Publications
Non-Belonging: borders, boundaries, and bodies at the interface of migration and citizenship studies
Anna Korteweg & Gökce Yurdakul
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Vol. 50, Issue 2, pages 293-316
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2024.2289704
Abstract
Non-belonging is an undertheorized current in work on migration and citizenship, too often understood as simply the absence of belonging. We define non-belonging as an actively constructed space and logic that entails the denial of personhood, where personhood captures one’s sense of self, one’s capacity to act, as well as the human and citizenship rights tied to this. We suggest that distinct processes interact to foster spaces and logics of non-belonging: (1) bordering through state practices; and (2) boundary formations through representation, with (3) both of these inscribed on bodies. We illustrate our framework through the example of a legal case regarding the repatriation of Dutch women who joined the Islamic State. We also apply our framework to examples from our previous research on Muslim masculinities in Canada and Germany and Turkish mothers in Berlin who circumvent immigrant stigma by sending their children to international schools to show the framework’s utility in analyzing non-belonging writ large.
Social Reproduction Gone Wrong? The Citizenship Revocation and Rehabilitation of Young European Women Who Joined ISIS
Anna Korteweg, Gökçe Yurdakul, Jillian Sunderland, Marloes Streppel
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society
Volume 30, Issue 4, Winter 2023, Pages 997-1017
https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxad015
Abstract
Some European women who joined the Islamic State during the 2010s have had their citizenship revoked, which leaves them in a liminal state in camps at the Syrian border. Others have been able to return home, where they face prosecution and potential pathways to “rehabilitation.” This article turns to media discussions of two cases that have been extensively discussed in the media: Shamima Begum, a British national whose citizenship was revoked, and Laura Hansen, a Dutch national who was rehabilitated. Our analysis homes in on the symbolic dimension of social reproduction, showing how media representations of these two women as mothers, wives, and daughters play a critical role in media justifications of revocation and rehabilitation. We argue that media discourses create a gendered, racialized, and class-based conceptualization of citizenship unattainable to those whose social reproductive labor is deemed a threat to the nation-state.