Precarious lives: Young migrants, citizenship and activism across Europe

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The aims of this Fellowship is first to consolidate my research findings and make them publicly available through both academic and non-academic publications, and second to build on this research to develop a new research project in a European comparative context. This is important as my research addresses an under-researched area of migration studies and it affects a significant group of young people in the UK. The publications will address the following key contributions made by my thesis: 1) There have thus far only been few in-depth ethnographic studies of young "undocumented" migrants, especially in the UK (Bloch et al., 2014; Bloch and McKay, 2016; Sigona and Hughes, 2012). And as Bloch et al. argue '[T]he phenomenon of undocumented migration and undocumented migrants is not going to disappear, making it increasingly important to understand their heterogeneous experiences' (2014: 2). This research contributes an in-depth and nuanced understanding of how immigration status operates in the everyday life of young migrants in London. The circumstances of participants in this study are different to participants in previous studies, in that they have lived most of their lives in the UK, migrating here at a young age with their parents, instead of as young adults or more recently.2) Foregrounding immigration status within an intersectional approach, rather than starting with a state-defined immigration category, problematises these state categories and analyses how they, together with other positions, create a specific lived experience and marginalisation for young migrants. Based on this research, I argue that certain experiences in specific moments of young people's lives pertaining from the dominance of immigration status are surprisingly similar. This contributes to an understanding of how 'the state [...] is thinking about itself when it is thinking about immigration' (Sayad, 2004: 279), and how the state is producing vulnerability (Anderson, 2008). Furthermore, the analytical lens of immigration status challenges methodological nationalism and groupism that has dominated migration studies (Gidley, 2014; Nowicka and Ryan, 2015; Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002).3) This study demonstrates the importance of looking at time and temporality as an important factor in migration studies. Although Cwerner called to attention the neglected research area of time and migration in 2001, it remains largely neglected nearly two decades later (2001; Griffiths, 2014). My research shows time is of importance to the experience of migration in many ways, and merits further examination and theorisation. Something that I will develop in this Fellowship, as encouraged by my viva examiners.4) This research contributes to a body of work that engages a critical perspective on migration studies by drawing on the postcolonial framework of 'connected sociologies' (Bhambra, 2014), and critical race theory, to situate the study of contemporary migration in/to "the West" in its historical and global context. My argument is that "migration studies" continues to be situated in a "Western-centric" framing that avoids the legacies of empire present in the racial construction of the contemporary situation. Examining the current immigration system and its bordering mechanisms in the UK through a historical lens, allows us to understand connections between its establishment during colonialism and contemporary stratifications.5) I will build on my own research to explore these dynamics comparatively in three different European countries. This fellowship will allow me to carry out necessary desk research to establish the case studies for the comparative research and understand how precariousness is produced in different country contexts, and how citizenship and immigration status are contested and constructed through migrant activist groups.