Everyday Re-Bordering and the Intersections of Borderwork, Boundary Work and Emotion Work amongst Romanians Living in the UK

Authors

  • Kathryn Cassidy Northumbria University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59670/ml.v17i4.839

Keywords:

Bordering, boundaries, emotion work, European migration, transitional controls

Abstract

This article explores the intersections of borderwork and boundary work in everyday encounters in the UK. It focuses on the experiences of Romanian nationals, who between 2007 and 2014 were subject to transitional controls, which are understood as a form of everyday re-bordering of the de-bordered space of the EU that denied equal access to the labour market and state support. These controls were accompanied by a range of bordering discourses in the media and political circles that firmly situated Romanians outside of the UK’s contemporary political project of belonging. This article argues that in order to understand borderwork in everyday life, we need to explore how it relates to boundary work, i.e. the differential positionalities of Romanians within social hierarchies, as well as their experiences of and engagement with emotion work. The data analysed comes from participant observation with Romanian communities in London and the North East of England in the period from 2009 to 2014.

References

Anthias, F. and Yuval-Davis, N. (2005). Racialized boundaries: Race, nation, gender, colour and class and the anti-racist struggle. London and New York: Routledge.

Bartkowski, J. and Read, J. (2003). “Veiled submission: Gender, power, and identity among evangelical and Muslim women in the United States.” Qualitative Sociology, 26(1): 71-92.

Cassidy, K. (forthcoming). “The Punitiveness of Everyday Bordering in the UK” in Sureau, T., Vojta, F. and Schlee, G. (eds.) On Punishment Berghahn: Oxford, New York.

Cassidy, K. (2018). “Everyday Bordering, Healthcare and the Politics of Belonging in Contemporary Britain” in Paasi A, Saarinen J, Zimmerbauer K and Prokkola E-K (eds.) Borderless worlds – for whom? Routledge: Abingdon, Oxon, pp.78-92.

Griffiths, M. (2017). “Foreign, criminal: a doubly damned modern British folk-devil” Citizenship Studies, 21(5): 527-546.

Hochschild, A.R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling, London: University of California Press.

Humphris, R. (2017). “Borders of home: Roma migrant mothers negotiating boundaries in home encounters”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(7): 1190-1204.

Kawale, R. (2004). “Inequalities of the heart: the performance of emotion work by lesbian and bisexual women in London, England”. Social & Cultural Geography, 5(4): 565-581.

Navaro-Yashin, Y. (2002). The Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Potter, J.L. and Meier, I. (2020, January 10). Emotional Borderwork in the NHS [paper presentation]. Doctors within Borders Workshop, Lancaster, UK.

Reeves, M. (2014). Border Work: Spatial Lives of the State in Rural Central Asia Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press.

Ruhs, M. and Wadsworth, J. (2018). “The impact of acquiring unrestricted work authorisation on Romanian and Bulgarian migrants in the United Kingdom,” ILR Review 71(4): 823-852.

Rumford, C. (2008). “Introduction: Citizens and Borderwork in Europe”, Space and Polity, 12(1): 1-12.

Rumford, C. (2013). “Towards a Vernacularized Border Studies: The Case of Citizen Borderwork”, Journal of Borderlands Studies, 28(2): 169-180.

van Houtum, H., Kramsch, O. T., and Zierhofer, W. (eds). (2005). B/ordering space. Aldershot: Ashgate.

van Houtum, H. and van Naerssen, T. (2002). “Bordering, ordering and othering”. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 93(2): 125–36.

Vaughan-Williams, N. (2008). ‘Borderwork beyond inside/outside? Frontex, the citizen-detective and the war on terror’. Space and Polity, 12(1): 63–79.

Verhage, F. (2014). “Living with(out) borders: the intimacy of oppression”. Emotion. Space and Society, 11: 96-105.

Wemyss, G. and Cassidy, K. (2017). “People think that Romanians and Roma are the same”: everyday bordering and the lifting of transitional controls. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(7): 1132-1150.

Yuval-Davis, N. (2013). ‘A situated intersectional everyday approach to the study of bordering’. EUBORDERSCAPES, Working Paper no. 2. http://www.euborderscapes.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/Working_Papers/ EUBORDERSCAPES_Working_Paper_2_Yuval-Davis.pdf.

Yuval-Davis, N. (2015). “Situated intersectionality and social inequality”, Raisons politiques, (2): 91-100.

Yuval-Davis, N., Wemyss, G. and Cassidy, K. (2019). Bordering Cambridge: Polity Press.

Yuval-Davis, N., Wemyss, G. and Cassidy, K. (2018). “Everyday Bordering, Belonging and the Re- Orientation of British Immigration Legislation”, Sociology, 52(2): 228-244.

Downloads

Published

2020-07-30

How to Cite

Cassidy, K. (2020). Everyday Re-Bordering and the Intersections of Borderwork, Boundary Work and Emotion Work amongst Romanians Living in the UK. Migration Letters, 17(4), 551–558. https://doi.org/10.59670/ml.v17i4.839