Borders, De-Borderization and Migration Narratives in Hungary

The events and processes of the recent decades drive us to awake from the hypnotic illusion of the ‘end of history’. The ‘return of history’ is not only a necessary step that has to be taken, but it is ontologically inevitable. Blinded by the mobile army of metaphors, metonyms and anthropomorphisms, we need to see that the processes of the 21st century are no different from the old politics which were recorded in history, thus it is unavoidable to think within the ‘dialectics of Old and New’. Globalization, relativization of values, removal of borders and the re-narration of borders in previously unseen areas lead us to an existential zero point. Borders play significant self-determining and self-definition role in our life and society, thus their relocation, reorientation and blurring of their meaning is a question that has to be analysed and closely watched. Together with the narration of borders, the narration of security plays major role. Migration and the question of open, permeable borders have become one of the most important security narrations of our everyday life.

CDA IN THE PERCEPTIONS OF THE PUBLIC SPACE OF IMMIGRATION: THE IDEOLOGY AND ELEMENTS OF HALLIDAY’S THEORY (SFG) IN THE INTERPRETATION OF MIGRATION NARRATIVES IN THE US PUBLIC SPACE

The key point of this article is to provide an interpretation of the selected immigration narratives of two periodical New York Post and New York Daily News, focusing on CDA and the ideological issues approached from the perspective of critical linguistics relies on SFL Halliday (1985) and Hart (2014). This article applies the theoretical understanding and concepts associated with CDA, to the interpretation of media literature and periodicals. Because CDA and SFG have a common relation in the link between language and society. Accordingly, the study investigates a number of statements/ texts in the public space in America by means of critical methods associated with CDA; the aim is to discover the mechanisms by means of which tabloids manage to persuade/ manipulate a certain target audience of Western readers.

Migration Multiple? Big Data, Knowledge Practices and the Governability of Migration

This chapter explores the big-data-based production of knowledge on migration. Following Mol (2002) and Scheel et al. (2019), it is analysed how migration and migrants are enacted through big-data-based research papers. The emerging sub-discipline of big-data-based migration research enacts migration and migrants in multiple ways that open up possibilities to rethink migration. However, this multiplicity of migration is held together by reference to three migration narratives—demography, integration and humanitarianism—which stand in stark contrast to these alternative enactments, as they all frame migration as something that needs to be governed. As the research papers aim at contributing to these research fields, they inscribe themselves into these migration narratives and thereby adopt the assumption of migration as an object of government.

How an Interdisciplinary Approach to Narrative Can Support Policymaking on Migration and Integration at the City Level

Narrative change and strategic communications are attractive tools for city officials setting policy for integration and migration. These tools allow for the construction and development of shared stories of place-based identity and belonging. Stories about migration often focus on (border) control, the value of the contribution of migrants, and the need for compassion. However, these frames of compassion and control are often oppositional: they can alienate rather than persuade, and they can neglect constituents whose views do not align with the polarities. They also elide other narrative frames, which may appeal to broader groups, particularly those focused on integration and belonging. This article analyzes three cities’ attempts at narrative change strategies that complexify migration narratives with place-based narratives of inclusion. From these case studies, this article identifies practical implications for local policy-makers and sets an interdisciplinary agenda for future research.

Tracks to gay elsewheres: cultural attachment and spatial imaginaries

This article considers how cultural narratives of queer migration to urban centres are understood through media and cultural references that mark specific non-urban places and times. Through an analysis of queer migration narratives in Smalltown Boy (1984), a song and music video by UK band Bronski Beat, and Boytown (2012), its suburban Sydney reimagining by artist Daniel Mudie Cunningham and DJ Stephen Allkins, I argue that the interconnections between visual, media and cultural artefacts are not merely an additive way to understand queer cultural geographies but rather signal intertwined geographic and aesthetic registers. In Boytown, the explicitly gay lyrics and imagery of Smalltown Boy are paired with other songs and music videos that connote queerness but also directly relate to suburban images of youthful alienation. The attachment to urban narratives and images is supplemented by this distinctly suburban attachment. In this article, I argue that conventional statistical figurations of changes to gay ghettoisation and now well-established critiques of queer urbanity are usefully combined and expanded by considering cultural attachment. This article demonstrates the generative intersection of creative geographies and geographies of sexualities attuned to the queer suburban.

Book review: Cajetan Iheka and Jack Taylor (Eds.), African Migration Narratives: Politics, Race and Space

Cajetan Iheka and Jack Taylor (Eds.), African Migration Narratives: Politics, Race and Space. University of Rochester Press, pp. 328. Year 2018, Price: $75 (paperback). ISBN 978-1580469340.

Children of the Great Atlantic Migration: Narratives of Young Jewish Lives

The experiences of children during the process of migration are explored with reference to the Great Atlantic Migration, specifically the Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th century. These experiences, as recorded by them later in their lives, are also represented in literary works penned by immigrant and second-generation authors. The subjective and representational aspects of child-immigrant lives add substance and perspective to an array of social data available about that era, including the proportion of children and youth in the migration stream, the effect of mass immigration on social services (including public education), employment of children and youth in industry, and welfare and institutional care. The article asserts that child-immigrants can be studied not only from the perspective of achievement outcomes in American society, as is currently common in the literature, but also in terms of assigning child-immigrants a separate voice in the historiography of U.S. migration.