Suchergebnisse

In Precarious Lives, Shahram Khosravi attempts to reconcile the paradoxes of Iranians' everyday life in the first decade of the twenty-first century. On the one hand, multiple circumstances of precarity give rise to a sense of hopelessness, shared visions of a futureless tomorrow, widespread home(land)lessness, intense individualism, and a growth of incivilities. On the other, daydreaming and hope, as well as civility and solidarity in political protests, street carnivals, and social movements, continue to persist. Young Iranians describe themselves as being stuck in purposelessness and forced to endure endless waiting, and they are also aware that they are perceived as unproductive and a burden on their society. Despite the aspirations and inspiration they possess, they find themselves forced into petrifying social and spatial immobility. Uncertainty in the present, a seemingly futureless tomorrow: these are the circumstances that Khosravi explores in Precarious Lives.Creating an intricate and moving portrait of contemporary Iranian life, Khosravi weaves together individual stories, government reports, statistics, and cultural analysis of art and literature to depict how Iranians react to the experience of precarity and the possibility of hope. Drawing on extensive ethnographic engagement with youth in Tehran and Isfahan as well as with migrant workers in rural areas, Khosravi examines the complexities and contradictions of everyday life in Iran. Precarious Lives is a vital work of contemporary anthropology that serves as a testament to the shared hardship and hope of the Iranian people

Based on fieldwork among undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers Illegal Traveller offers a narrative of the polysemic nature of borders, border politics, and rituals and performances of border-crossing. Interjecting personal experiences into ethnographic writing it is 'a form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context'.

The Foreigner's Home is a compelling and poetic film that explores two central concepts in Toni Morrison's work; the foreigner and the home. The film starts with footage from 2006 when Ms. Morrison was invited by the Louvre in Paris to curate an exhibition. With the same title, The Foreigner's Home, Ms. Morrison decided to put the focus of the exhibition on the pain of exile and displacement. Engaging footage of the exhibition, intertwining with Ms. Morrison's words, and animations, the film eloquently poses fundamental questions of our time: Who is the foreigner? How long does a foreigner remain a foreigner? Who decides what the foreignness is in a person? What, rather than where, is a home? What is the relationship between houselessness (lacking lodging) and homelessness (existential or politically imposed unbelonging)? Throughout the film Toni Morrison's words and visions engage us into a conversation which is vital to understanding: 'what does it mean to be human?'

The sociopolitical transition can be observed best in the shift of the symbolic position of working-class men: from veneration in the first decade after the revolution to condemnation three decades later.

Names carry strong ethnic and religious connotations and reveal an individual's affiliation to a specific group. When a religious or ethnic group is stigmatised, the relationship between names and social stigma becomes explicit. For Muslims, names and veils are the two most conspicuous signifiers of their stigmatised identity. Some believe that covering their Muslim identity with Swedish-sounding or 'neutral' European names will facilitate their individual integration into society. Based on empirical findings, examining application forms for name-changing and interviews with name-changers, this article offers an exploratory analysis of the reasons, expectations and effects of surname-changing among immigrants with Muslim names. It examines the extent to which the changes reflect the impact of social disadvantage and anti-Muslim sentiment in Sweden. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright, the Institute of Race Relations.]

Names carry strong ethnic and religious connotations and reveal an individual's affiliation to a specific group. When a religious or ethnic group is stigmatised, the relationship between names and social stigma becomes explicit. For Muslims, names and veils are the two most conspicuous signifiers of their stigmatised identity. Some believe that covering their Muslim identity with Swedish-sounding or 'neutral' European names will facilitate their individual integration into society. Based on empirical findings, examining application forms for name-changing and interviews with name-changers, this article offers an exploratory analysis of the reasons, expectations and effects of surname-changing among immigrants with Muslim names. It examines the extent to which the changes reflect the impact of social disadvantage and anti-Muslim sentiment in Sweden.

This article examines how migrant 'illegality' is experienced in the Swedish context. How do 'illegal' migrants manage work, housing, healthcare, safety and a family life in the absence of access to formal provisions? What are their survival strategies? I use direct quotations from undocumented migrants themselves to build a multifaceted picture of migrant 'illegality'. Following Willen's (2007) call for a 'critical phenomenology of illegality', I move beyond the socio-political situation of undocumented migrants to their embodied experiences of being 'illegal'. I conclude that undocumented migrants are not excluded but are excepted; they have not been thrown out, but neither are they considered participants. Undocumented migrants are included in society without being recognised as members.