A study of the conditions of being a citizen, belonging and democracy in suburban Britain, this book focuses on understanding how a community takes on the social responsibility and pressures of being a good citizen through what they call ‘stupid’ events, festivals and parades. Building a community is perceived to be an important and necessary act to enable resilience against the perceived threats of neoliberal socio-economic life such as isolation, selfishness and loss of community. Citizenship, Democracy and Belonging in Suburban Britain explores how authoritative knowledge is developed, maintained and deployed by this group as they encounter other ‘social projects’, such as the local council planning committee or academic projects researching participation in urban planning. The activists, who call themselves the ‘Seething Villagers’, model their community activity on the mythical ancient village of Seething where moral tales of how to work together, love others and be a community are laid out in the Seething Tales. These tales include Seething ‘facts’ such as the fact that the ancient Mountain of Seething was destroyed by a giant. The assertion of fact is central to the mechanisms of play and the refusal of expertise at the heart of the Seething community. The book also stands as a reflexive critique on anthropological practice, as the author examines their role in mobilising knowledge and speaking on behalf of others. Citizenship, Democracy and Belonging in Suburban Britain is of interest to anthropologists, urban studies scholars, geographers and those interested in the notions of democracy, inclusion, citizenship and anthropological practice.

Citizenship, Democracy and Belonging in Suburban Britain follows a group of community activists in suburban London, as they take on the responsibilities and pressures of being good citizens.

What graffiti says about contemporary society, and why it demands our urgent attention as a form of civic expression. What is graffiti—vandalism, ornament, art? What if, rather than any of those things, we thought of graffiti as a monument? How would that change our understanding of graffiti, and, in turn, our understanding of monument? In Monumental Graffiti, curator and anthropologist Rafael Schacter focuses on the material, communicative, and contextual aspects of these two forms of material culture to provide a timely perspective on public art, citizenship, and the city today. He applies monument as a lens to understand graffiti and graffiti as a lens to comprehend monument, challenging us to consider what the appropriate monument for our contemporary world could be. Monumental Graffiti unpacks today’s iconoclastic moment, showing us why graffiti demands our urgent attention as a form of expression that challenges power structures by questioning whose voices are included in—and whose are excluded from—public space. Written from twenty years of embedded research on graffiti, the book includes works from graffiti writers such as 10Foot, Delta, Egs, Honet, Mosa, Petro, Revok, and Wombat, alongside those of artists such as Francis Alÿs, Jeremy Deller, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jenny Holzer, Klara Liden, Gordon Matta-Clark, William Pope.L, Cy Twombly, and many more. Richly illustrated, this study of graffiti as monument and monument as graffiti is as fascinating as it is ethnographically expansive.

Bringing together a wide range of original empirical research from locations and interconnected geographical contexts from Europe, Australasia, Asia, Africa, Central and Latin America, this book sets out a different agenda for mobility - one which emphasizes the enduring connectedness between, and embeddedness within, places during and after the experience of mobility. These issues are examined through the themes of home and family, neighbourhoods and city spaces and allow the reader to engage with migrants' diverse practices which are specifically local, yet spatially global. This book breaks new ground by arguing for a spatial understanding of translocality that situates the migrant experience within/across particular 'locales' without confining it to the territorial boundedness of the nation state. It will be of interest to academics and students of social and cultural geography, anthropology and transnational studies.

An original study of a major change in the political thought of modern Britain, arguing that the period between 1956 and 1968 saw a seminal change in political thinking which created the framework of today's politics. A republican tradition of active citizenship, community and democracy was developed within the New Left and the radical Liberals around Jo Grimond. The Right, whose republican version of a property-owners democracy was developed by Michael Oakeshott and Enoch Powell, completed the new political framework.

Irregular migrants complicate the boundaries of citizenship and stretch the parameters of political belonging. Comprised of refugees, asylum seekers, "illegal" labor migrants, and stateless persons, this group of migrants occupies new sovereign spaces that generate new subjectivities. Investigating the role of irregular migrants in the transformation of citizenship, Anne McNevin argues that irregular status is an immanent (rather than aberrant) condition of global capitalism, formed by the fast-tracked processes of globalization. McNevin casts irregular migrants as more than mere victims of sovereign power, shuttled from one location to the next. Incorporating examples from the United States, Australia, and France, she shows how migrants reject their position as "illegal" outsiders and make claims on the communities in which they live and work. For these migrants, outsider status operates as both a mode of subjectification and as a site of active resistance, forcing observers to rethink the enactment of citizenship. McNevin connects irregular migrant activism to the complex rescaling of the neoliberal state. States increasingly prioritize transnational market relations that disrupt the spatial context for citizenship. At the same time, states police their borders in ways that reinvigorate territorial identities. Mapping the broad dynamics of political belonging in a neoliberal era, McNevin provides invaluable insight into the social and spatial transformation of citizenship, sovereignty, and power.

Global Migration provides a clear, concise, and well-organized discussion of historical patterns and contemporary trends of migration, while guiding the readers through an often difficult and politicised topic. Aimed primarily at undergraduate and Master’s students, the text encourages the readers to reflect on economic processes, politics, immigrant lives and raises debates about inclusion, exclusion, and citizenship. The text critically highlights the global character of contemporary migration and the importance of historical context to current processes and emphasises the role of gender, race and national ideologies in shaping migration experiences. Using over a decade of their own insight into teaching undergraduate migration courses in the US and the UK, and the knowledge and understanding of the subject they have acquired as migration researchers, the authors offer an accessible and student-friendly manner for readers to understand and explore the complex issue of migration. The book features numerous international case studies, a chapter dedicated to the perspective of the immigrants themselves, as well as key terms and further readings at the end of each chapter. Both theoretically and empirically informed Global Migration examines the subject in a holistic and expansive way. It will equip students with an understanding of the complex issues of migration and serve as a guide for instructors in structuring their courses and in identifying important bodies of scholarly research on migration issues.

Multiculturalism is now seen by many of its critics as the source of intercultural and social tensions, fostering communal segregation and social conflicts. While the cultural diversity of contemporary societies has to be acknowledged as an empirical and demographic fact, whether multiculturalism as a policy offers an optimal conduit for intercultural understanding and social harmony has become increasingly a matter of polarised public debate. This book examines the contested philosophical foundations of multiculturalism and its, often controversial, applications in the context of migrant societies. It also explores the current theoretical debates about the extent to which multiculturalism, and related conceptual constructs, can account for the various ethical challenges and policy dilemmas surrounding the management of cultural diversity in our contemporary societies. The authors consider common conceptual and empirical features from a transnational perspective through analysis of the case studies of Australia, Canada, Columbia, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Uruguay. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, comparative politics, international studies, multiculturalism, migration and political sociology.

A comparative and trans-national study of urban culture in Britain and the United States from the late nineteenth to the twentieth century

Adult Education and the Formation of Citizens turns attention towards normative claims about who adults should become through education, and what capacities and skills adults need to develop to become included in society as ‘full’ citizens. Through these debates, adults are construed as not yet citizens, despite already being citizens in a formal sense; this book problematises such regimes of truth and their related notions of the possibilities and impossibilities of adult education and citizenship. Drawing on empirical examples from the two main adult education institutions in Sweden, folk high schools and municipal adult education, it argues that, through current regimes of truth, these institutions become spaces for the re-shaping of the "abnormal" citizen. The book suggests that only certain futures of citizenship and its educational provision are made possible, while other futures are ignored or even made impossible to imagine. Offering a unique focus on critically problematising the role of adult education in relation to the fostering and shaping of citizens, the book addresses the important contemporary challenges of the role of adult education in a time of migration. Adult Education and the Formation of Citizens will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of adult education, lifelong learning and education.