This volume demonstrates that migration- and diversity-related concepts are always contested, and provides a reflexive critical awareness and better comprehension of the complex questions driving migration studies. The main purpose of this volume is to enhance conceptual thinking on migration studies. Examining interaction between concepts in the public domain, the academic disciplines, and the policy field, this book helps to avoid simplification or even trivialization of complex issues. Recent political events question established ways of looking at issues of migration and diversity and require a clarification or reinvention of political concepts to match the changing world. Applying five basic dimensions, each expert chapter contribution reflects on the role concepts play and demonstrates that concepts are ideology dependent, policy/politics dependent, context dependent, discipline dependent, and language dependent, and are influenced by how research is done, how policies are formulated, and how political debates extend and distort them. This book will be essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners in migration studies/politics, migrant integration, citizenship studies, racism studies, and more broadly of key interest to sociology, political science, and political theory.

This book provides a toolkit for tackling the fundamental questions and challenges in planning and conducting migration research. It illustrates not only how to develop rigorous methodological procedures, but also how to effectively disseminate research findings to both academics and practitioners.

This open access book covers the main issues, challenges and techniques concerning the application of qualitative methodologies to the study of migration. It discusses theoretical, epistemological and empirical questions that must be considered before, during, and after undertaking qualitative research in migration studies. It also covers recent innovative developments and addresses the key issues and major challenges that qualitative migration research may face at different stages i.e. crafting the research questions, defining approaches, developing concepts and theoretical frameworks, mapping categories, selecting cases, dealing with concerns of self-reflection, collecting and processing empirical evidence through various techniques, including visual data, dealing with ethical issues, and developing policy-research dialogues. Each chapter discusses relative strengths and limitations of qualitative research. The chapters also identify the main drivers for qualitative research development in migration studies. It is a unique volume as it brings together a multidisciplinary perspective as well as illustrations of different issues derived from the research experience of the recognized authors. One additional value of this book is its geographic focus on Europe. It seeks to explore theoretical and methodological issues that are raised by distinctive features of the European context. This volume will be a useful reference source for scholars and professionals in migration studies and in social sciences as well. The publication is also addressed to graduate and post-graduate students and, more generally, to those who embark on the task of doing qualitative research for the first time in the field of migration.

Scholars have long examined the relationship between nation-states and their "internal others," such as immigrants and ethnoracial minorities. Contested Embrace shifts the analytic focus to explore how a state relates to people it views as "external members" such as emigrants and diasporas. Specifically, Jaeeun Kim analyzes disputes over the belonging of Koreans in Japan and China, focusing on their contested relationship with the colonial and postcolonial states in the Korean peninsula. Extending the constructivist approach to nationalisms and the culturalist view of the modern state to a transnational context, Contested Embrace illuminates the political and bureaucratic construction of ethno-national populations beyond the territorial boundary of the state. Through a comparative analysis of transborder membership politics in the colonial, Cold War, and post-Cold War periods, the book shows how the configuration of geopolitics, bureaucratic techniques, and actors' agency shapes the making, unmaking, and remaking of transborder ties. Kim demonstrates that being a "homeland" state or a member of the "transborder nation" is a precarious, arduous, and revocable political achievement.

“Indigeneity” has become a prominent yet contested concept in national and international politics, as well as within the social sciences. This edited volume draws from authors representing different disciplines and perspectives, exploring the dependence of indigeneity on varying sociopolitical contexts, actors, and discourses with the ultimate goal of investigating the concept’s scientific and political potential.

This open access book explores how contemporary integration policies and practices are not just about migrants and minority groups becoming part of society but often also reflect deliberate attempts to undermine their inclusion or participation. This affects individual lives as well as social cohesion. The book highlights the variety of ways in which integration and disintegration are related to, and often depend on each other. By analysing how (dis)integration works within a wide range of legal and institutional settings, this book contributes to the literature on integration by considering (dis)integration as a highly stratified process. Through featuring a fertile combination of comparative policy analyses and ethnographic research based on original material from six European and two non-European countries, this book will be a great resource for students, academics and policy makers in migration and integration studies. Book Presentation: On April 22, 2021, the University of Sheffield hosted the book presentation on “Politics of (Dis)Integration”. During this event, the editors, Sophie Hinger and Reinhard Schweitzer, discussed the book. The event was chaired by Aneta Piekut and Jean-Marie Lafleur was the discussant. Please find the recording here: https://eu-lti.bbcollab.com/collab/ui/session/playback.

Drawing from empirically grounded studies, the volume Situated Mixedness sheds light on the state of migration-related “intimate diversity”, that is, the simultaneous formation and existence of various configurations of conjugal mixedness. It examines this phenomenon in Belgium, a country in the European Union with a long history of immigration and where an important percentage of registered marriages are international. Through the optic of “situated mixedness”, the volume pays attention to the (dis-)connections between intimate diversity and its surrounding environment. Bringing together mutually reinforcing or often contradicting emic and etic perspectives, it illuminates how specific context/s (socio-legal, cultural, temporal, etc.) not only can influence, stem from, or trigger a social phenomenon but also remain standstill without a particular impact on individual’s lived experiences. It brings out in subtle ways the agency and subjectivities of individuals, nuancing thereby common-held views on socially Othered couples. Focusing on the intimate sphere of individuals’ life at the crossroads of anthropology and sociology, the volume contributes fresh insights not only to the study of migration and intermarriage but also to the literature on super- and hyper-diversity. It will be of interest to scholars, students, and social actors working on family-related migration, state policies, and social cohesion.