Mitchell Institute Fellow Dr Ulrike M. Vieten recently published her third monograph on Loss and Liquid Citizenship in Europe: The Postmigration Condition in an Age of Populism (Routledge, 2025).  In the book, she brings together her critical scholarship on gender, migration and historically situated forms of marginalisation and racism in Europe.

The core argument focuses on the tension between citizenship and migration regimes and the question how those sits temporarily in a shifting (‘late modern’) world of turmoil, transformation and loss of certainty.  Whereas in the English-speaking world the notion of post-colonial (and coming from the Americas) de-colonial concepts are well known the postmigration condition locates migration at the heart of (European) societies, historically and – even more so – in the glocalised world of the 21^st century.  Postmigration is used as an analytical lens to capture the loss of familiar feelings of belonging for majorities and the intrinsic experiences of loss for individuals and minority communities on the move.   Further, contemporary citizenship should be understood through the framework of ‘liquid’, coined by the late Polish British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman as it is not a solid rights guarantee for individuals as it is claimed.  With a layered system of migrant and citizen rights in and across the European Union the strict boundary between ‘migrating’ and ‘settled individuals’ is increasingly blurred.

 The scope of the book is about envisioning a shared futurity, understanding loss as an inevitable part of human (and nature) life and insist on a common ground for all people living in postmigration societies in the face of multiple crisis.  

The book combines theoretical chapters, e.g. defining and explaining the postmigration condition, de-colonialising the spatial ordering and bordering, Liquid Citizenship and Loss – uncertainty of status and rights with illustrative findings of several empirical and experimental studies about minority EU citizens in three countries, on asylum seekers and refugees’ experiences in Northern Ireland and on contemporary dance as an aesthetic tool to translate experiences of loss and displacement.

 Dr Ulrike M. Vieten

Dr Ulrike M Vieten is a Mitchell Institute Fellow and Senior Lecturer of Sociology in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast.  Her research focuses on de-constructing racialised gendered and classed group boundaries, considering intersectional positionalities and historical situatedness of institutional racisms.  In the past, Dr Vieten carried out comparative research on Europe and Turkey, and with her recent involvement in the Indian research project expands her work on post-colonial societies in a populist age.

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