Overview

Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship develops essential insights concerning the notion of transnational citizenship by means of the life stories of skilled and educated migrant women from Turkey in Germany and Britain. It interweaves and develops theories of citizenship, identity and culture with the lived experiences of an immigrant group that has so far received insufficient attention. By focusing on the British and German contexts, it introduces a much needed European and comparative perspective, whilst exploring the ways in which diverging concepts and policies of citizenship allow for a differentiated examination of ethnicity, gender, multiculturalism and citizenship in Europe. Presenting a significant and welcome contribution to our understanding of the complexities of multiculturalism it challenges Orientalist images of women as backward and oppressed. Through engagement with the changing realities of education, work, intimacy, family and social activism, this volume provides a situated account of how the concepts of citizenship, transnationality and culture play out in actual social relations. With its rich empirical material the book explores how migrant women create new practices and meanings of belonging across boundaries. Critiquing dominant multiculturalist and anti-multiculturalist accounts, this book suggests how citizenship debates can be reframed to be inclusive of migrant women as actors. As such it will appeal to those working across a range of social sciences, including sociology and the sociology of work, race and ethnicity; citizenship, cultural and gender studies, as well as anthropology and social and public policy.

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9780754674948

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Reviews

'This is an insightful study of citizenship as a practice. The use of life-stories provides an effective tool for exploring lived citizenship; in particular, the life-stories throw light on how Turkish migrant women exercise agency in often difficult circumstances and, in doing so, forge new citizenship practices. It represents a valuable contribution to the gendered citizenship literature.' Ruth Lister, Loughborough University, UK 'Umut Erel significantly contributes to our understanding of issues relating to citizenship, racism, nationalism and their intersecting gender and class dimensions. Her analysis decentres hegemonic Western norms in understanding the agency and citizenship of migrant women. Erel develops a normative perspective in which migrant women are not constructed as potential danger to 'social cohesion' of the citizen body but rather as helping to transform citizenship to become more inclusive as well as more vital.' Nira Yuval-Davis, University of East London, UK '...a thought-provoking book that urges the reader to reflect on national, ethnic and gender-based boundaries of hegemonic discourses.' Immigration, Asylum and National Law 'On the whole this is a very interesting, clearly structured and well-written book. ... Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship is a timely and very important contribution to debates on citizenship, multiculturalism and diversity. The book's strength lies in the consequential entanglement of individual insights with her analysis of the politics of multiculturalism. Erel manages carefully to balance her empirical data and extrapolations by giving the women's voices an appropriate space and avoiding overgeneralizations...' European Journal of Women's Studies 'Umut Erel's Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship offers important correctives to mainstream popular and social science thinking on gender, migration, and citizenship. ... Erel presents a thorough and thought-provoking discussion of the utility of life history methods for engaging in structural and cultural readings that enable researchers to connect the macro and micro. ... Although Erel explicitly disavows typologies, the text contains many layers of comparison, including between mothering and non-mothering women and first and second-generation migrants, that render this material particularly rich. ... Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship is filled with provocative insights and makes significant contributions to the study of gendered citizenship... those readers willing to invest in exploring this text will find an insider's view of the typically invisible worlds skilled and educated migrant women occupy and new tools for conceptualizing citizenship. This work should serve to inspire additional research into migrant women's practices of citizenship across a range of contexts.' Contemporary Sociology 'Erel's work is an original and remarkable contribution to ongoing scholarly debates on transnational migration and citizenship providing empirical grounds for looking at the agency of migrants, and migrant women in particular. It is a good starting point for rethinking the notion of citizenship and challenging the boundaries of political participation.' Feminist Review '...Umut Erel's examination of the experiences of migrant women contributes greatly to current preoccupations with how women's citizenship is constructed and enabled in different geographical and political contexts. ... What is most compelling in Erel's work is the way in which she situates the life stories of a select group of women within the theoretical framework of social construction of skill. ... By focusing on the stories of ten first- and second-generation Turkish migrant women, she favours a more empirical approach to her research, taking it out of the realm of abstract theorizing and focusing on the lived experiences of women acting as citizens on daily basis. For Erel, though, gender is not the sole defining element within interpretations of citizenship: she examines the intersection of ethnicity, class and gender to establish how women in Britain and Germany negotiate social relations and gendered conditions of belonging. ... Erel's work challenges preconceived notions of the status of migrant women by examining only stories of skilled women, and their transition from passive to active subjects, their development of agency, and eventually their establishment as rights-claiming subjects. Thus, Erel sets out to overturn the concept that migrant women's citizenship, in the broadest sense of the term, can be solely seen in terms of their access to social rights.' Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 'Compared with other books in this area which rarely touch the issue of research methodology as a subject in itself, Erel's book stands out for its in-depth discussion of research design. There is a very engaging discussion of the life-stories method and epistemological issues related to it. In addition, the author very clearly explains how she interpreted data using cultural and structural readings... The extremely wide scope of Erel's book produces a scholarly and authoritative account... the appearance of a book as nuanced and sensitive as Erel's could be seen as good news for all sociologists interested in migration research.' Sociology '... the life stories of Erel's interviewees are absolutely central to her endeavour; they are a grounding from which the author's framework organically grows, rather than being constrained within a theoretical structure. Because Erel's goal is not to typologise or draw general conclusions from the particularities of her interviewees' stories - other than to illustrate the importance of migrant women's own self-defining to ongoing debates about citizenship - her small sample size is less problematic and more convincing... The ways in which Erel manages to draw on the narratives while contextualising them in terms of dominant discourses and structures and shedding light on wider debates around identity, belonging and citizenship, make for an effective and interesting read; the respect she shows her interviewees' self-definitions and narratives is engaging and impressive.' Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Author Information

Umut Erel is Research Fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences at The Open University, UK

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