Comparing the racialization of Central-East European migrants in Japan and the UK

The article deploys the lens of the race-migration nexus (Erel et al., Ethnic and Racial Studies 39:1339–1360, 2016) to compare the racialization of migrants in the UK and Japan. It draws on qualitative data on the experiences of Central-East European (CEE) migrants in the two countries to unpack how whiteness is constructed in relation to different histories and patterns of immigration in each national context. While CEE migrants in Japan benefit from being perceived as implicitly white and Western ‘foreigners’, their whiteness represents a form of enduring exclusion from the ethno-nationalist Japanese society. In the UK, changing political contexts and internal European hierarchies of whiteness contribute to CEE migrants’ ambiguous position in an increasingly anti-migrant society. By comparing the mechanisms of racialization in each country through the analytics of visibility and exclusion, the article furthers ongoing debates about the intersections of race and migration. It furthermore extends the comparative analysis of whiteness to a non-Western setting, making a significant contribution to the study of local/global articulations of race.

“I Felt I Arrived Home”: The Minority Trajectory of Mobility for First-in-Family Hungarian Roma Graduates

This chapter explores the upward social mobility trajectories, and the corollary prices of them for those 45, first-in-family college educated Roma in Hungary who come from socially disadvantaged and marginalised family and community background. We argue that among the academically high-achieving participants of our study the most common upward mobility trajectory, contrary to the common belief of assimilation, is their distinctive minority mobility path which leads to their selective acculturation into the majority society. This distinctive incorporation into the mainstream is close to what the related academic scholarship calls the ‘minority culture of mobility’. The three main elements of this distinct mobility trajectory among the Roma are (1) The construction of a Roma middle class identity that takes belonging to the Roma community as a source of pride, in contrast of the widespread racial stereotypes in Hungary (and all over Europe) that are closely tied to the perception of Roma as a member of the underclass, (2) The creation of grass-roots ethnic (Roma) organizations and (3) The practice of giving back to their people of origin that relegate many Roma professionals to a particular segment of the labour market, in jobs to help communities in need. However, we argue that in the case of the Hungarian Roma, these elements of the minority culture of mobility did not serve the purpose of their economic mobility as the original concepts (Neckerman et al. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(6):945–965, 1999) posits, but to mitigate the price of changing social class and to make sense of the hardship of their social ascension.

Black Lives Matter in sport…?

PurposeIn this invited professional insight paper the author draws parallels between recent debates on racism, Black Lives Matter and related research in sport and cognate domains.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) the paper contends that 1) sport is a contested site, 2) sport is a microcosm of society 3) “race” and everyday racism are central to our understanding of sport. It overlays this critique with a recognition of the dynamic and multi-dimensional nature of racisms.FindingsWhile the deaths of Black lives are being mourned it is argued that our attention can also become distracted by narrow manifestations of racism (overt). Such approaches leave key stakeholders efforts focused on the individual to the detriment of challenging systemic policies, practices and dispositions that entrench racism. The color-coded racism of past decades is still with us but in addition to this, our critiques and activism require continued surveillance of cultural, institutional and structural arrangements in the everyday that remain nebulous, complex and difficult to challenge.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a viewpoint paper. The author draws on previous original empirical work and current insights to draw parallels between sport, Black Lives Matter and broader social contexts. Due to limitations in the extant literature in regard to the section on cycling and ethnicity, examples are drawn primarily from the US and UK.Practical implicationsThis focus on sport and leisure past times demonstrates that the Black experience of “race” and racism transcends social boundaries and cannot be perceived as restricted to narrow social domains.Social implicationsRacisms are embedded in society and therefore its cultural products of which sport is a significant one should not be marginalised in antiracism efforts and activist scholarship.Originality/valueThis paper draws on the author's original published research and current insights. The paper makes a contribution to the development of critical race theorising to the sociology of sport, and broader ethnic and racial studies.

Editorial

Since the “birth” of our journal, we have been committed to publishing work that situates migration in a wider historical and societal context, which has included paying attention to critical theoretical perspectives on migration, and particularly encouraging scholarship from and about the global South. This commitment is also related to the increasingly mainstream acknowledgment that Anglophone academic studies of and policy responses to migration and displacement continue to have a strong Northern or Eurocentric bias. In effect, while scholars and journals focused on “migration” and the cognate fields of “ethnic and racial studies” have often prioritized studies of South-North migration (i.e., from “underdeveloped” or “developing” countries “to” North America, Europe, and Australia), much less attention has been paid to migration within and across the countries of the so-called global South (i.e., South-South migration). In turn, scholars and policy makers alike have often positioned particular directionalities and modalities of migration, and specified groups of migrants as “problems to be solved,” including through processes that are deeply gendered, classed, and racialized.

PAISAGEM LINGUÍSTICA EM CONTEXTO FRONTEIRIÇO: ESTUDO DE CASO EM TABATINGA (BRA) E LETICIA (COL)

Neste artigo apresento um estudo de caso sobre a paisagem linguística na fronteira entre as cidades de Tabatinga (Brasil) e Leticia (Colômbia), com base nos conceitos de paisagem linguística (Bloomaert, 2012; Shohamy, 2010; Cenoz y Gorter, 2006), superdiversidade (Bloomaert y Rampton, 2012; Vertovec, 2007) e metrolinguismo (Otsuji; Pennycook, 2010). Este estudo de caso utiliza como dados de análise imagens de placas e letreiros de estabelecimentos comerciais, localizados próximo ao marco de fronteira entre Brasil e Colômbia, fotografadas durante trabalho de campo nas cidades mencionadas e tem como objetivo pensar a paisagem linguística como um dos instrumentos que podem auxiliar no diagnóstico sociolinguístico dos repertórios comunicativos dos falantes de uma determinada comunidade e o status das línguas nesses territórios fronteiriços. Além disso, proponho pensar a paisagem como um importante recurso para a promoção do multilinguismo e das línguas autóctones invisibilizadas pela hegemonia das línguas oficiais dos países onde se desenvolve o presente estudo. Essa invisibilização é perceptível, conforme aponto no estudo, não apenas na paisagem linguística dessas cidades, mas também no sistema escolar municipal e estadual ao não se observar a presença dessas línguas nos currículos das escolas regulares, revelando a ausência de uma representação identitária e linguística de grupos étnicos que vivem nesse espaço.REFERÊNCIASBEN-RAFAEL, E.; SHOHAMY, E.; AMARA, M. H.; TRUMPER-HECHT, N. Linguistic Landscape as Symbolic Construction of the Public Space: The Case of Israel. In: GORTER, D. Linguistic Landscape: New Approach to Multilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd., 2006. p. 7-30.BERGER, I. R. Gestão do .multi/plurilinguismo em escolas brasileiras na fronteira Brasil – Paraguai: um olhar a partir do Observatório da Educação na Fronteira. 2015. Tese (Doutorado em Linguística) - Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2015. Disponível em: https://repositorio.ufsc.br/handle/123456789/133000 Acesso em: 14 jun. 2018.BERGER, I. R.; LECHETA, M. A paisagem linguística de um campus universitário fronteiriço: língua e poder em perspectiva. Entrepalavras, Fortaleza, v. 9, n. 2, p. 01-19, 2019.BLOMMAERT, J. Chronicles of complexity Ethnography, superdiversity, and linguistic landscapes. Tilburg: Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, 2012.BLOMMAERT, J.; RAMPTON, B. Language and Superdiversity. MMG Working Paper Print. Göttingen, 2012.BOURDIEU, P. O poder simbólico. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 1989.CENOZ, J.; GORTER, D. El estudio del paisage lingüístico. Amsterdam: Journal Hizkunea, 2008. P.1-10. Disponível em: https://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.293687 Acesso em: 04 abr. 2019.CENOZ, J; GORTER, D. Linguistic Landscape and Minority Languages. International Journal of Multilingualism, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2006. Disponível em: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.573.7767rep=rep1type=pdf Acesso em 15 jul. 2019.CRUL, M. Super-diversity vs. assimilation: how complex diversity in majority–minority cities challenges the assumptions of assimilation. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42:1, p. 54-68, 2016. Disponível em: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1061425 Acesso em 14 ago. 2019.LANDRY, R.; BOURHIS, R. Y. Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality: An Empirical Study. Journal of Language and Social Psycology, Mar., v. 16, n. 1, p. 23-49, 1997. Disponível em: https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0261927X970161002 Acesso em 14 ago. 2019.LOMBARDI, R. S.; SALGADO, A. C. P.; SOARES, M. S. Paisagem linguística e repertórios em tempos de diversidade: uma situação em perspectiva. Calidoscópio, v. 14, n. 2, p. 209-218, maio/ago., 2016. Disponível em: http://revistas.unisinos.br/index.php/calidoscopio/article/viewFile/cld.2016.142.03/5558 Acesso em 08 ago. 2019OTSUJI. E.; PENNYCOOK, A. Metrolingualism: fixity, fluidity and language in flux. International Journal in Multilingualism, 7:3, p. 240-254, 2009. Disponível em: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790710903414331 Acesso em 25 jul. 2019.SCHILLER, N. G., ; CAGLAR, A. Locating Migrant Pathways of Economic Emplacement: Thinking Beyond the Ethnic Lens.” Ethnicities 13 (4): 494–514 , 2013. Disponível em: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258136583_Locating_Migrant_Pathways_of_Economic_Emplacement_Thinking_Beyond_the_Ethnic_Lens Acesso em 12 ago. 2019.SHOHAMY, E. Language Policy: hidden agendas and new approaches. Nova York: Routledge, 2006. Disponível em: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203387962 Acesso em 23 ago. 2019.SPOLSKY, B. Prolegomena to a Sociolinguistic Theory of Public Signage. In: GORTER, D.; SHOHAMY, E. Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the scenary. Nova York: Routledge, 2009. p.25-39.STEIMAN, R. A geografia das cidades de fronteira: um estudo de caso de Tabatinga (Brasil) e Letícia (Colômbia). 2002. Dissertação de Mestrado em Geografia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2002. Disponível em: http://objdig.ufrj.br/16/teses/581220.pdf Acesso em 05 mar. 2018.VERTOVEC, S. Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, v. 30, n. 6, p. 1024-1054, 2007. Disponível em: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713685087. Acesso em: 06 jun. 2019.YIN, R. K. Estudo de caso: planejamento e métodos. 2. ed. Porto Alegre: Bookman, 2001.Recebido em 29-11-2019 | Aceito em 10-02-2020