Publications

This volume investigates the relationship between migration, identity, kinship and population. It uncovers the institutional practices of categorization as well as the conducts and the ethics adopted by social actors that create divisions between citizens and non-citizens, migrants and their descendants inside national borders. The essays provide multiple empirical analyses that capture the range of politics, debates, regulations, and documents through which the us/them distinction comes to be constructed and reconstructed. At the same time, the authors reveal how this distinction is experienced, reinterpreted, and reproduced by those directly affected by governmental actions. This perspective grants equal attention to both the logics of national governmentality and the myriad ways that individuals and collectivities entangle with categories of identity. Featuring case studies from countries as varied as the Netherlands; French Guiana; South-Tyrol; Eritrea and Ethiopia; New York City; Italy; and Liangshan, China, this book offers unique insights into the production of identity boundaries in the contested terrain of migration and minorities. It outlines how the process of producing national identity is enacted not only through impositions from above, but also when individuals themselves embody and deploy identities and kinship bonds. More so than lines of division, boundaries within are understood as an ongoing process of identity construction and social exclusion taking place among the various actors, levels, and spaces that make up the national fabric.  

Contents 

1. Nation, Migration and Kinship through Identity Categorization 
   Decimo, Francesca (et al.) 
   Pages 3-21
   
   
2. The Perils of Reification: Identity Categories and Identity Construction in Migration Research 
   Kertzer, David I. 
   Pages 23-34
   
   
3. The Uninvited Migrant, the ‘Autochtoon’ and the ‘Allochtoon’ in the Netherlands
   Doomernik, Jeroen
   Pages 37-52
   
   
4. The Politics of Racial Disproportionality of the Child Welfare System in New York
   Castellano, Viola
   Pages 53-74
   
   
5. Childbirth on Europe’s Ultra-Periphery: Maternity Care, French Universalism and Equivocal Identities on the Maroni River, French Guiana
   Grotti, Vanessa
   Pages 75-91
   
   
6. Migrant Incorporation in South Tyrol and Essentialized Local Identities
   Zinn, Dorothy L.
   Pages 93-114
   
   
7. Rethinking Kinship, Mobility and Citizenship across the Ethiopian-Eritrean Boundaries
   Massa, Aurora 
   Pages 117-138
   
   
8. Male Adulthood and ‘Self’-Legalizing Practices among Young Moroccan Migrants in Turin, Italy
   Rossi, Alice 
   Pages 139-159
   
   
9. Structural Restrictions and Personal Desires: Arranged Marriages between Punjab and Italy
   Bertolani, Barbara 
   Pages 161-180
   
   
10. When Politics Meet Marriage: Changes in Marriage Practices among Migrated Yi Cadres in Liangshan, China
    Guo Zhitian 
    Pages 181-198
    
    
11. Conclusions
    Key Remarks and Research Notes on National Boundaries, Kinship and Migration
    Decimo, Francesca and Gribaldo, Alessandra 
    Pages 201-209