https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7554-5852
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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.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented as the keynote ‘The Gendered Racialized Politics of Non Belonging: The Repatriation of European IS Members and their Children’ at the SCMR-JEMS 9th annual conference on Migration and global inequalities at the University of Sussex on 19 October 2022. The authors offer profound thanks to our colleagues at the SCMR, especially Paul Statham, Sarah Scuzzarello, Alexandra Lewicki, and Laura Morosanu, as well as the speakers and participants at this conference. We gratefully acknowledge the research assistant contributions by Jillian Sunderland, Marloes Streppel, Madelon van der Vorst, Katarina Kukla, Marie-Aminata Peron, and Renee Mahal.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 More information on the Social Science and Humanities Research Canada (SSHRC) funded research project can be found here: bordersboundariesbodies.org
2 Boumedienne, a French national, is one of the suspected perpetrators of the shooting in the kosher market in Paris in 2015. She traveled to the IS in 2015.
3 Interview with Dr. Gina Vale, 23 September 2022, conducted by Anna Korteweg.
4 The Al Hol camp in particular is extremely crowded, housing over 56,000 people, over half of them children under 12 (World Health Organizations Citation2021). The other camp, Roj, is smaller, holding approximately 3000, with 65% children under 17 (United Nations Human Rights Citation2023). Note that Europeans make up only a small percentage of camp dwellers in either camp, many are Iraqi and Syrian citizens, and citizens from other parts of the Middle East and Central Asia. (Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/09/senior-us-commander-sounds-alarm-over-syrias-islamic-state-prison-camps#ixzz7h9cn3uCh)
5 Author’s translation from the court’s decision in the first appeal: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/#!/details?id=ECLI:NL:HR:2020:1148