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This paper utilises Lefebvre's conceptual triad of space to propose a model of migrants' welcome. This model's application in the context of migration in urban areas requires a simultaneous engagement with social practices, representation and representational aspects of space, countering this way an otherwise essentialised notion of welcome. Utilising this framework in our research with migrants and non-migrant residents in five boroughs in Liverpool, UK, showed that welcome rests on the plane of urban inequalities, which affect the ethics of sharing resources, accepting and enabling the other. A multi-scalar dialectical dynamic of welcome emerges between the discursive notions of welcome as deployed in the everyday encounters and the way welcome is experienced and rephrased in the public domain or lamented in the private one. Dispersal and urban planning policies should regard migrants as stakeholders of welcome at local level for the purpose of migrants' inclusion and managing social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ethnographic research on Lodge Lane, the main commercial street within Toxteth (Liverpool), this paper reveals how fundamental ethnic minority enterprises (EMEs) have been to the regeneration of this marginalized area due to public disinvestment. Acting as critical infrastructure, they have transformed the materiality of the locale, and by extension, they have afforded new kinds of encounter and convivialities. Ultimately, EMEs appear to have a critical emplacing and displacing power, which involves urban inhabitants in a differential way over time, depending on their positionality toward the material and discursive aspects of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how asylum seekers and refugees living in Glasgow use various tactics to survive and navigate everyday challenges within the restrictive UK immigration system. Thirty interviews were conducted with asylum seekers and refugees of various nationalities and personal backgrounds (ethnicity, class, education and migratory circumstances). Twenty state and third sector organisation staff were also interviewed. Participant observation within third sector organisations was also undertaken. While asylum seekers and refugees feel uncertainties and challenges, we found that they actively use various tactics to navigate the often-lengthy UK asylum process. 'Agency in waiting' encompasses the negative impact of a long stagnation period endured while awaiting confirmation of refugee status and the tactics developed despite the difficulties that asylum seekers and refugees face. We consider three ways that tactics are used: to gain familiarity, to engage in meaningful activities, and to establish social connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Return migration has been traditionally conceptualised within a framework of 'homecomings', emphasising primordial ethnicity at the expense of micro-level and cognitive aspects of migrants' belongingness. Drawing on the narratives of Albanian-origin children and young people who moved (back) to Albania with their families from crisis-ridden Greece, this paper explores their experiences of otherness in the presumed homeland, and puts emphasis on their agency in the context of return migration. Memory emerges as an important aspect of agency in the process of what we term 'the transnational mirroring of otherness'. Brought up in Greece, the Albanian-origin children are othered upon return because of their perceived 'Greekness' among the locals and limited ability to speak Albanian. Beyond establishing and maintaining transnational ties and identities, participants show initiative in positioning themselves against shifting transnational identification frameworks, as they contemplate a spatially mobile future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the intersection between migration management and child protection is limited and, yet, contradictions between these two domains and ambivalence in the area of child migrants' rights across the developed world have already been highlighted. Based on fieldwork with policymakers and service providers in Albania, a middle-to-high income country with a significant history of emigration, this paper aims to shed light on the interaction of these institutional and policy domains and the impact they have on professional practice. The State's impact on migrant children's rights at the domestic level is affected by the resourcefulness of its system of social and child protection. This key factor appears to affect the work of professionals on the ground and ultimately mean a variety of categories of child migrants have limited access to child protection services. Professional practice in this context highlights the need to include material dimensions—the resources needed to realise child protection on the ground—in its definition, and to consider the impact of multi-scalar influences on service providers' work. The two domains of migration management and child protection appear to converge in the case of unaccompanied minors (UAMs). In turn, stateless, returned migrant children and those from very disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds are overlooked, giving rise to unequal access to state support. Nonetheless, an overall disjuncture appears in the context of transnational child protection, due to the rigid focus on nationality as a precondition for state support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the trips to the homeland and the embedded tourist practices of Kosovan migrants in the Western Balkans. Drawing from the diasporic tourism literature, it emphasises the role of (material) space and place in these movements and tourist practices. Findings show that return trips to Kosovo involved for the participants leisure mobilities in the context of Albania and other Albanian-speaking areas in the Balkans. The paper concludes by questioning the strong connection in the existing literature between diasporic tourism and ethnicity, arguing that the former is also affected by material space – in the Kosovan case, more specifically, the sea – as an aspect of migrants’ experiences. Migration, leisure mobilities and tourism in the case of Kosovan migrants and the (West) Balkans region, at least, appear to have their historical, temporal and spatial specificities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on migration and integration in Britain have noted the paucity of research on ‘new’ migrants, especially ‘illegal’ migrants and asylum seekers. This paper focuses on one understudied group – Albanian immigrants and their children – and looks at their migration and settlement, based on sixty interviews conducted in two phases either side of a 2003 mini-amnesty that gave many indefinite leave to remain. This regularization is the fulcrum around which our analytical narrative is built. Focusing on the interaction of migrants' agency with host-country structure, the paper shows that an unsettled asylum policy and delays in implementation have had deleterious effects on migrants' integration and sense of belonging, even after citizenship acquisition. As they search for a social and ethnic positioning within a multi-ethnic host society, the eventual realization of Albanians' migration project is accompanied by culture shock, intergenerational difference and ambivalence towards integration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on transnationalism and integration is increasingly focusing on the intersections between the two concepts. However, the debate is polarised between the country of origin and the host country when migrants' identity and belongingness are concerned. In the case of the children of migrants, the literature also largely lacks references to locality, mobility and cosmopolitanism. This paper explores the integration of Albanian-origin teenagers in Tuscany and the relationship between their transnational orientations and their integration strategies. Findings show that both the social and cultural institutions and the spatial ‘units’ to which these teenagers refer in their integration discourse go beyond their country of origin and their host country. Firstly, there is a translocal dimension to their references—to Florence, Prato and Tuscany and the place of their parental origin in Albania. Secondly, their views and perceptions of integration contain a strong cosmopolitan orientation—both conceptually and spatially. The qualities of space and locality impact on transnational ties, giving rise to cosmopolitan orientation and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on the links of the second generation to their parental homeland, and return visits in particular, is largely lacking. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 75 Albanian teenagers in London, Thessaloniki and Florence, this paper brings a multi-sited perspective on attitudes towards and experiences of homeland visits. Contrasts are drawn between positive themes emerging from the narratives, which are about belonging, family and nature in Albania, and negative impressions which relate to poverty and traditionalism, and a developing sense of boredom as teenagers get older. We then relate some of these contrasting experiences to differences in social integration in the three different host-society contexts. The conclusion elaborates the uniqueness and significance of this case, both in terms of this being the first exploration of the transnational orientations of one of Europe’s newest second generations, and in relation to the home-country context of a liberalising ex-communist country still in a state of economic backwardness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]