Liberating Temporariness

Liberating Temporariness? explores the complex ways in which temporariness is being institutionalized as a condition of life for a growing number of people worldwide. The collection emphasizes contemporary developments, but also provides historical context on nation-state membership as the fundamental means for accessing rights in an era of expanding temporariness - in recognition of why pathways to permanence remain so compelling. Through empirical and theoretical analysis, contributors explore various dimensions of temporariness, especially as it relates to the legal status of migrants and refugees, to the spread of precarious employment, and to limitations on social rights. While the focus is on Canada, a number of chapters investigate and contrast developments in Canada with those in Europe as well as Australia and the United States. Together, these essays reveal changing and enduring temporariness at local, regional, national, transnational, and global levels, and in different domains, such as health care, language programs, and security. The question at the heart of this collection is whether temporariness can be liberated from current constraints. While not denying the desirability of permanence for migrants and labourers, Liberating Temporariness? presents alternative possibilities of security and liberation.

Liberating Temporariness? explores the complex ways in which temporariness is being institutionalized as a condition of life for a growing number of people worldwide. The collection emphasizes contemporary developments, but also provides historical context on nation-state membership as the fundamental means for accessing rights in an era of expanding temporariness - in recognition of why pathways to permanence remain so compelling. Through empirical and theoretical analysis, contributors explore various dimensions of temporariness, especially as it relates to the legal status of migrants and refugees, to the spread of precarious employment, and to limitations on social rights. While the focus is on Canada, a number of chapters investigate and contrast developments in Canada with those in Europe as well as Australia and the United States. Together, these essays reveal changing and enduring temporariness at local, regional, national, transnational, and global levels, and in different domains, such as health care, language programs, and security. The question at the heart of this collection is whether temporariness can be liberated from current constraints. While not denying the desirability of permanence for migrants and labourers, Liberating Temporariness? presents alternative possibilities of security and liberation.

This book looks at migrant landing spaces, exploring the processes and infrastructures which people encounter as they navigate urban spaces along the central Mediterranean route. The book argues that there remains a theoretical and practical difficulty in grasping the complexity of migrant arrivals. Migrants are often unsure whether they will stay or leave, their mobility is uncertain. Despite this, they face rigid binaries and categories within administrative policy and planning which tries to pin them down as either permanent or temporary. Drawing on extensive original research in southern Italy, this book suggests that we should instead think of ‘landing spaces’: parts of the city that work as infrastructures for landing, that allow for an open and dynamic use of the urban space and provide opportunities for encounter and information exchange as migrants consider their next steps. Combining an ethnographic gaze with insights from urban planning, architecture, geography, social sciences and migration studies, this book invites us to look closer at the interactions between people, practices and places as migrants land in Europe.

This is a compilation of the abstracts of papers presented at the Migration Conference 2021. Please visit migrationconference.net for more details.

​This volume introduces a strategic interdisciplinary research agenda on arrival infrastructures. Arrival infrastructures are those parts of the urban fabric within which newcomers become entangled on arrival, and where their future local or translocal social mobilities are produced as much as negotiated. Challenging the dominance of national normativities, temporalities, and geographies of “arrival,” the authors scrutinize the position and potential of cities as transnationally embedded places of arrival. Critically interrogating conceptions of migrant arrival as oriented towards settlement and integration, the volume directs attention to much more diverse migration trajectories that shape our cities today. Each chapter examines how migrants, street-level bureaucrats, local residents, and civil society actors build—with the resources they have at hand—the infrastructures that accommodate, channel, and govern arrival.

This book examines the diversity of international student experiences in the top four destination countries in the English-speaking world (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada). Bringing together scholars from the fields of education, sociology, communications, linguistics, international relations, and geography, this edited collection explores the challenges and opportunities of “international encounters” on college and university campuses. Additionally, the contributors rethink many of the key concepts in the field of international student studies such as “international student,” “host community,” and “cultural adjustment” while also critically examining the role that race, gender, and national identity play in shaping international student experiences. Through a series of case studies, the contributions to this book highlight the diverse experiences of international students from different world regions, including East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The broader aim of the book is to enrich our understanding of cross-cultural interactions within the context of higher education institutions in order to enhance the international student experience.

"This volume focuses on the state's role in managing the fall-out from the global economic and financial crisis since 2008. For a brief moment, roughly from 2008-2010, governments and central banks appeared to borrow from Keynes to save the global economy. The contributors, however, take the view that to see those stimulus measures as "Keynesian" is a misinterpretation. Rather, neoliberalism demonstrated considerable resiliency despite its responsibility for the deep and prolonged crisis. The "austerian" analysis of the crisis is--historical, ignores its deeper roots, and rests upon a triumph of discourse involving blame-shifting from the under-regulated private sector to public or sovereign debt--for which the public authorities are responsible."--

When migrants reach their new home, we often interpret their settlement and integration as an individual process driven largely by the labour market. But family plays a crucial role. Putting Family First investigates the experience of immigrant families settling in Greater Toronto, from newcomers’ initial reception to their deep involvement in and attachment to their receiving society. Contributors explore such themes as the policy environment, children and youth, gender, labour markets and work, and community supports in order to illustrate how the family context can be mobilized to facilitate the successful integration of newcomers.