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Migration is a form of spatial and social transplant from one local and national context to another. Migration trajectories often expose the underlying intersections of social relations and social hierarchies that underpin cultural and social national environments. Migrants who encounter those complex structural inequalities must learn to negotiate classed, gendered and racialised social relations and seek the most suitable social positions within new systems. This article builds on Amartya Sen's capability approach to conceptualise migrants' embeddedness in the framework of social inequalities and explores the relationship between individual choices, resources and entitlements. It points towards patterns of advantage and disadvantage that frame migrants' opportunities and draws tacit analytical, theoretical and methodological links that have the innovative potential for the study of migration. Building on the parallels between studies in the fields of social inequalities and migration, this article argues that Sen's analytical and conceptual approach provides innovative insights into migration experiences, and Sen's unique reasoning opens up new avenues for the discussion of migrants' social justice.

Anderson's notion of imagined communities has helped to focus attention on the complex connection between language and membership of social groupings. This article explores the sense of membership of an imagined transnational community of 'Europe' through a selection of autobiographical narrative interviews in a multi-nation study of identity formation. Data drawn from a sample of European Union citizens reveals how people narrate their experiences of transnational mobility and how languages feature in their storytelling. We present evidence of key linguistic situations and encounters, including childhood experiences of other languages, experiences of education, as well as language choices in mature relationships and careers. We engage with the question of what it means to identify oneself as a learner, user or non-user of languages in the context of cross-border mobility. To the extent that language acquisition is advantageous for expanding cultural horizons, increasing mobility, extending networks and enhancing careers, the data is consistent with concepts of imagined community and language learning motivation. However, we also see evidence that linguistic diversity is a source of inequality and that languages can exclude as well as include. This prompts a conceptual discussion designed to articulate the problem that what is imagined is less than a collective identity or community, and more a mental frame of reference. In this context, we consider the applicability in the European context of the metaphor of linguistic capital, investment, markets and the right to speak developed by Bourdieu and others. Extempore narratives provide particularly valuable data for showing how social relations of language are configured and how they are experienced as constraint as well as opportunity.

In this article we discuss findings from our ethnography investigating how volunteering in local associational life is changing, asking whether structural factors fixed in localities remain important or whether, as others have suggested, volunteering is becoming disembedded from place. Across two locations, we observe how situational variables, including belonging, identification and interaction, remain important determinants of volunteering, and how the relationship between people and their localities has distinct meanings. In one locality, people participated as volunteers because they had a strong sense of belonging; in the other, they often volunteered because they wanted to belong. We find that local voluntary association is important in forming bridges between people in 'places' and wider society, but that differing notions of belonging mean that localities are not equally situated to operate as effective conduits. We conclude that understanding these dynamics is important for outside agencies in delivering support and public services.

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Drawing on place-based field investigations and new empirical analysis, this original book investigates civil society at local level.
The concept of civil society is contested and multifaceted, and this text offers assessment and clarification of debates concerning the intertwining of civil society, the state and local community relations. Analysing two Welsh villages, the authors examine the importance of identity, connection with place and the impact of social and spatial boundaries on the everyday production of civil society.
Bringing into focus questions of biography and temporality, the book provides an innovative account of continuities and changes within local civil society during social and economic transformation.