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This thesis is concerned with developing an archaeological theory of movement. Movement forms one of the most important phenomena of human life. It is an essential component of being, action and identity indeed without it we cease to live. Notwithstanding, human pedestrian movement remains little theorised within prehistoric contexts and when it is considered is usually restricted to seasonal mobilities or patterns of movement around and within the architectures of Neolithic monuments. This thesis goes beyond this narrow focus by examining movement as an integral facet of quotidian life. Notably, this thesis outlines how the bodily engagement of individuals creates a sense of space, place and architecture - essentially how the world comes into being. This point of departure, from contemporary archaeological narratives, states that gestures, movements and mobilities physically create the fabric of place, architecture and landscape, can transcend such physical features and transform them. Alongside this theoretical perspective, a Geographical Information System (GIS) methodology has been developed in which past movement can be foregrounded and analysed. In particular, this methodology elucidates general patterns of prehistoric mobility for three study areas within the Great Ouse, Nene and Welland river valleys, situated in the East Midlands/East Anglia. Through using a theoretically informed humanistic GIS methodology, changes in movement from the Late Mesolithic to the Middle Bronze Age (5000 - 1300 cal BC) have been analysed for each river valley study area. This wide temporal range has been chosen as it represents a dynamic period in British prehistory which encompassed broad-scale changes in patterns of mobility - from mobile lifeways to more tethered lives. How these transformations were played out in the Great Ouse, Nene and Welland river valleys is outlined in a series of narratives.

At the juncture of sexuality, politics and national belonging, this research investigates the connections between the Israeli nation and its outcasts, and between social exclusion and departure. Based on 42 interviews with queer Israeli emigrants, as well as exploration of online platforms and popular texts, this dissertation suggests viewing Israeli emigration as a political activity directed at the Zionist regime. The focus on queer subjects enables an investigation of an extreme case of resistance and antagonism to Zionist ideology and social conventions in Israel, such as reproduction, army service, and emigration. This research argues that in departing, queer Israelis undermine Zionist ideology, as well as change the obvious paths of resistance to Zionism. This dissertation will demonstrate that the decision to emigrate stems from recognising the vulnerability of the emigrants, who no longer could take the hardship of the life offered to them in Israel. The very act of announcing their vulnerability undermines the entire system. In stepping out of the territory of the state of Israel, they avoid the Zionist demand to perform as strong, masculine Sabras. Likewise, the left-wing resistance to the state demands similar strength - taking part in violent demonstrations and risking imprisonment and getting physically hurt. In a reality which values courage, heroism, total obedience and masculinity on both sides of the political spectrum, acts of weakness, desertion, evasion, and vulnerability will be read here as politically significant. Queer forms of departure symbolise a refusal to answer Zionism in the currency of heroism and active resistance.

This thesis takes an intergenerational perspective to investigate how senses of identity and belonging are constructed in a Greek-Cypriot community in the UK. This aim is particularly necessary given increasing rates of migration and mobility worldwide, which has resulted in growing acknowledgment across a number of disciplines of the need to explore the everyday lives of migrants and how ethnic identities are reconstituted across all generations. Despite this acknowledgment, research on the third-generation remains limited. This thesis addresses this gap by exploring how three generations of Greek-Cypriot migrants express feelings of identity and belonging and engage with translocal spaces. It does so through exploring findings from forty-eight qualitative interviews and participant observations undertaken in an ethnographic setting. The results reveal how constructions of ethnic identity change across the generations as successive generations are situated between a number of competing cultural reference points. The importance of the family in creating a feeling of belonging is also revealed as well as the fluid and evolving nature of familial relationships. The thesis also identifies the significance of space and place in identity formation and argues that the importance of trans-local spaces should not be overlooked in favour of the trans-national. The research makes a valuable contribution to geography by enhancing understandings about the everyday lives of migrants and the ‘doings’ of families. It also contributes to understandings of a relatively ‘invisible’ and under-researched white migrant group in the UK. Work that focuses on such ‘invisible’ migrant groups is particularly pertinent to broader studies of immigration into the UK.

Irregular, clandestine or so-called “illegal” migration by land and sea is rarely out of the political and media agenda in Europe despite its statistically limited significance. Taking this mismatch as its starting point, this thesis explores the industry that has emerged around clandestine migration in recent years – the transnational policing networks, aid organisations and media outlets that all make the “illegal immigrant” their target, beneficiary and source. It focuses on the migration circuit between West Africa and Spain, where a joint European response to irregular flows was first tried and tested under the umbrella of the border agency Frontex. It is also here that success in “fighting illegal migration” has been most readily announced following the brief, spectacular migration “crises” in Spain’s North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in 2005 and in the Canary Islands in 2006. The thesis explores ethnographically how clandestine migration has been constituted as a field of intervention and knowledge-gathering since this time. In this field, it is argued, the roles of policing, caring for and informing on migrants intermingle while producing shared models, materialities and classifications that impinge upon the travellers labelled “illegal”. Drawing on the dynamic nominalism of Ian Hacking, the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour and a growing body of critical migration and border studies, the thesis explores the interfaces where specific modalities of migrant illegality are produced. The exploration of these interfaces – in deportation, surveillance, patrolling, rescues, reception and activism – relies on an extended field site, with research carried out in Senegal, Mali, Morocco, southern Spain and European policing headquarters. Throughout, the thesis highlights not just the workings of the migration industry but this industry’s excesses and absurdities, which make the business of bordering Europe a fraught and contradictory enterprise.

This thesis originally sets out to interrogate Brah’s conception of diaspora as the site of everyday lived experiences. Unlike other notions, Brah’s contention is that migrants’ desire for the homeland is a myth. For seven months, the thesis investigates the validity of this statement in the everyday diasporic experiences of first and second generation Nigerians, in the diasporic space of ‘Little Lagos’; Peckham, London. Of particular interest, and under focus in the study, is media use and the affordances that new media technologies, as tools of negotiating multiple attachments to a contemporary Nigeria, provide. In the main, the study sought to find answers to three questions. The first of these was whether the media made the diaspora feel at home within the diasporic space of Peckham. The second investigates how connections between contemporary Nigeria and the UK are negotiated, and the third, the different identities and attachments constructed in ordinary media consumption compared to media engagements with exceptional media events such as those relating to terrorism. Based on media ethnography, the study involves 67 demographically diverse participants – 49 first generation and 19 second generation Nigerian immigrants in Peckham. A combination of participant observation and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data. The collected data was analysed manually using thematic analysis. One of the key findings is that home is lived in the present by the Nigerian migrants, validating Brah’s proposition, and corroborated by mediation from social, cultural, religious and commercial practices. Although both generations interact with a contemporary Nigeria that is trendy; and has been facilitated in differing ways by technological developments; the first generation of the Nigerian migrants use the media to navigate ties with the home and the place of settlement. For the second generation, the media are windows to global trends, connect them to Nigerians all over the world, as well as keep them abreast of events and issues in Nigeria. Furthermore, the thesis shows through both generations’ contestation of media’s emphasis on the Nigerian aspect of the Woolwich killers’ identities, and through the younger generation’s celebration of the inclusion of afrobeat music, Nollywood and the representation of ankara in the host society and the global mainstream, that discourses of hybrid identities would continue to revolve around a national centre. This thesis builds on the work of Couldry (2013) and Johnson and McKay (2011), as the findings demonstrate that social, religious and cultural practices shape both generations’ engagements with diasporic media, and expand national identification and definitions of home. Overall, the key discovery is that home will continue to be a major issue in diasporic discourse.

This PhD thesis evaluates the nexus between Stateless Nationalist and Regionalist Parties’ (SNRPs) constructions of minority nations’ identity and immigration. A longitudinal comparison (1992 – 2012) of the Basque Country, Corsica, South Tyrol, Scotland and Wales first explores the impact immigration has on the parties’ construction of the minority nations’ identity. Secondly, I examine if and under which conditions SNRPs consider migrants and migration-generated diversity to constitute an integral part of the minority nations. The dissertation relies on a qualitative analysis of SNRPs’ discourses on immigration, their construction of the migrant as ‘wanted’ or ‘unwanted,’ and their discourse and policies on migrant-integration. Finally, the thesis offers an innovative explanation of the diverse approaches to immigration and the construction of the nation confronted with immigration by SNRPs in the selected minority nations. I argue that, on the one hand, robust political-institutional relations between the state and the minority nation and, on the other, robust and conflict-free societal relations between the community claiming to belong to the minority nation and the state majority living within the minority nation have a significant impact on the SNRPs’ approach to immigration. Societal cleavages, which divide the receiving society in the minority nations are shown to impact the SNRPs’ framing of the minority nation’s identity. Parties instrumentalize the discourse on immigration to differentiate themselves as far as possible from their national governments’ approach to immigration and hence to strengthen their strategic interests for the territory, which usually overlap with demands for further devolution or secession. Thus, most SNRPs develop a particular form of instrumental nationalism which facilitates the construction of an identity based on civic and territorial markers. Such a framing of the minority nation’s identity allows the inclusion of migration-generated diversity, either through multicultural recognition or assimilation, but is constructed against the traditional ‘significant other’, namely the central state.

This study explores how a group of post-2004 Polish migrants have adapted to life in the UK. Eight participants were interviewed and transcripts were analysed using the qualitative methodology of interpretative phenomenological analysis. Four master themes emerged: relating to Poland; relating to the UK; impact on self; and adaptive ability. Migrants’ relationship with Poland and the UK is considered and the psychological impact of migration on the individual is explored. The findings suggest that migration brings benefits as well as challenges. It is evident that participants are equipped with a range of adaptive characteristics and employ a variety of strategies to cope with difficulties, and these are explored in detail. Exploring identity processes reveals that participants’ adaptation is aided by prior identification with UK and ‘Western culture’, which is understood as a reflection of the socio-economic changes taking place in Poland since 1989. Theoretical implications and relevance of the findings to the field of counselling psychology are considered and further areas of exploration are discussed.

This study investigates the practices and discourses of groups and networks supporting migrants in the context of the construction of the European Union (EU) and the Europeanisation of immigration and border controls. Its main objectives are: (1) to engage in critical examination of the European political project and the discourse of European belonging that has sustained its construction and consolidation; (2) to observe whether novel contentious practices have emerged to respond to multi-scalar developments associated with harmonisation of immigration-related policies; and (3) to investigate narratives of pro-migrant groups and networks. The project mobilises ethnographic research focused on pro-migrant organisations and networks in three European Union member states: France, Italy and the United Kingdom. It analyses testimony from participants involved in solidarity initiatives and assesses their perspectives on Europe and European belonging. This study draws on insights from a range of disciplines including Political Science, International Relations, Security Studies, Historical Sociology and Migration Studies. It embraces an historical approach to European construction and an analysis of global influences upon the development of the EU. It addresses the tensions and conflicts that arise when national, supranational and global processes take their effect upon the European project, and the specific impacts in the area of migration and bordering. This project concludes that a transnational pro-migrant movement is in formation in the EU. It is characterised by intensified cooperation and communication across borders, the development of new crossborder activist tools and tactics, increasingly complex transnational networks and the formulation of a mutually comprehensible analysis of the EU border regime. Yet this movement-in-formation has not been articulated and integrated around alternative visions of Europe and European identity. I argue that this is due to tensions and contradictions generated by the European project and I develop a critical reflection about processes of European construction and the production of ideas about Europe.

Through the lived experiences and narratives of Brazilian migrants in London, this thesis explores the intersections between processes of social differentiation and international migration. By examining the diverse journeys of Brazilians, I provide an in-depth ethnographic examination of the multivalent ways in which difference contours Brazilian migration. I argue that the group is diverse, comprised of individuals from different class backgrounds, regions, and genders, which shapes both their decisions to migrate as well as the distinct ways in which they live their lives in London. These migrants are continuously re-inventing, producing and negotiating ‘cultural’, class, and regional differences - often intersected by gender, ‘race’ and immigration status. By focusing on how these differences, rooted in the colonial and postcolonial history of Brazil, become reconstituted in new processes of social-differentiation and racialisation in the receiving society, this thesis analyses the ways in which these migrants construct ties of affinity as well as exclusions, through bodies and spaces. This includes the bodies with whom they relate and the spaces in which they circulate, as well as those they explicitly avoid. The empirical research draws on a mixed methods approach, which combines an 18-month ethnography in places of leisure with 33 in-depth interviews with Brazilians in London. Problematising widespread assumptions in the literature that ethnic commonalities result in the constitution of migrant communities based on solidarity, this thesis makes important empirical and theoretical contributions to studies of migration through its focus on how the continuous production and negotiation of difference affects the way migrants live in a global world.