(Un)Settled Sojourners in Cities: Challenges of "Temporariness" among Migrants and Asylum Seekers

Temporary migration is a response to uncertain environments, with varying precarity based on skill, legal status, and location. This book explores the experiences of temporary migrants through case studies from around the world, highlighting their resistance to categorization and embedding in urban life. It is of interest to researchers and advanced students in Sociology, Politics, Human Geography, Urban Studies, and Social and Cultural Anthropology.

Format: Hardback
Length: 170 pages
Publication date: 28 February 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Temporary migration is a profound human response to the unpredictable and often challenging economic, ecological, political, and socio-cultural landscapes that we navigate. This captivating book makes a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the rights, lived experiences, and trajectories of temporary migrants. It delves into the intricate nature of precarity experienced by these individuals, spanning various scales in urban settings, from the household to the institution, neighborhood, and city. Temporary migrants navigate a complex web of precarity, which is influenced by their categorization as skilled or unskilled, their ambiguous legal status, and the specific locales in which they reside and work.

Through a series of individual chapters, this book showcases how temporal and scalar precarity intersect and are mediated by a range of factors, including national and local policies, civil society, and the personal and social attributes of migrants themselves, such as gender, race, and country of origin. The chapters utilize compelling case studies from diverse locations around the world, including the United States, Canada, Ireland, Turkey, Singapore, and China, to illustrate how temporary migrants actively resist being labeled as disposable and instead embed themselves within urban life through individual and collective efforts.

While temporary migration may often be overlooked due to its transitory nature, the chapters in this book shed light on the ways in which these individuals actively shape and contribute to urban communities. They challenge the notion that temporary migrants are merely passing through and instead demonstrate their resilience, adaptability, and determination to create meaningful lives for themselves and their families. This book appeals to a wide range of scholars and advanced students, including those in the fields of Sociology, Politics, Human Geography, Urban Studies, and Social and Cultural Anthropology. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, further solidifying its place as a valuable resource for researchers and scholars seeking to understand the complexities of temporary migration and its impact on urban societies.

Weight: 494g
Dimension: 246 x 174 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032433813