Territorial ironies : deservingness as a struggle for migrant legitimacy in Belgium

Masja van Meeteren; Malini Sur

doi:10.1007/s10767-020-09360-w

Territorial ironies : deservingness as a struggle for migrant legitimacy in Belgium

Masja van Meeteren, Malini Sur

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This article ethnographically examines the everyday lives and collective activism of undocumented migrants in Belgium as they await the results of asylum appeals and regularisation applications. We show how the values emphasised by state-led migrant legalisation regimes contrast with undocumented migrants' narratives of their own worthiness. In foregrounding deservingness as a moral and legal threshold, we argue that the Belgian nation-state responds to undocumented migrants by enforcing and implementing citizenship policies that persistently keep them on the fringes of legitimacy and recognition. The discursive constructions of 'good citizens' that undocumented migrants embody and make claims to in Belgium extend to and envelop the lives of undocumented migrants in Europe in general.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	575-589
Number of pages	15
Journal	International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society
Volume	33
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-020-09360-w
Publication status	Published - Dec 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).

Open Access - Access Right Statement

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Keywords

Belgium
asylum seekers
citizenship
immigrants
refugees

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1007/s10767-020-09360-w

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Cite this

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title = "Territorial ironies : deservingness as a struggle for migrant legitimacy in Belgium",

abstract = "This article ethnographically examines the everyday lives and collective activism of undocumented migrants in Belgium as they await the results of asylum appeals and regularisation applications. We show how the values emphasised by state-led migrant legalisation regimes contrast with undocumented migrants' narratives of their own worthiness. In foregrounding deservingness as a moral and legal threshold, we argue that the Belgian nation-state responds to undocumented migrants by enforcing and implementing citizenship policies that persistently keep them on the fringes of legitimacy and recognition. The discursive constructions of 'good citizens' that undocumented migrants embody and make claims to in Belgium extend to and envelop the lives of undocumented migrants in Europe in general.",

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doi = "10.1007/s10767-020-09360-w",

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AB - This article ethnographically examines the everyday lives and collective activism of undocumented migrants in Belgium as they await the results of asylum appeals and regularisation applications. We show how the values emphasised by state-led migrant legalisation regimes contrast with undocumented migrants' narratives of their own worthiness. In foregrounding deservingness as a moral and legal threshold, we argue that the Belgian nation-state responds to undocumented migrants by enforcing and implementing citizenship policies that persistently keep them on the fringes of legitimacy and recognition. The discursive constructions of 'good citizens' that undocumented migrants embody and make claims to in Belgium extend to and envelop the lives of undocumented migrants in Europe in general.

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KW - refugees

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IS - 4

ER -

Territorial ironies : deservingness as a struggle for migrant legitimacy in Belgium

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Open Access - Access Right Statement

Keywords

UN SDGs

Access to Document

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