its future possibilities.
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526165565/race-bordering-and-disobedient-knowledge/
Beek, Jan, Bierschenk, Thomas, Kolloch, Annalena and Meyer, Bernd (eds.) 2023. Policing Race, Ethnicity and Culture: Ethnographic Perspectives across Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
How to deal with differences based on culture, ethnicity and race, has become a key issue of policing. This edited collected explores everyday, often mundane interactions between police officers and migrantised actors in European countries and asks how both sides deal with perceived differences. The contributions reflect that such differences are not just 'out there' but are being situationally (re-)produced in police-citizen encounters. By taking a comparative approach, the book develops a distinctly European perspective on these questions. The book contains 12 ethnographies from ten European countries, based on new and often innovative empirical research, two theoretical contributions, an introduction and a postface.
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526165589/
Colombini, Jacopo 2023. Transnational Lampedusa: Representing Migration in Italy and Beyond. Cham: Palgrave McMillan.
This book examines how Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost island, has become a transnational symbol representing migration to Europe from the Global South. It analyses how three very different associations have used the name “Lampedusa” as a means of restoring a sense of subjectivity or agency to migrants themselves. Jacopo Colombini argues that the work of the Archivio delle Memorie Migranti (Rome), the self-organised refugee group Lampedusa in Hamburg, and the Lampedusa-based Collettivo Askavusa offers an alternative to the stereotypical, often racially connoted, public discussion of migrant presence in Italy and Europe. He also demonstrates, however, that the marginalisation of migrant and refugee voices in the public discourse is also partially and unavoidably reproduced in the cultural projects that wish to restore their agency.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-45734-0
