Open research questions in Diaspora, migration, transnational identity

What the literature leaves open

• Immigrant integration is controversial both in academic writing and political discourse. There are at least two perspectives in the former: cultural and progress. The culturalist or nationalist perspective of integration assumes that migrants are pollutants and their culture and traditions are not in line with those in the host country; hence, they need to be integrated. A typical definition of immigrant integration in this regard was provided in a 2006 Dutch Parliamentary report where integration was defined thus as quoted by Willem Schinkel (2013): “Integration means participation and that requires that all migrants learn the Dutch language and adopt the norms, values and forms of social conduct prevailing in our country” (p. 1149). This definition requires that migrants embrace in totality the language and other cultural practices of the host country and must be in contact with the “autochtones,” which means natives or indigenes. By implication, traditionally, migrants were imagined as people from the filthy, polluted, and criminal “outside society” while nationals of the host country were in the clean, peaceful “inside society” (Schinkel 2017). Hence, integration was seen as the extent to which migrants have embraced and submitted to the ways of life in the host society (see Dodevska 2023; Schinkel 2013, 2017). To this end, integration was synonymous with migrants’ socialization (Wieviorka 2014) or migrants’ submission (Schneider and Crul, 2010). The traditional culturalist view, therefore, equates assimilation (in Berry’s terms) with integration and sees both as a one-way process. Alternative culturalist perspectives appear less coercive and recognize the accommodation of some aspects of migrants’ culture (see Favell 2021) and admit to the two-way process (i.e., as a mutual adjustment of both migrants and receiving countries) of immigrant integration (Klarenbeek 2021). Blanca Garcés- Mascareñas and Rinus Penninx (2016) argued for an understanding of integration as a three-way process comprising migrants, the host country, and the country of origin. To Berry (2001), “When there is an interest in both maintaining one’s original culture and engaging in daily interactions with other groups, integration is the option; here, some degree of cultural integrity is maintained” (p. 619). Integration is still commonly understood as assimilation by some contemporary scholars, such as Adrian Favell (2019), especially in the United States, where both concepts are often used synonymously to refer to the gradual disappearance of ethnic distinctions (see Alba 2024; Lee and Sheng, 2024). https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X26100071 Published online by Cambridge University Press 62 Tunde A. Alabi To those who regard assimilation and integration as the same, culture (change) is central to their understanding. Perhaps the assimilationist or nationalist view of integration led Schinkel (2018) to advocate abandoning the concept.

  “I’m 70% Nigerian, 30% American” · 2026 · DOI

• While this study offers new insights into the interplay of education, family, and social networks in Jewish identity formation, several limitations should be acknowledged. First, although the analysis draws on data from four national Jewish community surveys, inconsistencies in variable definitions and question wording complicate direct cross-national comparison. In addition, the use of cross-sectional Silver Bullet Versus Ecosystem: Unraveling the Impact of Jewish… 50 Page 22 of 26 A. L. Bankier-Karp, D. Graham data constrains our ability to trace the temporal sequencing of identity formation. Future research should incorporate longitudinal designs to examine how educational experiences and socialization processes shape Jewish engagement over the life course. Second, although our findings highlight the pivotal role of social networks, further work is needed to illuminate the mechanisms through which peer relationships foster or inhibit identity continuity. Social network analysis and qualitative inquiry could reveal how patterns of friendship, community involvement, and institutional participation sustain Jewish belonging in everyday life. Finally, extending this ecosystem approach to other ethnic and religious groups would enhance its comparative value, clarifying how different diasporic communities negotiate continuity and adaptation within their specific social contexts. Such research would not only test the robustness of the framework proposed here, but also contribute to broader sociological understanding of how education, networks, and family life together sustain group identity in pluralist societies.

  Silver Bullet Versus Ecosystem: Unraveling the Impact of Jewish Educational Interventions on Jewish Identity · 2026 · DOI

• I translated all Russian and Serbian interviews myself, treating translation as an interpretive act. I preserved culturally embedded idioms, politically charged vocabulary, and emotionally weighted phrasing; untranslatable terms appear in italics with brief glosses. Because I share linguistic and cultural fluency with participants, I adopted a reflexive approach to mitigate potential over-identification or assumptions of shared experience. As with most qualitative studies, this sample is not statistically representative. Participants were recruited online, skewing toward urban, digitally active migrants; individuals experiencing acute repression or extreme precarity may be underrepresented. Ethical concerns also limited inquiry into transnational surveillance and security behavior. Finally, the findings reflect a particular geopolitical moment. Serbia’s alignment, and thus migrants’ sense of the future, may shift, requiring future research to revisit these dynamics as conditions evolve. O 9 Mladenovska: Russian Migrants in Serbia: Diaspora Fragmentation, Identity Politics, and Strategic Ambiguity Findings and Analysis: Migration Motivations and Decision-Making This subsection shows how the initial decision to leave Russia is already shaped by Serbia’s strategic ambiguity and how, from the outset, this produces the conditions for suspended migration and uneven diasporisation. Rather than a simple push–pull story, participants’ narratives reveal layered moral, political, emotional, and practical pressures that only crystallize into actual movement when Serbia appears as a uniquely accessible yet indeterminate corridor. Across interviews, motivations for departure combined moral rupture, political fear, and exhaustion with more prosaic constraints such as visa regimes, income, and family obligations. What transformed these diffuse pressures into concrete exits was not a strong attraction to Serbia as an ideal destination, but its ambiguous openness: a visa and residency regime permissive enough to allow entry, yet noncommittal about longterm incorporation. Participants repeatedly stressed that they did not “choose Serbia” in a positive sense; they chose it because it remained possible when other options closed. This “last open door” logic marks the first step in suspended migration, movement undertaken under constraint, with futures left deliberately unspecified. For some, the moral and political break with Russia was long in the making but only became actionable once Serbia emerged as a viable exit. Participant 10, a marketing professional and mother from Moscow now living in Novi Sad, described how accumulated ethical refusal finally tipped into departure when war began: ST E FIR NLIN Every year things got a little heavier… another law, another humiliation, another silence.

  Russian migrants in Serbia: Diaspora fragmentation, identity politics, and strategic ambiguity · 2026 · DOI

• By addressing the underexplored potential and future aspects of narrative identity, this research contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of identity construction in the context of migration, offering insights into the dynamic and transformative power of narratives in shaping personal and social realities.

  Conformans novas selves: The significance of Balkan route migrants’ possible and future narrative identities · 2024 · DOI

• Abstract While a great deal of research has been conducted on implications of integrative policies targeted at migrants, later-life migrants and their relational and spatial negotiations and enactments of the policy-driven discourse of integration, and the dynamics under which it is interpreted remains understudied.

  A voluntary-sector meeting place as a site for interpreting and ‘doing’ integration: a case of later-life Russian-speaking migrants · 2023 · DOI

• Drawing from ‘screen-shot elicitation’ group interviews with young men in Hargeisa (Somaliland) and digital ethnographic investigation of social media content gathered before, during and after these sessions, this article argues that transnational flows of mobility-related information need to be studied from the perspective of people within contexts commonly understood as ‘sources’ of south-north migration, but beyond policy-orientated questions about the impact of ICTs on rates of migration.

  Social media, youth (im)mobilities, and the risks of connectivity in urban Somaliland · 2023 · DOI

• Few studies have explored ideas of power, belonging, and respectability among the Iranian diaspora in the United Kingdom (Aitchison, Hopkins, and Kwan 2007; Karimi 2020; Mobasher 2018; Moghissi and Ghorashi 2016).

  Power, Belonging, and Respectability · 2022 · DOI

• While much research has been conducted on citizens’ attitudes toward the abolition, tightening, or loosening of the Kafāla system in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries with regard to migrant workers’ residency rights, and on their contribution to the economic development of these countries, little is known about how citizens’ religiosity and social engagement impact their acceptance of migrant workers.

  Social Capital and Citizens’ Attitudes towards Migrant Workers · 2017 · DOI

• It is argued that their deficiencies stem from the fact that they are nationally embedded, contingent on ongoing public and political discourses, almost exclusively limited to the sociological, psychological and cultural dimensions of migration, and largely operating with the concepts of community, ethnicity and identity, despite the increasing share of ethnographic descriptions of good quality in the field.

  Migration Studies in Bulgaria · 2009 · DOI

• Whereas the findings were mixed regarding the behavioural effects of the subjects' religious commitment, the majority of female respondents said that the sharing of decision-making and the division of household responsibilities with their spouses were reasonable (81).

  Haideh Moghissi, Saeed Rahnema and Mark J. Goodman. Diaspora by Design: Muslim Immigrants in Canada and Beyond · 2009

• He foreshadows his theorizing on the social construction of ethnicity by deliberately making no distinctions between Gypsies and Travellers in GTE 'as there seems to be no agreement about the boundary between these labels and some doubt concerning the integrity/ authenticity of either' (p.

  Gypsy and Traveller Ethnicity: The Social Generation of an Ethnic phenomenon/Questioning Gypsy Identity: Ethnic Narratives in Britain and America · 2005

• Finally, as this paper studies a particular diaspora case, future research should investigate the dynamics we uncover here within other diaspora groups and, ideally, even in a comparative manner.

  Transnational Voters: Citizenship regimes, Political mobilisation, and the Emigrant Vote in Turkish Elections, 2014-2023 · 2026 · DOI

• In addition, studies are still scarce that would combine network-analytic approaches with rigorous investigations of refugees’ acquisition of host-country language skills, despite the proven import thereof for functioning in the new destination.

  Social Networks and Language Learning in Forced Immersion: Ukrainian Refugees in Poland · 2025 · DOI

• Little is known about how international students, especially from non-Anglocentric, peripheralized European countries negotiate power and navigate crises during war.

  Social Media Sanctuaries: A Discourse Analysis of Indian International Students’ Agency & Liminality During the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict · 2024 · DOI

• How and why have they invested in their diaspora youth, particularly over the last two decades? The significance of young diasporans for international affairs remains understudied.

  Cultivating seeds abroad: China’s and Turkey’s diaspora youth diplomacy · 2024 · DOI

• New migrants with different interests and agendas have unsettled the delicate balance of exile life, and the impact of the clash of different histories in this diaspora space remains unknown.

  The transformation of UK Chilean diaspora space: new Chilean migrants and encounters across time · 2024 · DOI

• Iranian Baha’ís are a significantly understudied population who experience an outsider status, both in their home country where they are persecuted due to animus towards them by the government and religious leaders, and in the United States.

  From Outsider to Outsider: A Study of Iranian Baha’ís’ Identity in Iran and the United States · 2023 · DOI

• This study was prompted by a lack of empirical research addressing the overlap between sense of community and eudemonic well-being components, the limited attention paid to immigrant perspectives in well-being studies, and the presence of under-researched type of festival and population.

  Sense of community and well-being in diaspora festivals · 2023 · DOI

• It does so by examining deportees’ understudied ego-documents, taken either from the collections of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies in Athens or from family archives.

  “This expulsion is explained in many ways”: Ottoman Greek Orthodox internal exiles during the Great War (1914–1918) · 2023 · DOI

• This study encompasses the Ukrainian presence in such countries as Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Tunisia, and Kuwait, and, in terms of the digital field, the attention is limited to the social media platform Facebook.

  New Ukrainian Communities and Expat Associations in the Middle East: Characteristics and Research Findings during the COVID-19 and Digital EraМолоді українські громади та об’єднання експатів на Близькому Сході: особливості та результати дослідження в добу цифри й COVID-19 · 2022 · DOI

• Future research should focus on the role of peer support in the re-entry process and the re-entry experiences of aid workers returning from comparable settings further afield (e.

  Identity in transition: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of international humanitarian workers’ experiences of returning home · 2021 · DOI

• Little is known about how community organizations can use the making of an organizational documentary to build the capacities of the organization, its affiliates, a neighborhood, and social change.

  “RECONSTRUCTION HAS STOPPED THE NONSENSE” · 2021 · DOI

• This article explores this under-researched area in the field of migration studies and revisits the highly contested migration–citizenship nexus among Fulani herders in the Shai-Osu-Doku and Agogo traditional areas of Ghana.

  Citizenship, Indigeneity, and the Experiences of 1.5- and Second-Generation Fulani Herders in Ghana · 2021 · DOI

• <p dir="ltr">Very little is known about the life experiences of highly skilled female migrants and almost nothing about them outside of Western contexts.

  Gender and mobility: Qatar's highly skilled female migrants in context · 2020 · DOI

• While the role of Lutheran churches in the Nordic context is understudied when it comes to migration, this article – and the study it builds on – contributes to a deeper understanding of how the Church of Sweden is being both challenged and motivated to act in relation to migrants coming to Sweden.

  ‘Can We Find Other Ways Forward?’: <i>Church Relations among Migrants and Non-Migrants in the Church of Sweden</i> · 2019 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Diaspora, migration, transnational identity

• Belonging and the politics of belonging · Patterns of Prejudice · 2006 · 1,516 citations
• Transnationalism: current debates and new perspectives · GeoJournal · 2020 · 121 citations
• Cultural geographies of counter‐diasporic migration: perspectives from the study of second‐generation ‘returnees’ to Greece · Population Space and Place · 2009 · 100 citations
• The role of music in ethnic identity formation in diaspora: a research review · International Social Science Journal · 2016 · 68 citations
• Social remittances and the changing transnational political landscape · Comparative Migration Studies · 2016 · 63 citations
• Birds of a feather (don’t always) flock together: Critical reflexivity of ‘Outsiderness’ as an ‘Insider’ doing qualitative research with one’s ‘Own People’ · Qualitative Research · 2023 · 62 citations
• Knowledge production for whom? Doing migrations, colonialities and standpoints in non-hegemonic migration research · Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2022 · 60 citations
• What It Means to (Not) Belong: A Case Study of How Boundary Perceptions Affect Second‐Generation Immigrants’ Attachments to the Nation · Sociological Forum · 2017 · 57 citations
• Disruptive Technologies for e-Diasporas: Blockchain, DAOs, Data Cooperatives, Metaverse, and ChatGPT · Futures · 2023 · 48 citations
• Integration and the struggle to turn space into “our” place: Homemaking as a way beyond the stalemate of assimilationism vs transnationalism · International Migration · 2021 · 48 citations

Most recent work

• Voices across borders: exploring transnational activism and repression through diaspora perspectives · Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2026
• Transnational repression in an age of global authoritarianism: experiences of Uyghur diaspora activists in Sweden · Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2026
• Migration, class and the intergenerational self in contemporary Australia: Exploring family legacies · Current Sociology · 2026
• Neither from within nor from without: how states securitize diasporas · Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2026
• Translation and transformation of class through migration: Rethinking social and spatial mobility across contexts · Current Sociology · 2026
• The religious aspiration-capability nexus in African youth migration · Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2026
• Back to the fold? Women, return migration, and patriarchal governance in MENA · International Review of Sociology · 2026
• From Religion to Kinship: The Politics of Giving in Somali Diaspora Aid Networks · Africa Spectrum · 2026
• <i>Doing Agency</i> through Personal Networks: The Case of Ukrainian Forced Migrants in Romania · Global Networks · 2026
• Hospitality and Agency in Young Refugees’ Everyday Relationships: A Study of Mutual Becoming · Global Networks · 2026

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