This thesis explores the relationships between immigration and labour mar- kets. The work consists of three empirical papers that examine particular aspects of this relationship. The first paper investigates the hypothesis that immigrants are attracted by a particular labour market institution, the minimum wage. The empirical analysis is implemented by assessing the impact that an exogenous increase in the federal USA minimum wage has on the immigration ows of low-skilled individuals. The main findings are that low-wage workers move to States where the growth of the minimum wage is larger, while high-wage individuals are insensitive to the policy. The second paper analyses the effects of immigration in the host labour market, in particular on the mobility of previous residents. The main objective is to investigate if inflows of recent immigrants determine an out-migration of natives and earlier immigrants. This is achieved by analysing patterns of internal mi- gration using information on the local authority of origin and destination and on the skill level of individuals. The analysis demonstrates that, while UK-born individuals and recent immigrants move to similar locations, earlier immigrants are instead displaced, suggesting closer substitutability with the newcomers. The impact of ethnic networks on employment outcomes is the final topic of the thesis. The important feature of this study is to examine this effect separately for immigrants and natives. This is achieved by analysing detailed data on ethnic enclaves from two Censuses of England and Wales, which are used to construct an index that captures local interactions. The results show that, for the majority of immigrant groups, a larger informal network is associated with higher employ- ment probabilities. For the group of natives, there is no evidence that living in an enclave is detrimental to employment, and the eect is, at worst, zero.

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In this thesis I consider the interface between copyright law and cultural practice. I argue that the protection of folklore through copyright obfuscates the status of folklore as a generative resource for derivative works in favour of its status as a carrier of national identity, over which states can exercise property rights. Specifically, I analyse the significance of folklore within the playwriting culture of Ghana and discuss how, within this specific context, the introduction of the 2005 Copyright Act (which requires nationals to seek permission and pay a fee to use folklore), rather than incentivising artists to create derivative works from folklore, significantly disrupts the ability of playwrights to continue to create work that reflects the codified theatrical practice established in Ghana post independence. As such, the Ghana Copyright Act, 2005 threatens to jeopardise the fundamental balance in copyright between protection and access, and so the purpose of copyright as a mechanism for incentivising artists. Through exploring the development of the relationship between folklore and copyright and how protection for folklore interacts at the international, continental and sub-regional levels, this thesis examines both the potential impact of the copyright law in Ghana and the efficacy of protecting folklore through a copyright paradigm at all.

Theorists of constitutional patriotism argue that the binding sentiment of shared national identity can be replaced with allegiance to universal principles, interpreted into particular constitutions through ongoing deliberative processes. In this thesis, I explore the implications of such an approach for the defensibility of restrictions on migration, a subject which has previously received very little attention. I argue that constitutional patriotism implies a commitment to the free movement of individuals across borders; but that freedom of movement itself creates challenges for the implementation of constitutional patriotism. This is because it may increase anti-immigrant, nationalist sentiment in the host community. I term this phenomenon the ‘post-national paradox’. I then draw on independently collected qualitative data on Eastern European migration to English rural communities to explore this post-national paradox. I analyse the argumentative strategies, as the well as the perceptions of difference, evident in justifications of anti-immigrant and nationalist sentiment in these contexts. I highlight both perceptions of cultural and economic threat, as well as a ‘banal’ sense of national loyalty, underpinning such attitudes; and suggest that discursive practice at the most local level is necessary for the bottom up construction, or growth, of an inclusive form of identity and belonging.

The housing wealth experiences of ethnic minority home owners is relatively unexplored within the UK literature. This thesis makes a contribution to this field by exploring the experiences of African Caribbean post war families. There are a number of original points of departure to this literature that this study makes. Links are made with Caribbean migration and social anthropology literatures in developing fresh perspectives on the study of housing wealth among this group. The study avoids treating housing wealth in isolation from other networks within African Caribbean communities. Instead it develops a single asset network that positions housing wealth within a broader resource framework used to interpret home ownership careers and return migration planning. The study incorporates literature drawn from cultural consumption theory in exploring values and meanings attached to inheritances in the UK and Caribbean. An original methodological contribution is made in the use of life history methods in exploring consumption and transmission of housing wealth across two generations of the same family. The 13 families included in the study are drawn from Birmingham and London. The findings suggest that there is a complex interaction of networks used throughout home ownership careers. Informal financial networks in the form of intergenerational exchanges are used in supporting younger family members at the start of home ownership careers. There is evidence that inheritance of 'family land' in the Caribbean provided a focus for the investment of UK housing wealth to facilitate return migration. Other forms of housing wealth leakage took place, with evidence of investments in second homes in the Caribbean, kinship networks and entrepreneurial activity. This investment of UK housing assets in second homes across the Caribbean region suggests the creation of 'transnational housing markets'.

My research bridges the gap between Anglophone postcolonial studies and Francophone literary studies by looking at Francophone literature from West and Equatorial Africa, which remains under-studied in France. This work answers key questions: how can this literature be interpreted beyond its current confines? How does it rethink local and global identities? What theoretical configurations can be applied to these writers to bring them into greater academic and public prominence? I propose a comprehensive analysis of this literature’s significance in the world through a comparative reading of five contemporary regional novels in their political, social and historical context. This multidirectional reading allows me to evoke what Dominic Thomas calls an ‘intercultural dynamics’ in which colonialism ‘finds itself relocated as a mechanism that proceeds from globalization’, and integrates various spatial zones in which thinking is produced. It brings forward key writers situated ‘outside of the parameters of Frenchness’ inscribed in cosmopolitan decolonizing and cultural reconstruction trends, such as Léonora Miano, a young Cameroonian author and winner of six French literary prizes; Fatou Diome, a Senegalese best-selling writer; Sénouvo Agbota Zinsou from Togo, 63 and in political exile; one contemporary writer, Kangni Alem (Togo), and one more established intellectual, Boubacar Boris Diop (Senegal).

This thesis examines the twenty-first-century intercultural performance of Shakespeare in Kerala, India. The thesis highlights Shakespeare’s function in invigorating local performing arts traditions that navigate tensions between paradigms of former feudalism, post-Independence democracy and capitalist globalisation. Throughout, individual artistic perspectives in interview illustrate local productions of \(Macbeth\) for indigenous Keralan performing art forms, ranging from the two-thousand-year old kutiyattam to contemporary postmodern Malayalam-language drama. My introduction contextualises these hybrid productions in their global, national, and local historiography, exploring intersections of the sacred, supernatural, and secular; postmodernism and rasa theory; intercultural Shakespeares and Keralan performing arts; and Shakespearean works with Indian literary and theatrical traditions from the colonial to the postmillennial era. Chapter One highlights cultural translation, focusing on kutiyattam artist Margi Madhu’s 2011 \(Macbeth\); Chapter Two discusses cultural collaboration, studying kathakali artist Ettumanoor P. Kannan’s \(Macbeth\) \(Cholliyattam\), 2013; Chapter Three considers cultural fusion, profiling Abhinaya Theatre’s experimental local-language production of \(Macbeth\), 2011. In closing, the thesis underscores the importance of giving a voice to Keralan theatre artists on Shakespeare, recognising the hitherto critically unexamined potential for the meeting point of two great dramatic cultural traditions as a forum, underpinned by residual colonial and Communist legacies, for intercultural discourse.

This thesis is an ethnographic investigation into how Pentecostalism impacts on the religious, family and work life of Nigerian migrants in London, and overall how such religious engagement shapes informants' relationship with the United Kingdom. It brings together the study of migration, Pentecostal Christianity and gender relations. The thesis focuses on the members of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). The RCCG is one of the biggest Pentecostal churches in Nigeria, where it has developed into a significant social and political player and has spread worldwide. In London, the RCCG caters for a good portion of the local Nigerian Christian community. The RCCG is part of a transnational social and moral field that I term ‘London-Lagos', which Nigerian migrants inhabit. RCCG members' relationships in church, with significant others and with wider society are embedded in power relations – relations that are mediated and rendered meaningful by a Pentecostal morality. The negotiation of moral authority is therefore central theme in this thesis. I trace how it shapes and is shaped by church doctrines and wider British society. The central modes employed to mould Pentecostal Nigerian selves in London are self-discipline, the dialectic of submission and responsibility, and the disciplining of others. Such dynamics around Pentecostal authority are crucially articulated in gendered terms. Hence, they are investigated in relation to gendering processes in singlehood, marriage and the raising of children. The requirements of non-Pentecostal contexts such as wider British society and state institutions sometimes contradict this three-fold way of becoming a morally sound Pentecostal. To navigate this tense and morally complex situation RCCG members tend to employ skills (‘smartness') they have obtained in Nigeria.

This thesis is a study of colonialism and the university, and the relationship between knowledge, imperialism, empire and domination. It is influenced by those who have written on and lived through decolonisation, principally, Sylvia Wynter. The first chapter examines the history of the Westernised university as a Eurocentric narrative. It also considers the evolution of the discipline of the humanities as an imperial science of the human. The second chapter reflects on the effect of an imperial education on an individual’s relationship with their communities. Reading texts written during and after anti-colonial struggle, I consider how writing begins the process of communitarian ethical repair. Chapter 3 explores what it means to be included in the imperial university, and the cost of assimilation. The chapter focuses on texts from ‘outsiders’ to Oxford University who write back to an imperial centre. Chapter 4 revisits Wynter’s analysis of the Westernised institution in the context of 1968 Jamaica to reflect on the Westernised university’s internationalisation agenda. The chapter looks at the history of educational institutions in settler colonial plantations. The fifth chapter examines the evolution of the Westernised university as a site and agent of border control. It reviews the Tier 4 visa regime and Prevent legislation, examining the colonial history of the university as border control. In turning to the work of writer Leila Aboulela, the chapter explores how the creative imagination interprets the university, border control, race and emergent authoritarianism. The conclusion to this thesis is a dystopian short story. The narrative follows the journey of an international student at the University of Glasgow in 2050. Lecturers and books have been abolished. The violent collusion between university and state forces the protagonist into a choice. This thesis is intended as a sustained reflection on participation in Westernised higher education. The decision to conclude with a dilemma is a strategic one.

This thesis combines two burgeoning fields – New Institutionalism and migration studies – to explain the process of institutional change. It tests six hypotheses drawn from a hybrid theoretical framework drawn from Historical Institutionalism, Rational Choice Institutionalism, and Sociological Institutionalism, identifying concrete mechanisms of reproduction and sources of endogenous and exogenous change. It applies this framework to changes in access to citizenship in the form of citizenship and naturalisation policy in the United Kingdom and Germany between 2000 and 2010. Its greatest contributions lie in a more comprehensive explanation of endogenous factors and incremental changes, two aspects of institutional change that have received inadequate theoretical attention and empirical investigation. Testing economic, power-based, and ideational explanations for change, it concludes that each of the New Institutionalisms makes an important contribution to a complete understanding of the process of change and the dynamics of this policy area in two very different European countries.