Doctoral Dissertation Research: Liminality, Citizenship, and Social Stratification in a Rapidly Growing Migrant Population

这项研究将审查新出现的经济移徙模式，这些模式使人们在不确定的时间段内被困在其发送社区和所需目的地之间的界限安置中。该项目的核心是与北非迅速增长的移民人口进行人种学接触。通过关注移民的生活经历，移民与公民在公共劳动领域的互动，以及在国家话语中放置“非法”主题，研究人员将考察新形式的跨国移民、身份建构和社会分层之间的相互联系。这项研究将在首都人口稠密的郊区进行。研究人员将采用一系列定性方法，包括：传记问卷、半结构访谈、“走下去”访谈、口述历史收集和作为移民援助组织志愿个案工作者的持续参与者观察。该项目将通过探索政治认同的种族、社会和经济结构，促进人类学对公民身份和“非法性”的理解。这项研究的发现将对学者和政策制定者非常重要，他们将北非视为非洲移民的最后停靠点。除了培训研究生，资助这个项目还将为那些致力于政策改革的人提供宝贵的信息，以确保国际人权公约在整个欧盟及其周边得到维护。

This research will examine emerging patterns of economic migration that leave populations trapped in liminal settlement between their sending communities and desired destinations for undefined periods of time. The project will center on ethnographic engagement with the rapidly expanding population of migrants in North Africa. Through a focus on migrants' lived experiences, migrant-citizen interactions in the public sphere of labor and the placement of "illegal" subjects within national discourse, the researcher will examine interconnections between new forms of transnational migration, identity construction and social stratification. The research will be conducted in a heavily migrant-populated suburb of a capital city. The researcher will employ a range of qualitative methodologies, including: biographical questionnaires, semi-structured interviewing, "go-along" interviewing, oral history collection and ongoing participant observation as a volunteer caseworker at a migrant aid organization. The project will advance anthropological understandings of citizenship and "illegality" by exploring the racial, social and economic constructions of political identity. Findings from this research will be important to scholars and policymakers, who examine North Africa as a final stopping point for African migrants. In addition to training a graduate student, funding this project will contribute valuable information to those working towards policy reform to ensure that international human rights conventions are upheld throughout the E.U. and its periphery.