Illegal Traveller

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'.

With more than half its population under twenty years old, Iran is one of the world's most youthful nations. The Iranian state characterizes its youth population in two ways: as a homogeneous mass, "an army of twenty millions" devoted to the Revolution, and as alienated, inauthentic, Westernized consumers who constitute a threat to the society. Much of the focus of the Islamic regime has been on ways to protect Iranian young people from moral hazards and to prevent them from providing a gateway for cultural invasion from the West. Iranian authorities express their anxieties through campaigns that target the young generation and its lifestyle and have led to the criminalization of many of the behaviors that make up youth culture. In this ethnography of contemporary youth culture in Iran's capital, Shahram Khosravi examines how young Tehranis struggle for identity in the battle over the right to self-expression. Khosravi looks closely at the strictures confronting Iranian youth and the ways transnational cultural influences penetrate and flourish. Focusing on gathering places such as shopping centers and coffee shops, Khosravi examines the practices of everyday life through which young Tehranis demonstrate defiance against the official culture and parental dominance. In addition to being sites of opposition, Khosravi argues, these alternative spaces serve as creative centers for expression and, above all, imagination. His analysis reveals the transformative power these spaces have and how they enable young Iranians to develop their own culture as well as individual and generational identities. The text is enriched by examples from literature and cinema and by livid reports from the author's fieldwork.

The massive scale and complexity of international migration today tends to obscure the nuanced ways migrant families seek a sense of belonging. In this book, Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg takes readers back and forth between Cameroon and Germany to explore how migrant mothers—through the careful and at times difficult management of relationships—juggle belonging in multiple places at once: their new country, their old country, and the diasporic community that bridges them. Feldman-Savelsberg introduces readers to several Cameroonian mothers, each with her own unique history, concerns, and voice. Through scenes of their lives—at a hometown association’s year-end party, a celebration for a new baby, a visit to the Foreigners’ Office, and many others—as well as the stories they tell one another, Feldman-Savelsberg enlivens our thinking about migrants’ lives and the networks and repertoires that they draw on to find stability and, ultimately, belonging. Placing women’s individual voices within international social contexts, this book unveils new, intimate links between the geographical and the generational as they intersect in the dreams, frustrations, uncertainties, and resolve of strong women holding families together across continents.

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 Committee's report examines the provision and management of Gypsy and Traveller sites within England, focusing on the following aspects: current provision and location of sites; demand for, and use of sites; existing funding arrangements; the Gypsy Site Refurbishment Grant scheme; site characteristics and facilities; management of unauthorised camping; and ODPM statistical information on caravans, sites and families. The Committee's report notes the contradictory views held about Gypsies and Travellers, and the public opposition to their encampment in local areas for fear, whether real or not, of crime and anti-social behaviour. In light of this, the report seeks to assess the extent of problems faced both by Gypsies and Travellers and the settled community, and suggests ways to reduce the conflict, misery and nuisance being caused. Recommendations made include, due to the lack of sites available, that the Government should re-introduce a statutory requirement for local authorities to provide suitable accommodation, based on an assessment of need at regional level, and funded through a capital grant.

Both a memoir in travel essays and an anti-guidebook, Bad Tourist takes us across four continents to fifteen countries, showing us what not to do when traveling. A woman learning to claim her own desires and adventures, Suzanne Roberts encounters lightning and landslides, sharks and piranha-infested waters, a nightclub drugging, burning bodies, and brief affairs as she searches for the love of her life and finally herself. Throughout her travels Roberts tries hard not to be a bad tourist, but owing to her cultural blind spots, things don’t always go as planned. Fearlessly confessional, shamelessly funny, and wholly unapologetic, Roberts offers a refreshingly honest account of the joys and absurdities of confronting new landscapes and cultures, as well as new versions of herself. Raw, bawdy, and self-effacing, Bad Tourist is a journey packed with delights and surprises—both of the greater world and of the mysterious workings of the heart.

This volume hopes to act as a new marker in the areas of Irish Studies and Migration/Diaspora Studies. It is also, in part, an attempt to give a voice to communities who have frequently found themselves on the margins of the so-called “mainstream” community - the hidden Irish, the hidden European, the migrant, the nomad that reflects the changing face of the “new” and “immigrant” Europe. The scholars and activists writing here have engaged with the questions of ethnicity, identity, racism, cultural expression and the new historiography that characterises those newer disciplines often referred to now as Traveller Studies and Romani Studies. Of particular concern to this book’s contributors has been the necessity to address these broader issues within the context of the ever-changing dynamics of representation, modernisation, globalisation and the construction of the modern nation-state that has been the “litmus test” for many Western and Eastern European countries including Britain and more-recently Ireland. It is to be hoped that this collection of essays will function as a catalyst for some new and exciting areas of enquiry in the more “liminal” interstices of Irish Studies, Traveller Studies, Romani Studies and Diaspora and Migration Studies, the latter, a discipline which modern Irish society is only now beginning to interrogate on a more serious and scholarly level.

This incisive study combines the two subjects and views the migration scholarship through the lens of the gender perspective.