Future Paths in the Study of Migrant Descendants' Citizenship: Engaging with Critical Literature

Abstract

This paper discusses how research related to migrant descendants’ citizenship could potentially benefit from recent critical literature towards migration and citizenship. On the one hand, we discuss how such research focusing on the so-called “second generation” and citizenship could draw from conceptualisations that approach citizenship as everyday practices and as lived experience. On the other hand, we reflect on how such research could benefit from calls to de-migrantize migration scholarship. In this paper, we also discuss how such critical approaches allow problematising the research categories, such as “second generation” or “migration background”, and what implications this has in terms of understanding the citizenship among migrant descendants. In the end, we suggest possible paths for future research and theorisation concerning citizenship and migrant descendants.