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CSI0010.1177/0011392115614780Current SociologyAnthias

CS

Article

Interconnecting boundaries
of identity and belonging
and hierarchy-making within
transnational mobility studies:
Framing inequalities

Current Sociology Monograph


2016, Vol. 64(2) 172190
The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0011392115614780
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Floya Anthias

University of Roehampton and University of East London, UK

Abstract
The article explores the collision and collusion between inequalities and identities with
a focus on transnational mobilities. The author engages critically with the notions of
identity and belonging before exploring racism, and integration and diversity discourses
and practices, as ways in which non-belongings become shaped and reinforced. Belonging
and identity simultaneously raise the question about boundaries of difference and
identity and how they are struggled over but also relate to how people are placed
hierarchically within societal systems of resource allocation and inequality. Struggles
about membership, entitlements and belonging become ever more politicized where
there is competition over resources in the translocational and transnational spaces
of todays world. Racisms forge and reconstitute forms of non-belonging which are
central to inequalities, and as forms of boundary- and hierarchy-making, mark the
boundaries in particularly violent and dehumanizing ways. Diversity and integration
discourses are discussed in relation to European developments in the management of
migration, with a particular focus on the UK. They are regarded as being underpinned
by a hierarchization, culturalization and essentialization of difference. Finally, the article
explores the potential of a translocational and intersectional frame for understanding
the transnational positioning of social actors in terms of hierarchy and inequality.
Keywords
Belonging, inequality, racisms, translocational, transnational migration

Corresponding author:
Floya Anthias, Department of Social Sciences, University of Roehampton, Roehampton Lane, London, SW15
5PU, UK.
Email: f.anthias@roehampton.ac.uk

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In this article I explore the collision and collusion between inequalities and identities
with a focus on transnational mobilities. I focus on the interconnection between the construction of inequalities and discourses and practices of identity-making and belongingness; both are based on boundary- and hierarchy-making processes across local, national
and transnational levels. Transnational processes give rise to diverse and heterogeneous,
as well as intertwined, relations sometimes captured by the notion of superdiversity
(Vertovec and Wessendorf, 2006). However, such a summary term needs to be accompanied by more analytical tools for analysing the processes involved. And it is here that
I want to look at the potential of a translocational frame that suggests that the transnational positioning of social actors is a complex process relating to social processes, outcomes of differentiation and the structuration of social place, i.e. in terms of hierarchy
and inequality.
Belonging and identity raise questions about boundaries of difference, the differences
that count, their normative and political evaluation, the boundaries of collectivities and
social bonds, and how they are struggled over. These struggles about membership, entitlements and belonging become ever more politicized where competition over resources
exists in translocational and transnational spaces in the world today. This is characterized
by flows of people and interculturality, displacements and relocations of various types
which are not only related to migration but also class, gender and other social categories
of difference and identity. The primary feature is inequality along many dimensions: it is
an asymmetric space, therefore. In the first section of the article I engage critically with
the notions of identity and belonging before exploring racism, and integration and diversity discourses, as ways in which non-belongings become shaped and reinforced.

Identity and belonging in the study of transnational


migration
Issues of identity and belonging dominate the political landscape in many countries. In
the UK, for example, they were raised prominently on 13 November 2013 by some of the
statements made by the ex-Home Secretary David Blunkett. Talking to BBC Radio
Sheffield he said that the arrival of a large number of Slova Roma migrants would lead
to rioting and that their behaviour was aggravating to local people. He said, Youve got
to adhere to our standards and to our way of behaving and if you do this youll get welcome. We have got to change the behaviour and the culture of the incoming community,
the Roma community, because theres going to be an explosion otherwise (The Guardian,
14 November 2013). The then Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg followed this by saying, We have every right to say if you are in Britain and are coming to live here you
have got to be sensitive to the way of life in this country (The Guardian, 14 November
2013). Jack Straw, another former Home Secretary, then intervened by calling the opening up of Britains borders to Eastern European migrants a spectacular mistake. Prime
Minister David Cameron followed, saying that we welcomed the right kinds of migrants
like businessmen and medical personnel who contributed to British society.
In this discussion, and the commentaries that have followed, the boundaries of belonging and conceptions about the undesirable elements in society were flagged again, with
the targets being the Roma and East Europeans (rather than Muslims or Black
Commonwealth migrants, both targets in the past and still). Issues of integration premised
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on following the way of life of the country you migrate to come to the fore here and now
sit alongside the much discussed citizenship tests, skilled migration regime and securitization discourse that are essential parts of the managed migration and integration policies of
recent years in the UK and other European countries. These raise the issue of the political
as well as analytical importance of the ways we theorize and understand belonging and
identity in the modern world. Ideas about racial or ethnic identity as primary social
markers and the forms of belongingness and cohesiveness they construct underpin much
research on transnationalism, e.g. in the concern with hybridity, diaspora consciousness,
cosmopolitanism and ethnic fundamentalism.
We have seen an increasing focus, too, on identity issues from states who regard the
retention of diverse identities as synonymous with the failure to integrate, and therefore
as an impediment to social cohesion. This is not only linked to the role of ethnic markers, which become both visible and challenging in a globalizing world, but also to the
regulatory regimes of modern states and coalitions of power amongst states. These set up
new frontiers and borders that depend on categorizing desirable and undesirable persons
and groupings. These are attached to a presumed threat from hostile identities embodied in the war against terror but also in fears of unskilled, dependent migrants, asylum
seekers and refugees whose culture and ways of life are seen to be incompatible or undesirable within Western societies and a companion fear of social breakdown and unrest.
Current debates on multiculturalism and social cohesion are examples (see Yuval-Davis
et al., 2005 on the UK).
All aspects of differentiation and stratification involve socially constructed boundaries and hierarchies that produce population categories that are then organized in terms
of the idea of groups. What happens is that the socially constructed nature of the categories becomes reduced to people belonging to groups that are endowed with a given and
inalienable quality thereby ignoring the crosscutting differences within them. Groups are
treated as homogeneous categories of people with particular and given characteristics
(e.g. groups relating to women or ethnic groups are presumed to have particular needs,
predispositions and strategies) and assumptions are made about how they should be
inserted into the labour market and society to which they have moved, both in terms of
their role in the labour market and the reproduction of culture and traditions they are seen
to be endowed with.
This is mirrored in the idea that transnational actors belong to ethnic groups and they
have given predispositions (which involve them making particular choices in terms of
labour market niches or familial and social organization and mobilization). We then cannot recognize the crisscrossing influence of other dimensions of their location such as
how ethnic categories crosscut with gender, generation, class, political values, experience, opportunities, and very importantly, agency. It also under-emphasizes the constraints of structural processes and contextual parameters such as those of opportunity
structures.

Mapping the parameters of identity and belonging: Some


conceptual issues
Increasingly, in much current research and writing, we find attempts to map out the conceptual parameters of identity and belonging (e.g. see the writings of Anthias, 2002,
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2006; Antonsich, 2010; Pfaff-Czarnecka, 2013; Yuval-Davis, 2006, 2011) which in part
have been concerned with delineating the distinctions between these terms and their use
as research concepts. For example Pfaff-Czarnecka (2013: 6) states that: Identity is a
categorical concept while belonging combines categorisation with social relating.
Some writers have also asked about the extent to which we can continue using the
concept of identity given its theoretical baggage (e.g. Anthias, 2002; Brubaker and
Cooper, 2000). The impossibility of the identity term is seen as deriving not only from
the fact that it is a slippery and overburdened concept attempting to do too much
(Brubaker and Cooper, 2000) but also that it says too little (Anthias, 2002). For example
I have argued before that identity has a tendency to function as a disabling concept that
limits the focus and moves the analyst away from context, meaning and practice
(Anthias, 2002: 493).
Moreover, the term tends to suggest mutually exclusive identities, and that identity is
a possessive property of individuals. Indeed, it is equated with being an individual: not
to have an identity or for it to be ambiguous is regarded as a problem. Can the notion of
belonging therefore avoid some of the potential essentializing and other problems identified with identity?
Sometimes the question about delineating the differences assumes that it is possible
to treat the concepts in definitional terms (e.g. see the attempts at definitions in PfaffCzarnecka, 2013). However, the view I take is that their use must be heuristic. In and of
themselves, the concepts do not necessarily carry any given analytical worth for it is in
the ways that we use them that this worth is given. So at this level, it is not possible to
make a definitional distinction between them as though this resolves any question about
their analytical or political use. On the other hand, it is possible to see, in the ways they
have been used and continue being used, some general patterns which point to a burdensome theoretical baggage. We need to distinguish between heuristic concepts and definitional concepts the latter assume a static and given meaning to the terms we use.
Whilst identity can be criticized, it is important to remember that it remains an everyday concept with meaning to actors. Its infiltration into our common understandings in the
Western world, particularly with the rise of possessive individualism (Macpherson, 1962),
makes its deployment a powerful tool in political claims-making and contestation.
It is useful to reiterate here some of the complex elements that the notion of identity
is asked to deliver. These include notions of the self, i.e. identity as denoting the core
self and as the aspirational self (see e.g. Erikson, 1968), and notions of primary identity,
identity as a form of categorization we claim (e.g. linked to authenticity but also in relation to resources, both symbolic and material) or attributed by others. It also encompasses the idea of identity as a form of practice, as a performance (e.g. as in lived
everyday performativities or as impression management). Underpinning the notion is the
idea of shared spheres of being with similar others (found particularly in the related and
perhaps less problematic notion of identification), such as shared emotions (towards for
example a group or homeland) and shared values and beliefs (e.g. religious, political,
cultural), or a shared gender, ethnic origin or class. All these latter formulations cannot
be understood, of course, without treating identity as a site of struggle, relating to strategies of power, recognition, representation and redistribution. However, as all these elements actually raise potentially a range of issues which are analytically distinct from

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each other, it is clear that using the term identity to encompass them all acts to confuse,
muddying our analysis.
Another form of critique is to argue that identity assumes a static being which fails
to signal the processes involved, i.e. the processes of becoming. It is therefore linked to
the kind of positivistic framing that being potentially hails.
For our second concept, we can turn to belonging. Here we can discern a move, in
much recent writing, towards using this term rather than that of identity. Is this because
it moves away from the individual as a unitary subject? Or is it better able to grasp the
multiple elements which individuals use in order to make their claims and which are
reflective of their affective lives? It is important to note in this context that belonging
too can be used in a unitary way and is not necessarily freer of those essentializing and
totalizing concerns found in identity. This can be found for example in the idea that you
can only belong to one nationality or you can only belong and have allegiance to one
country (as in the idea of the Cricket test posed by Norman Tebbit under Margaret
Thatchers government that saw who you supported in the cricket match as the acid test
of where you belonged by implication if you supported the Pakistani team you did not
belong to Britain).
There is also the distinction between belonging and the politics of belonging (see e.g.
Antonsich, 2010; Yuval-Davis, 2006, 2011), which at first glance seems eminently necessary. Antonsich argues:
belonging should be analyzed both as a personal, intimate feeling of being at home in a
place (place-belongingness) and as a discursive resource that constructs, claims, justifies, or
resists forms of socio-spatial inclusion/exclusion (politics of belonging). (2010: 644)

He draws on Fenster (2005) and Yuval-Davis (2006) for this. Yuval-Davis (2011: 4)
argues:
It is important to differentiate between belonging and the politics of belonging. Belonging is
about emotional attachment, about feeling at home. The politics of belonging comprise of
specific political projects aimed at constructing belonging to particular collectivities.

In these formulations, belonging denotes what people feel and their orientations, the
politics of belonging denoting those contestations and struggles around who does and
who does not belong. But the picture becomes more complicated when we pause to
think further about this distinction. This is because the arenas of the social and the
political infiltrate all social life, including our feelings, values and orientations.
Belonging can involve shared values, networks and resources with others but need not
do so. Its technology is multiple and its operations wide-ranging. We can ask about the
politics of shared values, networks, practices, resources. As soon as we open up these
questions we can then see that struggle and negotiation as well as contestation inform
all claims and attributions of belonging, including our affective placement in terms of
what we share with others and to what this sharing relates. Feelings or emotions are not
innocent of social structures, as Sara Ahmed (2004) has argued. If this is the case then
a clear-cut distinction between belonging and the politics of belonging cannot be

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convincing any more. For there is politics in the bigger sense, i.e. political organizations
and contestations about who belongs and who does not or to what degree they do and
do not (i.e. in determining differential belonging). There is also the micropolitics of
everyday life where we forge our sense of belonging too; this is as much political
although using the term in a different sense here. This relates to the issue of the agonistic nature of all social life.
Nor is it possible to argue that shared values are a prerequisite to belonging. Neither
are they a necessary or sufficient condition. There are shared values of different kinds.
One can share with others values of democratization or gender equality whilst neither
identifying with them, having access to membership in their club, nor indeed having
affective links with them. On the other hand, one can be accepted as a member and therefore in this sense belong whilst having very different political or cultural values: how
and the extent to which shared values count in the yielding of belonging is contextual and
situational. To share values might take us some way in the direction of belonging, but
other aspects need to be in place also to yield belonging either in the formal juridical
sense or in the more informal sense as well as the affective sense.
Belonging is a concept that can be used at a number of different levels (as has been
suggested for identity also). Belonging as an analytical term can enable us to ask questions about belonging to what rather than, as with identity, who an individual is or
who and what they identify with (which are in fact two different questions). Certainly
the use of identification may be entailed in the notion of belonging as well as in the
notion of identity. But more than identification, belonging actually entails not only issues
about attributions and claims (as does identity) but also allows more clearly questions
about the actual spaces and places to which people are accepted as members or feel that
they are members, and broader questions about social inclusion as well as forms of violence and subordination entailed in processes of boundary-making. In this sense the
place-making elements of belonging stressed for example by Antonsich (2010) as well as
in my own work on social locations (Anthias, 2002, 2008) seem relevant.
Of course at this and every level what characterizes the belonging notion is that it does
not have the same theoretical baggage as that of identity which turns us always back to
the self. Belonging is always in relation to something outside the self (a place in the
social as well as geographical sense and is therefore always located), whilst identity
has been used more as a possessive characteristic of the individual, as that which defines
who they are or who they think they are as well as entailing the construction of bonds
with similar others. Belonging may also be forged in relation to belonging with (for
example others), though this is not always premised on similarity but can be forged in
relation to solidarity and values of dialogue and engagement (although the delivery of
the politics of this has been little and far between).
This is the point I believe where identity stops, for if nothing else it constructs boundaries that cannot be crossed. Boundary-crossing is a crucial potential found more in the
notion of belonging, but it is not one that is always upheld as there is always seepage
from the notion of identity to the notion of belonging. Moreover belonging to something is always linked to belonging with particular others who also occupy the realm of
belonging to that something. And here it becomes akin to although, arguably, more malleable than the idea of collective identity. It would be therefore wrong to argue that

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belonging does not involve boundary-making but it also involves potentially at least
boundary-breaking if it moves beyond the originary essentialism characterized by ethnicized notions of identity.
What is clear is that belonging references the issue of what one belongs to much
more clearly than identity. However, as I suggested earlier, I do not think that it is possible to think of belonging to without also involving the practices and orientation of
belonging with. Belonging to in the sense of formal membership or being accepted
within a nation, a neighbourhood, grouping, a club, or a social category, does not mean
you cannot belong to something else also, unlike identity which suggests much more a
mutual exclusivity of identifications. The proviso here of course is that adherents of
identity have argued that the idea of multiple identities or multilayered identities has
shifted the emphasis away from such unitary formulations. However, it is possible to
argue that the idea of multiple or multi-layered does not resolve some of the issues relating to identity; rather that such prefixes put into question what is being retained through
its continuing use (for this argument see Anthias, 2002).
If belonging asks about to what and with whom you are a member, where and by
whom you are accepted and you feel attached to, rather than who you are, it is not a totalizing concept. However, it faces the same difficulties as identity, identified by Brubaker
and Cooper (2000) in terms of asking too much. It is useful to break down the different
components in terms of formal membership (juridico-legal as in nationality), informal
membership (being accepted and participating within) and being attached to (feeling
belonging and a sense of a shared set of values, origins, feelings and so on), and about
claims and attributions which are political in different ways (as within political mobilizations of different types or in more subject-centred politics relating to resource and representational arenas as well as impression management). This involves a much more
complex delineation of questions and issues than the distinctions drawn between belonging and the politics of belonging noted earlier.
However, the critique I made of identity, that it asks too little, does not apply so much,
as belonging is by its very linguistic force about place, about context and about location.
Belonging relates to place/location both in the geographical sense but also the symbolic
figurations around it. Amongst other things, and as an elaboration of the components
mentioned above, belonging can include an attachment (to place, community), claims
(for place, community), attributions (of place, community), formal membership to places
through meeting criteria of such membership, as a commitment or practices of consensus
to a state/social system.
As such belonging ties in much better than identity to a focus on social location and
positionality, which I have stressed in some of my own work (see e.g. Anthias, 2002,
2013a, 2013b). This is because of its relationality to place both physical and symbolic
and because it denotes spatial and temporal contexts. There are a multiplicity of locations relating to gender, race and class, locality, etc. and specific situational and conjunctural spheres which affect our positions and therefore belongings in time and
place. Moreover the struggles around belonging in terms of who belongs and the criteria used become much more embedded in struggles of national and territorial resources
rather than being posed, if not actually constituted, by struggles over representation
and culture (which have been tied to identity politics). For example, struggles around

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membership, nationality and citizenship much more clearly entail struggles of belonging even where they may be couched in terms of the issue of identity.
Access to material resources is central in belonging inasmuch as it an important part
of living with a sense of safety and participation. There is some evidence that those who
are professionally active have a greater sense of belonging to society than those who are
excluded or involved in casual work (see e.g. Chow, 2007; Yuval-Davis and Kaptani,
2008), also contributing to providing a sense of a stake in the future of the community
(Anthias, 2006; Sporton and Valentine, 2007). Juridical belonging such as citizenship is
fundamental also to the sense of safety that many writers see as an important element in
forging a sense of belonging (Alexander, 2008; Anthias, 2006; Loader, 2006). Legal
status, or formal membership and formal belonging, constitutes a condition for effective
participation also (see Anthias and Pajnik, 2014).
Having discussed the concepts of identity and belonging I want to turn to the issues of
racisms as a formation of non-belonging related to transnational migrants and othered
collectivities. I will then examine the ways in which integration and diversity discourses
and practices (which purport to create conditions for social inclusion of transnational
migrants) are dependent on notions of identity and belonging that are infused with
assumptions about essentialization, culturalization and hierarchization.

Race and racisms: Attributions of non-belonging


In the European context as well as more globally, racism, a particularly virulent form of
boundary-making which constructs non-belonging and othering, is on the rise to a
frightening extent and racisms breed on racisms. There has been an alarming rise in
right-wing parties and their supporters. There has been a growth of different manifestations against a range of categories: anti-Black, anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish, anti-Roma,
anti-Eastern European, anti-migrant. Economic crisis, failed policies, failed left-wing
political parties, the backlash against multiculturalism, a highly charged European discourse on borders and containment, fears of safety and poverty, the Middle East conflict,
securitization discourse and new legal powers to prevent or control home grown terrorists, nationalisms: all these are some of the central factors involved.
Despite the proclaimed end of race, race and racism rear their ugly head in opportunistic and multiple ways which do not always rely on biologistic forms of understanding
of boundaries or biological racism. Ideas about belonging, cultural difference, undesirability and threat underpin the types of proclamations increasingly made.
There is of course the problem of naming processes and effects (i.e. naming something as the space of race or racism). As Nira Yuval-Davis and I wrote some time ago
(Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1992), a useful heuristic is to think of racism as those discourses, practices and outcomes that serve to inferiorize, subordinate, exclude and
exploit on the basis of a purported collective origin. In addition these are outcomes and
effects of broader social relations rather than a product of relations between so-called
races. As such we need to turn to political, economic and nationalist projects and relations of power as well as link racism to other forms of difference-making and marking
such as gender, class and sexuality. Nor do they require some notion of intentionality
which is clear-cut. This also links to the process whereby subjects adopt taken for granted

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attitudes that are not defined by them or the society as racist. The racialization process is
opportunistic, i.e. an outcome of political and economic projects at a number of different
levels, and invents criteria for race-making, drawing on available elements which
become salient in arenas of struggle.
The idea of race-making uses the notion of race but not as something that can be
defined since it does not exist as such; it is a discredited notion and yet socially salient.
Race-making involves a process whereby a social category or population grouping is
constructed in terms of collective characteristics that are essentialist and inalienable
whether the criteria used are biological, cultural (including religion) or linked to character. This does not mean that such populations will always be defined in this way since the
labels, ideas and practices around them can shift and change and the self-definitions of
the people involved will also be subject to change. This is found in the idea that class
whitens or blackens, for example, or whether Jews are regarded as a religious or a racial
grouping. Such definitions are therefore not fixed; attention must be paid to time, place,
context and meaning.
Instead of asking whether this is racism or something else it is more productive to ask:
how are people categorized, how are they positioned, what are the practices that they
experience, what are the outcomes for their lives? We can also ask: how is all this linked
to economic and political forces and projects of state-making and challenging (by the
actors themselves or progressive forces)?
A major facet of racisms is that they are constituted through effects, i.e. are outcomes
of social practices, discourses and social relations at different societal levels (such as
representational, intersubjective, institutional and experiential; Anthias, 1998), and
therefore complex. They are intersectionally constituted it is not vital to see these as
products of race difference in order that they produce outcomes which are racist they
can be product of the interplay of social forces linked to class although not reducible to
this or to gender.
Racisms are boundary- and hierarchy-making, often marking the boundaries in particularly violent and dehumanizing ways. The faces of contemporary racisms involve
essentialism, culturalism and the hierarchization of difference. The tropes underlying
contemporary racisms can be seen as those of danger, deviance, deficit and disgust in
different ways. These are what I call the Four Ds, an easy mnemonic for the processes
shared to different extents and in different combinations, by racism.
constructing the collectivized other as a danger: either to culture or the
Danger: 
national character or identity, or as a threat to life itself and as a security issue.
the other is endemically deviant and at times evil or their beliefs are such
Deviance: 
that they cannot be accommodated by mainstream or hegemonic culture
or interests.
Deficit: 
the other is deficient and cannot meet the level required by the society
(i.e. the dominant social locations) and therefore needs to be corrected,
and if judged unable to correct their lack of cultural competence or deficient way of behaving then they should be excluded or segregated: this
appears in terms of citizenship tests and requirements at entry for
migrants as proofs of integration or capacity to integrated.

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Disgust (and desire): 


where the others ways of life or character give rise to emotions which are characterized by physical and bodily
responses leading to avoidance, sexualization and animality
as with disgust over food smells or bodily characteristics and
stigmatization. Disgust involves ideas of contagion, contamination and sexuality of the other.
The other that is racialized can be one or all of these. These elicit, at the intersubjective level, fear, avoidance, dehumanization and stigmatization (to cite a few responses).
Whilst the governmentality of the racialized subject found in imperial domination lies in
the dehumanization of the other as species, whether articulated through biological or
culturally determined ascriptions and attributions, the figure of the contemporary racialized subject is the diverse and found to occupy a range of spaces of difference but can
operate even where there is the concession of the possibility of assimilation. I am not
referring here to skin colour alone because the object of such a racialization, as we have
learnt, is differentially and opportunistically constituted. A racialized subject can occupy
the terrain of the diverse or can cease to be the other as and when the logics of hegemonic social and economic forces, as well as struggles against these, derail the foundations
of imperial racisms.
And here is precisely where there is a link with notions of belonging and identity. As
argued earlier, belonging and identity simultaneously raise the question about boundaries
of difference and identity and also relate to how people are placed hierarchically, i.e.
within societal systems of resource allocation and inequality.

Integrating the diverse and notions of identity and


belonging
Integration is concerned with the governance of diversity. Diversity is a highly normative notion. I have argued that as a boundary-maker, it functions to undermine the very
intent it seems to activate (Anthias, 2013a). If its intent is to demarcate or to include
then it registers the difference that can be bridged. On the other hand, if its intent is to
exclude then it constructs the demarcation and difference as alien or other, occupying
a terrain that cannot be crossed. Simmel (1908 [1994]), to some extent, illustrates the
conundrum, the contradiction or paradox involved. He refers to the bridge as both connecting spaces but also demarcating a boundary. Diversity functions a bit like the
notion of the bridge. The metaphor of the bridge demarcates boundaries from edge to
edge. So contemporary discourses of diversity are boundary- and hierarchy-making.
Diversity occupies a paradoxical place in discussions of social welfare and enablement. First it signifies the other, as that which needs to be embraced and which is what
makes our cities (e.g. London, Paris) uniquely fascinating, as in the idea of multicultural conviviality used by Gilroy (2004) or everyday multiculturalism where people
live side by side, go to the same schools and share tastes in property or design and
fashion. On the other hand, diversity stands for danger, which elicits what I call the
notion of the perverse diverse.

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The perverse diverse


There are two ways in which the perverse diverse is constructed both within migration
policy and discourse but also in terms of the discourse of diversity. The first, denoting the
unacceptable face of diversity, is found in the trope of the unwilling to integrate.
Migrants unwillingness to integrate, treated as deviant, is to be corrected by requiring a
demonstration through, for example, sitting citizenship or integration tests. Here the concern is to put in place certain requirements which will enforce the integration of the
other and as proof of willingness. Their own cultural and social resources are thereby
treated as deficient for the purposes of participating in society. Where difference persists
it must be relegated to the private sphere and not denote a strong communal character,
unless it can be used to police those within its boundaries (Department of Communities
and Local Government, 2012).
The second trope we find is that of unable to integrate. This posits the impossibility
of some undesirable differences being eliminated, and that these constitute a threat to
Western values and society. This treats difference as dangerous or deviant. Here not only
is there an unwillingness to integrate but a threat to society itself. Related is that they
are incapable of becoming one of us, i.e. adapting to the society and adopting our
values. This is found in the securitization discourse on Muslims, new laws and their
modes of operation, and in debates on the body covering of women and on honour-based
violence including forced marriages.
The unable to integrate is signposted particularly on Muslims as potential terrorists.
By 2006, in the UK, a core of one in four had a strongly anti-Muslim perspective (Field,
2007). The securitization of Muslims has also been possible because there has been support
that has allowed exceptional state actions, and new legislation. Stop and search powers and
powers of arrest without a warrant of those suspected of being a terrorist or concerned with
terrorist activity have become broad and highly discretionary powers: elsewhere, there
have been attacks against setting up minarets in Switzerland, in France the banning of the
niqab and minority groups attacked on the basis of their gender values. In addition, with
regard to the Miss France 2014 report in Elle, it was stated that there were within minutes
1.1 million tweets saying shame and decrying black surfing on Mandela wave.
The boundaries of belonging are being defined in essentialist and culturalist ways.
The focus on culture is also found in the claims that minorities make. However, claims
and contestations, organized in the name of cultural identities, may also be about
resources (economic, cultural, educational and other resources) or about rights, respect/
representation and redistribution (Fraser, 1997), and linked to the political economy of
power. As recent publications by Joseph Rowntree (see Hickman et al., 2008) have
shown, people in localities are more concerned with safety and convenience and issues
of age, locality and class rather than ethnic/religious diversity. In other studies also
(Rogaly and Taylor, 2007; Vertovec and Wessendorf, 2006), issues of culture were not as
important as other problems in local neighbourhoods to do with housing, public policy,
local governance and safety.
A particular example of culturalization is found in discourses relating to the veil,
honour-based violence and forced marriages, which raise gendered issues in particular.
Concerns with so-called honour-based violence (see Gill, 2010) articulate the need to

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protect women who are seen as victims, from their ethnic or Muslim culture in particular.
Such framings tend to divest it of its gendered aspects, viewing such crimes as the result
of cultural values rather than practices of gender-based violence more widely (see e.g.
Begikhani et al., 2010). This discourse shows how gender is often at the heart of culturalist constructions of collectivities (Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1992). Indeed, the culturalization of violence against women means that individual cases are seen as representing
collective patterns and leads to demonization of the whole culture (Gill, 2010; Grillo,
2008), fuelling Islamophobia in particular.

Towards a framing for belonging and social location in


relation to transnational migration
A more intersectional approach which does not treat people purely in ethnic, migrant or
racial terms but considers the different facets of peoples social locations would be able
to deliver a much better frame for issues of belonging. This involves a rejection of the
culturalization and hierarchization found in the particular construction of belonging
within diversity and integration discourse and practice.
A more transnational lens is also important as this recognizes the kind of transnational
links people have, the flows of communication between different spaces, including
places of residence, countries of origin, local and translocal links as well as translocational positionalities (noting not only the crisscrossing connections in peoples lives but
also some of the contradictions these create at a number of different levels). This means
that belonging has become a term that can no longer be linked to a fixed place or location
but to a range of different locales in different ways. This also means that people might
occupy different and contradictory positions and have different belongings globally. For
example, a migrant who has lived and worked in Britain may not feel a sense of belonging to British life, feeling for example that they are not full members or accepted as such.
Their social position in their own homeland may be advanced when they return if they
have been able to save and display relative wealth on their visits. However, on such
return they may not necessarily gain full belonging in their country of origin as they may
be regarded as outsiders (e.g. this is the case for many ex-Commonwealth migrants such
as Indians or Cypriots). A transnational lens enables us to see that fixity of belonging is
not possible.
I want to develop a little bit further the contribution that a framing using a transnational intersectional lens can make and how a notion of solidarity can help us rethink
some of the issues involved.

A transnational intersectional lens and translocational positionality


The intersectionality framework, formulated within ant-racist feminism (e.g. Combahee
River Collective, 1982 [1977]; hooks, 1981), is concerned with the articulation of different forms of hierarchy organized through social categories such as race, gender and class
(amongst others). The focus of intersectionality has often used, however, a nation-based
lens. A transnational perspective to issues of migration has provided an important corrective to a nation-based approach which has little concern or acknowledgement of multiple

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and translocational locations and allegiances. A transnational intersectional lens can also
broaden the scope of analysis of othering processes, illuminating both the differential
placing of actors within and across national borders and the often contradictory and complex processes involved.
I do not treat intersectionality as a unitary framework but rather a heuristic device that
allows a set of approaches for furthering the understanding of social relations relating to
boundaries and hierarchies of social life. I will refer, therefore to an intersectional framing rather than intersectionality theory or framework. This differs from some current
views that it constitutes a theoretical and empirical paradigm (Hancock, 2007: 249250),
on the one hand, or the idea that it is a buzzword (Davis, 2008), on the other. However,
the plurality of the ways in which it can be advanced is acknowledged.
The political underpinnings of intersectionality are crucial as it sought to challenge
not only mainstream theorizing but particular projects of emancipation (such as those
based on identity politics) as well as being dedicated to dismantling hierarchies more
generally. These political underpinnings are clear in the work of pioneers such as Patricia
Hill Collins and Kimberl Crenshaw amongst others. For example, the work of Patricia
Hill Collins on gender, race and class became central to feminist theory and method
before the term intersectionality was coined. She treats these as ideological (Collins,
1990, 1993, 1998, 2001) or discursive practices emerging in the process of power production, and as historically contingent (as would be suggested in the work of Foucault,
1972).1 Kimberl Crenshaw, a socio-legal theorist, focuses on the overlapping of categories of discrimination (Crenshaw, 1994) and her work has been very influential, leading
to an interest in the production of data or policy research and practice that recognize the
specificity of the discriminations experienced by intersectional identities (e.g. racialized
women), identities that have suffered from intersectional invisibility (Crenshaw, 2000).
Within the UK, the work of Avtar Brah as well as Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis
began to locate the articulation of social divisions within the context of power relations
and the state, and was central to the entry of intersectionality within the European context (Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1983, 1992; Brah, 1996).
There has been a proliferation of recent writing on intersectionality, pointing to the
limitations of some existing intersectionality frames and attempting to provide better
theoretical and methodological underpinnings (e.g. Bilge, 2010; Brah and Phoenix,
2004; Davis, 2008; Dhamoon, 2011; Erel et al., 2011; Ferree, 2009; Gimenez, 2001;
Hancock, 2007; Knapp, 2005; Levine-Rasky, 2011; Lutz et al., 2011; McCall, 2005;
Taylor et al., 2011; Verloo, 2006; Walby, 2007; Winker and Degele, 2011; Yuval-Davis,
2006). A range of theoretical issues have been identified. The positions taken range from
the idea that intersectionality is the best means we have for exploring the multidimensional and complex articulation of forms of social division and identity (Brah and
Phoenix, 2004), that it serves as a useful buzzword but cannot aim to be a theory as such
(Davis, 2008), to the view that it tends to reduce all forms of difference to a list and treats
them as equivalent (Erel et al., 2011; Gimenez, 2001).
Intersectionality provides a way of thinking about the complex inequalities found in
relations of hierarchization and stratification. These include unequal resource allocation
and scales of value as well as practices relating to morality (Sayer, 2005), disgust (Lawler,
2005), stigma and so on which link to inferiorization and othering. Through these

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processes, there occurs a construction of places or positions in the social order of things.
However, these do not necessarily work in a coherent way nor are the places or positions
mutually exclusive. These may lead to complex forms of hierarchy across a range of different dimensions. This is where the processes involve intersectional constructions and
outcomes: at the level of concrete relations of positionality and hierarchization.
This analysis has radical implications for understanding social stratification and inequality in society. For example, it requires us to reject the difference between social
categories characterized by culture and those characterized by economic features. It also
asks us to revise the idea that culture has less saliency in the production of inequality than
economic factors (as indeed also exemplified by newer approaches to class; e.g. in the
work of Skeggs, 1997). Concrete relations of hierarchy exist as outcomes of the operation of power, underpinned by social categories that naturalize, collectivize and essentialize social relations, and through the workings of processes of inferiorization (stigma,
disgust, devaluation, disrespect), exploitation (commodification of persons and deriving
interest and benefit from the exercise of power over them as an extension of the Marxist
term) as well as unequal resource allocation (entailing multiple forms of inequality of
access and inequality of outcome).
The emphasis on combinatory or complex articulations is able to recognize dialogical
and contradictory positions and positionings. Such a framework underpins the concept
of translocational positionality which denotes the ways in which social locations are
products of particular constellations of social relations. In focusing on social divisions,
as boundaries, hierarchies and ontological spaces (see Anthias, 1998, in particular), and
using the notion of translocational positionality (Anthias, 2002, 2008, 2009, 2013b), I
have tried to work towards a complex recognition of hierarchical relations which has a
wider theoretical resonance in terms of social stratification. The domain of structural
location is therefore not a given and unproblematic placing of people in an overall hierarchical system but is much more nuanced and prone to different placing in terms of
different gazes, different societal contexts and different parameters of social inequality.
Spatiality and temporality are key to the concept of translocational positionality. This
does not deny the existence of unequal power but rather locates the hierarchical and
stratifying process as complexly interwoven with the different operations of power (see
also Hall, 1985). This includes broader relations of power in terms of political, economic
and discursive processes that operate simultaneously and intersectionally within particular locations at particular times.
On the one hand, these can be mutually reinforcing (e.g. as in the case of particular
racialized migrant women). In this case social divisions articulate to produce a reinforcing set of practices of subordination. They may, however, on the other hand, construct
multiple and uneven social patterns of domination and subordination, i.e. produce contradictory locations at particular conjunctures. This is where human subjects are positioned differentially within these social divisions: e.g. a man may be subordinated in
class terms, but is positioned advantageously in relation to his female partner and may
exercise patriarchal forms of power over her. Another example is where a woman may be
subordinated as a cleaner, but has a degree, which gives her good life chances in some
contexts. An individual may be positioned higher in one social place than another (e.g.

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migrants returning to their homelands may achieve class benefits as they display relative
wealth to poorer villagers).
A transnational perspective to issues of migration has provided an important corrective to a nation-based approach which has little concern or acknowledgement of multiple
and translocational locations and allegiances. A transnational intersectional lens can also
broaden the scope of analysis of othering processes, illuminating both the differential
placing of actors within and across national borders and the often contradictory and complex processes involved. In fact, some writers have begun to use intersectionality within
a transnational frame (see e.g. Radhakrishnan, 2008). It is important to attend to the
transnational dimensions of context and time, including the realities of multicultural and
cosmopolitan spaces, digitalized communities, relating to virtual space and time and
post-coloniality.
The idea of translocations first focuses on social locations, rather than on cultural difference and boundaries. Our location is embedded in relations of hierarchy within a
multiplicity of specific situational and conjunctural spheres. Therefore the lens is turned
towards the broader landscape of power which is productive of social divisions. This
recognizes the importance of context, the situated nature of claims and attributions and
their production in complex and shifting locales. Within this framework, identity and
belonging are conceptualized as a set of processes (therefore there is a need to attend to
historicity), and not possessive characteristics of individuals.
Just as a translocational lens moves away analytically from the focus on difference,
politically it moves away from the governmentality of difference. Recognizing that there
are new, emerging constellations of invisible intersections corrects the tendency to single
out some at the potential expense of erasing other boundaries and inequalities which
might exist but have not been articulated or claimed. A temporal and contextual analysis
shifts attention away from fixities of social position (usually underpinned by assumptions about the primacy of the nation-state boundary), and enables a more transnational
as well as more local-based lens. The idea of translocation thereby treats lives as being
located across multiple but also fractured and interrelated social spaces of different types.
To summarize, a transnational intersectional imaginary is able to recognize diversities
on the basis of shifting combinatories of location and positionality within a time and
space framework. This involves the recognition of the global and intersectional nature of
social bonds and interests and the need to move away from an ethnocentric and national
based lens for achieving inclusion and social justice. Such an approach is not focused on
cultural difference but on inequalities and subordinations that are produced intersectionally; it therefore moves beyond culture and ethnicity, and considers material struggles
over resources of different types.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

Note
1. Others have argued, however, that Foucaults approach is inimical to an analysis of social
divisions like gender, ethnicity and class (see e.g. Bilge, 2010).

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Author biography
Floya Anthias is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Social Justice at the University of
Roehampton. She has also been Professor of Sociology at the University of Greenwich, Oxford
Brookes University and the University of East London. Her main academic writings have explored
different forms of stratification, social hierarchy and inequality, and how they interconnect. Her
most recent work has been developing the concept of translocational positionality as a way of
addressing some of the difficulties identified with concepts of hybridity, identity and intersectionality. She has published on these issues in a range of top peer reviewed journals. Floyas books
include Woman Nation State (with N Yuval-Davis; Palgrave), Ethnicity, Class Gender and
Migration (Ashgate), Racialised Boundaries: Nation, Race, Ethnicity, Colour and Class and the
Anti Racist Struggle (with N Yuval-Davis; Routledge) and Contesting Integration, Engendering
Migration (with M Pajnik; Palgrave).
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Rsum
Cet article explore la collision et la collusion des ingalits et des identits au sein des
mobilits transnationales. Je critique les notions didentit et dappartenance afin
dexplorer le racisme, lintgration et les discours et pratiques de diversit pour montrer comment la non-appartenance se forme et se renforce. Appartenance et identit,
ensemble, soulvent la question des frontires de la diffrence et de lidentit ainsi que
les conflits qui sy rattachent. De plus, ces notions se rapportent la manire dont les
individus sont placs de manire hirarchique dans les systmes socitaux dallocations
de ressources et dingalits. Les conflits dadhsion, de droit et dappartenance deviennent de plus en plus politiques renforant la comptition lie aux ressources des espaces
positionnels et transnationaux du monde daujourdhui. Le racisme forge et reconstitue
les formes de non-appartenance qui sont centrales aux ingalits, et en tant que formes
de frontire et de hirarchie, elles marquent les limites de manire particulirement
violente et deshumanisante. Les discours de diversit et dintgration sont abords en
lien avec les dveloppements du management de la migration en Europe, plus particulirement au Royaume-Uni. Ils sont analyss comme tayant une hirarchisation, culturalisation et essentialisation de la diffrence. Pour finir, cet article explore le potentiel
dun cadre positionnel et intersectionnel pour comprendre le positionnement transnational des acteurs sociaux en termes de hirarchie et dingalit.
Mots-cls
Ingalit,
appartenance
translocalisation

pertenencia,

migration

transnationale,

racismes,

Resumen
Este artculo explora la colisin y colusin de desigualdades e identidades desde un
enfoque en la movilidad transnacional. Se adentra de manera crtica en las nociones de
identidad y pertenencia. Previo a ello, profundiza sobre el racismo y las prcticas y discursos de integracin como maneras de dar forma y reforzar el sentido de falta de
pertenencia. Tanto la identidad como la pertenencia cuestionan las fronteras de las
diferencias e identidades y cmo se lucha por ellas, pero tambin se relacionan con
cmo las personas son colocadas de manera jerrquica dentro de los sistemas sociales
de asignacin de recursos y desigualdades. Las luchas por los sentidos de membresa,
derechos propio y pertenencia se politizan cada vez ms donde hay competencia por
los recursos de los espacios que trascienden las localizaciones y las naciones del mundo
de hoy. Los racismos forjan y reconstituyen formas de falta de pertenencia que son
fundamentales para el recrudecimiento de las desigualdades. Como formas de construir
fronteras y jerarquas, las demarcan de una manera particularmente violenta y deshumanizante. Los discursos sobre diversidad e integracin son discutidos en relacin con
los desarrollos europeos en el manejo de la migracin, con un enfoque principal en el
Reino Unido. Estos discursos jerarquizan, culturizan y esencializan las diferencias.
Finalmente, el artculo discute el potencial de un marco translocalizacional e interseccional para comprender la posicin transnacional de los actores sociales en los planos de las jerarquas y las desigualdades.
Palabras clave
Desigualdad, pertenencia, migracin transnacional, racismos, translocalizacin

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