Blog post by Dan Liu, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China

​In an era of heightened global mobility and geopolitical tension, international students are often seen as cultural bridges between nations. Yet, how these students themselves experience and rethink their own national identities while studying abroad remains less discussed. My Identities article, ‘Formed in China, negotiated in the UK: national identity among Chinese international postgraduate students’, examines how Chinese international postgraduate students in the United Kingdom negotiate their national identity.

Based on interviews with 19 Chinese postgraduate students studying in the UK, my article shows that national identity is actively negotiated rather than carried from one context to another. Rather than adopting a single, stable position, students move between different ways of understanding and expressing their national identity depending on who they are interacting with, what is being discussed, and what is at stake.

Blog post by Cristina Rodríguez-Reche, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

In Spain, children of Maghrebi–Spanish couples are often portrayed as the generation for whom belonging will finally be easier. Having a native parent, growing up ‘with us’, and navigating multiple environments are assumed to smooth the path. In this narrative, mixedness equals integration. Everyday life, however, tells a more complicated story.

In interviews I conducted with young women aged 18 to 30, one situation appeared again and again. They were asked where they are from. When they answer ‘from here’, the response rarely satisfied. The conversation continues until Morocco, or North Africa, emerges. In that moment, almost everything loses relevance. What matters is how they are read.

Mixedness does not necessarily eliminate difference. It is often eclipsed by racialized ideas about Muslimness. My Identities article, ‘Racialized identities in a postcolonial context: exploring religious identification processes among daughters of Maghrebi-Spanish couples in Spain’, examines how these repeated encounters shape religious identification. Rather than treating religion simply as belief or practice, I approach it as a social position forged through recognition, doubt and exclusion. Identity is produced in interaction. It takes form when one is accepted, questioned or misrecognized.

Blog post by Raquel Santos Fernandes and Isabel Estrada Carvalhais, University of Minho, Portugal

Women vote, work and pay taxes, but for many of them, democracy remains an experience that is incomplete, uneven and deeply conditional. This sense of being ‘half-citizen’ goes well beyond the absence of formal rights. It is about how citizenship is experienced and constrained in everyday life. In various political contexts, women’s rights are among the first to be contested or reversed. Restrictions on reproductive rights, reversals on protection against gender-based violence and policies normalizing their responsibility for care reveal how gender inequality exposes the fault lines of citizenship.

In our Identities article, ‘From foes to friends? Fighting against women’s ‘half-citizenship’ through gender-mainstreaming citizenship’, we respond to these tensions by proposing the idea of gender-mainstreaming citizenship. This framework integrates political participation, economic autonomy and intimate rights into a single analytical lens. It challenges the assumption that democracy stops at home’s front door and highlights how inequalities in the private sphere directly undermine democracy. 

Blog post by Dr Aaron Winter, Lancaster University and co-editor, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. Cross-posted from LSE Blogs.

​On 2 June 2026, a “protest” against alleged racist policing in Southampton led to injuries to police and multiple arrests. While historically, the far-right have tended to deny racism, defend the police and demonise or attack protestors, in this case it was the far-right accusing the police of ‘reverse racism’ against white people and “two-tier policing” which holds that racialised and migratised people are given preferential treatment. It followed the trial and conviction of Vickrum Singh Digwa, who is Sikh, for the stabbing murder of Henry Nowak, a white British-Polish university student, with a ceremonial knife on 3 December 2025 and the release of police bodycam footage. It showed the police, appearing to believe Digwa’s claims that he was the victim of the stabbing and racism, rejecting Nowak’s pleas that he was stabbed and could not breathe.  
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 The “Justice for Henry Nowak Protest”, included far-right leaders and influencers such as Tommy Robinson and Britain First leader Paul Golding. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage argued that Britain has a “two tier culture where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities” and that “white lives matter just as much as black lives”, evoking the BLM protests of 2020. He also called for an end to “anti-white prejudice” and the public to respond with “pure, cold rage“. Like so much these days, it is not limited to the far-right. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch blamed “the training that police have been given, all of this nonsense that came in after the Black Lives Movement”, adding “I do not want police looking at the colour of your skin when they’re deciding how to treat you”, and Tory Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said that the "police appeared more concerned with the accusation of racism than they were with helping Henry".

Blog post by Mauricio Rentería, University of Manchester, UK

‘Do you cholea?’                                                  
‘In what sense, choleo?’
‘Using terms such as “cholo motherfucker” or “serrano piece of shit”.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m classist, but not racist.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you use those phrases?’
‘Yes... believe it or not.’
‘Why?’
‘Because driving in this country is horrible.’ (smiles). [1]
 
This exchange took place in 2015 on the streets of San Isidro, one of Lima’s most affluent districts. The interviewer, host of a popular Peruvian YouTube channel, was asking passers-by whether they practised choleo. The term refers to the use of cholo as an insult: a racial slur directed at people of mixed Indigenous ancestry and, in the Peruvian context, carrying a level of violence comparable to that of the N-word in the United States. The interviewee was a middle-aged woman whose appearance and accent would be immediately recognized by most Peruvians as typical of a White, upper-class Limeña. Her responses are striking: she admits to using racial slurs yet insists she is not racist, instead describing herself, without apparent embarrassment, as classist. As if this contradiction were not enough, she justifies her stance with an unrelated grievance: Lima’s traffic.

Blog post by Karim Murji, University of West London, UK and Ipek Demir, University of Leeds, UK

This blog is linked to the Identities Special Issue: The Global Configurations of Whiteness.

How do two recent instances from the UK provide a window into a wider picture of White supremacy?

In late 2025 Robert Jenrick, then the Conservative Shadow Justice Minister (who defected to the Reform Party in 2026) made headlines when he complained of ‘not seeing another White face’ in Handsworth, Birmingham. Handsworth is indeed one of most diverse places in the UK, hosting many ‘postcolonial’ immigrants – data compiled from the Office for National Statistics by Birmingham City Council shows the population as, for example 9% White, 25.1% Pakistani, 23.1% Indian, 10.2% Bangladeshi, Black Caribbean 8.2%, 8.7% White alongside many other ethnic groups.

When challenged Jenrick said he was highlighting a ‘lack of integration’. This claim skates over the fact that racial diversity does not in itself equal a lack of integration. Nor can integration be measured by people’s skin colour. Jenrick’s claim is not really about a lack of integration but rather turns racial diversity itself into a problem and threat which needs urgent attention.

This is how one branch of contemporary Whiteness is constituted when it can present White people as victims of multiculture. The Civil Rights movement in the US reminded us that ‘equality feels like an oppression if you are used to privilege’. Presenting racial diversity as an oppression by those used to dominance is an expression of supremacy.

Blog post by Wajihah Hamid, Macquarie University, Australia
 
Every year, Eid al-Adha is often introduced to the wider public as the Muslim ‘festival of sacrifice’. This description is not wrong, but it is too thin. It tells us what the day commemorates, but not what the day does: how it gathers families, moves food across households, renews bonds of obligation, and makes Islam visible not as an abstraction, but as a lived and ordinary practice.

Eid al-Adha marks the story of Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham), his family, and their willingness to submit to God. It is closely tied to Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Makkah, and to the memory of sacrifice, trust and obedience. For Muslims who are able to do so, Eid al-Adha is also marked by qurban or udhiyah, the ritual sacrifice of an animal. The meat is then distributed among family, neighbours and those in need. The Qur’an (22:37) teaches that it is not the meat or blood that reaches God, but piety and sincerity. This matters because qurban is not simply an act of ritual slaughter. It is an ethical practice of sharing.

On Eid morning, millions of Muslims around the world attend congregational prayers at local mosques, open fields, community halls and temporary prayer spaces. The morning is filled with takbir, greetings, embraces, visits to elders, gifts for children, food prepared in advance, and messages sent across families separated by migration and distance. The day before Eid, the Day of Arafah, is also widely understood by Muslims as a special time for supplication and nearness to God. A well-known hadith describes the best supplication as the supplication of the Day of Arafah. Eid al-Adha therefore sits within a larger sacred time: prayer, remembrance, charity, food and community.

Blog post by Jihane Sliti and Iman Lechkar, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

With the rapidly deteriorating security situation in North East Syria, media discourse once again presents the issue of Kurdish-led camps and its prisoners as a security threat. As the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) lose control over detention camps, such as Al Hol, reports of mass escapes of Islamic State members dominate the news. In Belgium, this renewed sense of urgency was reinforced when Minister of Foreign Affairs Michel Prevot stated on 22 January 2026 that ‘terrorist fighters will not be able to return to Belgium’.

Fear-driven discourses are not new. For more than a decade, public and political debates on Belgian men who travelled to Syria have largely been shaped by punitive logics and vindictiveness. Yet our research shows that ‘foreign fighters’ have not always been framed as irredeemable threats. Media discourse has, at times, allowed for complexity and empathy, though not for everyone.

Based on a critical media discourse analysis, our research published in our Identities article, ‘On altar boys and good-hearted guys: de-Othering and the whitening of male convert “foreign fighters” in Belgian newspapers’, shows that the category of ‘foreign fighters’ was not always associated with danger. While born Muslim Belgian men who left for Syria were frequently depicted as barbaric and irredeemable, converts were mostly presented as naïve and disillusioned individuals who had made poor choices. Indeed, scholarly literature discerns two main depictions of convert men as naïve, disillusioned and redeemable, or as traitors, radical and in high-ranking positions. 

Blog post by Amani Braa, University of Montréal, Canada

What do hundreds of people from across the world, conversations unfolding in over a dozen languages, and an unusually bright sun over Leeds have in common?

At first glance, perhaps nothing.

And yet, for a few days in April, they all converged in one place: the Race and Media Conference.

There was something quietly striking about that sun. Throughout the week, people kept mentioning it – half amused, half surprised – ‘This doesn’t happen very often in Leeds’. It became a recurring joke, a shared observation, almost a ritual of disbelief. And yet, it lingered. As if the city itself had decided, for once, to lean into the moment. As if Leeds was offering a kind of warmth that mirrored the intensity, generosity and urgency of the conversations taking place within its walls.

Blog post by Nadine Thielemann and Lejla Atagan, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
​
Public debates about migration often allege economic burden, stress cultural differences or question integration. What tends to be overlooked are the everyday strategies through which migrants create stability, dignity, and a sense of belonging in their new environments. One place where these strategies become visible is in small businesses – especially in gastronomy, a sector where many migrants find opportunities despite structural barriers to the labour market. But what does it actually mean to become an ‘entrepreneur’ when one’s life has been shaped by migration? And how do migrants make sense of this transition in their own words?

Our Identities article, ‘Empowerment through enterprise: Balkan migrants and the narrative of entrepreneurial identity’, explores these questions through the lens of narrative identity. We conducted qualitative interviews with migrant entrepreneurs from the Balkan region who run gastronomy businesses in Vienna. Rather than evaluating their businesses, we examined how they narrate their identities, how they came to their current positions and what entrepreneurship means to them in their lives.

Across the interviews, a distinctive narrative pattern emerged. Migrants weave together two storylines often treated as separate: classical entrepreneurial themes of self-reliance, hard work and autonomy, and migrant experiences of vulnerability, marginalization and the search for recognition. When intertwined, they create a unique variation of the entrepreneurial ‘success story’, shaped by the realities of migration.

Blog post by Spencer Swain, York St John University, UK

In the heart of Northern England, a quiet cultural ritual unfolds behind closed doors: young British-Somali men gather in mafrish (khat cafes) spaces to chew khat, a bitter leaf native to the Horn of Africa. Far from being solely a leisure activity, this practice is deeply embedded in questions of identity, belonging and resistance. As I explore in my Identities article, ‘Don't forget the juicy fruits’: khat-chewing, diaspora, and identity amongst young British-Somali men in the North of England’, khat-chewing functions as a powerful cultural anchor for diasporic youth navigating the complexities of British urban life.

Khat (Catha edulis) is a mild stimulant traditionally consumed in Somaliland and surrounding regions such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Yemen. In the diaspora, its use has been reappropriated to fit the cultural and social dynamics of a new context, serving not only as a link to heritage but also as a coping mechanism amid experiences of marginalization, Islamophobia and racialization. Within the mafrish, young men engage in storytelling, debate and ritualized consumption that echo the cultural rhythms of their ancestral homeland.

Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, my research challenges binary understandings of identity. Rather than viewing British-Somali youth as caught between two worlds, the study reveals how they actively construct hybrid selves that blend Somaliness with Britishness. In this context, it is documented how khat-chewing becomes a site of ‘diasporic consciousness’, where cultural memory and contemporary experience intersect. As one participant put it, ‘Chewing khat makes you feel like a proper Somali’.

Blog post by Heisnam Olivia Devi and Hashik Nadukkandiyil, Tezpur University, India
 
When cultural tradition is invoked, who gets to belong? This question is central to our research on trans women in Manipur, India, known locally as nupi maanbi. Their presence in festivals and rituals is both visible and contested, showing how tradition can act as a tool of inclusion or exclusion.
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One of the most important sites where this tension unfolds is the Lai Haraoba festival, a pivotal event in Meitei society. Lai Haraoba celebrates creation, deities and community life through ritual dance and music. The performances are led by maibis (Meitei shamans, including nupi amaibis and nupa amaibis) accompanied by maibas (male shamans) playing the pena, a traditional musical instrument. Within this linguistic and cultural framework, amaibi refers to a priestess figure in the Meitei tradition, encompassing both nupi amaibis (female priestesses) and nupa amaibis (individuals assigned male at birth who represent femininity in their priestly functions, including nupi maanbis). In recent years, cultural organizations in Manipur have restricted the participation of nupi maanbi, arguing that the celebration must adhere to a rigid male-female binary, and justifying this exclusion in the name of preserving tradition. In practice, however, this exclusion narrows who counts as culturally legitimate.

Blog post by Çağlar Çetin-Ayşe, Augustana College, USA
 
When discussions of gender equality surface in Turkey, attention often centers on women’s struggles and resistance. My research, published in Identities as ‘Unpacking the nexus of ethnoreligious identity, minority status, and young men’s feminist self-identification in Turkey’, shifts that focus to diverse young men who support gender equality. Based on face-to-face interviews I conducted with Sunni Turkish, Kurdish, Alevi and Arab Alawite men, the study examines how their ethnoreligious identities shape their paths toward (or away from) feminist allyship. The findings complicate the widespread assumption that marginalization fosters empathy for other oppressed groups.

Across Europe and beyond, public debates may frame minority men (such as Muslim men in Scandinavian countries or Kurdish men in Turkey) as either threats to gender equality or as potential allies due to their experiences of exclusion. But the picture is far more complex. In Turkey, a country deeply polarized along ethnic, religious and political lines, these dynamics play out in unexpected ways.

Blog post by Övgü Ülgen, University of Montreal, Canada
 
Identities are multiple, fragmented, fluid, and – generationally speaking – often quite complex. My Identities article, ‘Generations and difference: language, religion, and North African Jewish identification in Québec’, examines the generational dynamics of North African Jewish belonging in this francophone province through the interplay of language and religion.
 
Drawing on 18 life-story interviews with North African Jewish immigrants in Québec, my article examines the coexistence of non-convergent identities across generations. Participants included first-generation immigrants, primarily baby boomers (born 1946–1964) with a few from the silent generation (born 1937–1945); 1.5-generation individuals from Generation X (born 1965–1979) who immigrated before the age of 18; and second-generation participants born and raised in Québec, including both Generation Xers and millennials (born 1980–mid-1990s). The first wave of North African Jewish immigrants to Québec – mostly francophone – settled in the 1950s, though emigration, particularly from Morocco, continued over the following decades. 

Blog post by Dounia Largo, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

Introduction
Since October 2023, Brussels has become one of the main centres of pro-Palestinian mobilisation in Europe. On a daily basis, people have gathered in public spaces to express solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide, occupation, apartheid, and forced displacement imposed by the Israeli state. These mobilisations have taken many forms, including static gatherings, mass demonstrations, direct actions, boycotts, and protests organised without official authorisation.

At first glance, Brussels presents itself as a city that welcomes protest. Its political leaders regularly portray it as a space of democratic openness, freedom of expression, and tolerance. Yet the treatment of pro-Palestinian mobilisation reveals a different reality: when political demands challenge dominant geopolitical interests and racialised ideas of belonging, tolerance quickly becomes conditional.

Blog post by Anna Tuckett, Brunel University of London, UK
 
The Life in the UK test is well known for the triviality of its questions. Less discussed, however, is the racist and exclusionary message that the citizenship test communicates about ‘authentic Britishness’.
 
The current Labour government has recently announced plans to ‘refresh’ the citizenship test. This must include the reversal of changes implemented by the Coalition government in 2013, which replaced practical information with selective history and general knowledge. Based on 24 questions, topics now include the Bronze Age, cricket, the Tudors and Stuarts, the Bayeux Tapestry, pantomimes and the Scottish judicial system (among others).
 
Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in private training centres that help applicants prepare for the test, my Identities article, ‘Still whitewashing Britain: race, class and the UK citizenship test’, argues that the UK citizenship test equates Britishness with a White, middle-class identity that ignores migrants’ existing participation in British society and excludes much of the British citizenry. 

Blog post by Malgosia Machowska-Kosciak and Maria Barry, Dublin City University, Ireland

In recent years, Ireland has witnessed worrying headlines: anti-immigrant protests, arson attacks on refugee accommodation, and growing online disinformation campaigns. Such incidents jar with the country’s self-image as the land of céad míle fáilte – a hundred thousand welcomes – and force us to ask: who gets to be considered Irish today?

For young people born in Ireland to migrant parents, or who arrived as children, this question is lived daily. Our Identities article, ‘Forty shades of ‘otherness’ – engaging with second-generation migrant young people’s identities through intersectionality, power and agency’, explores how second-generation youth navigate these tensions – and, crucially, how they refuse to let rigid labels define them.

In our study, participants described microaggressions and exclusions: a foreign-sounding name, a distinctive accent, a hijab in school, each sparking questions about their belonging. But these stories are not simply about being positioned as ‘other’. They are also about how young people resist, reinterpret and reshape what Irishness means.

Blog post by Idreas Khandy, Anglia Ruskin University, UK
 
The British Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, previewed what her ‘moral mission’ would look like when she laid out the broad contours of the measures concerning legal migration to the UK. The proposed measures, if adopted, would be the ‘biggest overhaul of legal migration model in 50 years’. The announcement amounted to the Home Office tipping its hat towards the far-right, whose rhetoric on immigration now openly advocates mass deportation. Crucially, this unfolded at a time when hate crimes against racial and religious minorities are rising in hospitals, schools and public transport.

Given this context, the announcement, coupled with its endorsement by Farage’s Reform, deepened existing concerns among racialised migrants. Within days of the announcement, as The Guardian reported, some immigrants in fear stopped accessing the support they are legally eligible for, despite strict eligibility conditions. Online, the immediate response to the announcement was that of shock, disbelief and confusion. For instance, discussions on a highly active subreddit (r/SkilledWorkerVisaUK, about 23K weekly visitors) focusing on immigration to the UK expressed feelings of betrayal, feeling unwanted, being asked to ‘prove’ one’s ‘worth’ again, and frustration at the vagueness of the proposal and the accompanying consultation.

​A closer reading of the proposed changes and the accompanying consultation suggests that both are rooted in a racial logic, and that a flawed consultation process may be used to legitimise their implementation, with serious consequences for the UK in the coming years.

Blog post by Owen McNamara, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
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Just as consumers around the world have begun to realize that Mexican food is more than ‘TexMex’ style tacos and burritos, so too have Mexicans themselves undertaken a critical revaluation of their traditional cuisine. Increasingly, foods and drinks that were previously (disparagingly) associated with Indigenous, rural and poor communities are being reappraised within Mexican society.

These two revaluations are linked. The attention garnered by Mexican cuisine among international gourmands (and acts of institutional recognition, such as UNESCO’s 2010 designation of Mexican cooking as part of humanity’s ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage) have created demand in cities across Mexico for a supposedly more ‘authentic’ Mexican cuisine, not only among tourists but among Mexican consumers as well.

Simultaneous with this boom in interest in native corn and traditional cuisine, the stigma which has traditionally been attached to southern Mexican identities has likewise been rethought. Mexican racial geographies commonly divide the country between a relatively prosperous north, associated with European or mestizo culture, and a poor, Indigenous south. This understanding is supported by the higher prevalence of Indigenous people in southern states (particularly Oaxaca, Chiapas and Yucatán), and the historical investment in infrastructure and industry that has favoured the north, driving migration from southern states towards central and northern Mexico. 

Blog post by Dennis Wiedman, Florida International University, USA and Vanessa León León, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL), Ecuador

Collective identity is often presented in neatly defined categories by governments, NGOs and international organizations, like the United Nations framework to recognize ‘Indigenous’ peoples. Such recognition is often tied to resources, visibility and political leverage. Yet, these frameworks of Indigeneity risk freezing identities into fixed categories. What happens when communities decline these categories?

This question guided our long-term research with the Wuankavilkas, the original people of Ecuador’s Santa Elena Peninsula. Using ethnohistorical methods combining oral histories, community archives, archaeological evidence, participant observation and four years of ethnographic fieldwork, we traced how the Wuankavilkas identify themselves in everyday life and in political arenas.

In our Identities article, ‘Identity fluidity and refusal of indigeneity by Wuankavilkas, the place-based original people of the Ecuadorian coast’, the combination of historical and contemporary sources using longitudinal cultural theme analysis allowed us to describe how the Wuankavilkas' collective identity has shifted fluidly over centuries while retaining a deep connection to land and ancestry.

Blog post by Nicola Guerra, University of Turku, Finland

Climate change is one of today’s most urgent global challenges—but it’s also become a highly political battleground. While environmentalism is typically associated with progressive values in mainstream media and public opinion, my Identities article, ‘The dark green agenda: tracing ecofascist ideologies and identities in Italy’, reveals a more complex and unsettling development gaining attention in academic circles: far-right movements are crafting their own ecological narratives in ways that are both sophisticated and contradictory.

In Italy, where far-right activism has deep roots and growing momentum, some groups are blending environmental concerns with anti-modern, anti-capitalist and identity-based ideologies. This phenomenon is increasingly referred to as ecofascism. Ecofascism isn’t a unified ideology. It’s a flexible constellation of ideas in which nature is valued not for its own sake, but as a symbol of purity, order and belonging – often tied to ethnic, territorial, or cultural identity. At its core, ecofascism sees modernity – especially capitalism, consumerism and multiculturalism – as having broken humanity’s bond with the natural world. 

Blog post by Max Mauro, Bournemouth University, UK
 
Lamine Yamal, the 17-year-old wonderkid in the world of football, has three tiny flags printed on his boots: that of Equatorial Guinea, the country of origin of his mother; that of Morocco, the country of origin of his father; and that of Spain, the country where he was born and that he decided to represent in international competitions. His case is not original; over the last decades, many athletes with multiple national backgrounds have risen to fame.
 
They are often the offspring of migration journeys from the Global South to the Global North or members of ethnic minorities. In one case or the other, they have likely been racialized, and they often claim to have experienced racism and discrimination. Furthermore, their belonging to the ‘nation’ is frequently questioned in public and media discourse, as happened to the members of the France national teams who won the men’s FIFA World Cup in 1998 and 2018.
 
The global visibility of sports such as football magnifies the impact that these dynamics can have on popular culture. In a way, the sporting spectacle exposes the fragility of the 'imagined communities' that we call nations by showing that is perfectly normal to have multiple belongings. As noted by Stuart Hall, identities are never fully settled; they are made of continuous additions and diversions. However, this contradicts the way sports and media usually represent people and nations; as crystallized identities, often fixed in stereotypical traits.

Blog post by Heather Poke, Michigan State University, USA
 
In this blog, Heather Poke, a second-year master’s student in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, reflects on what it means to navigate higher education as a first-generation Black woman from a low-income, rural community in Alabama.
 
I remember watching the different road signs pass by through the window in my U-Haul, and reality kicked in: I’m really moving 12 hours away from home. My first day of class at the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University was terrifying, yet a proud moment. I was the first of my family to move hours away from home ‘just for school’, as my parents stated. And the only thing I kept repeating to myself was: ‘You’re too country for the north’.
 
Despite moving to a slightly better environment, I had to leave behind things that shaped me, like my hometown. I grew up in a rural town in Alabama, called York, a predominantly Black community with limited resources. Not only were the resources limited for my community (health), but also academically.
My community placed my high school basketball team on a pedestal, and the idea of relying on higher education was considered a shadow or often viewed as a dream rather than a reality. Observing my loved ones struggle to make ends meet while still being classified as ‘lower class’ inspired me to seek education as a means of achieving stability and opportunity. This is what motivated me to further my education. 

Blog post by Giuliana Sanò, University of Messina, Messina, Italy

My Identities article, ‘Producing labour stratification: how migration policies affect the working, living and housing conditions of migrant farmworkers’, examines the  relationship between migration and labour stratification in the city of Vittoria, located in south-eastern Sicily. This agricultural district provides a valuable case study of the evolving patterns of (e)migration in Italy.

Historically marked by emigration, Vittoria underwent a significant transformation in the 1960s, rapidly becoming a destination for workers from Tunisia. At that time, Italy had not yet developed a comprehensive immigration policy, as its primary focus was to curb domestic emigration, particularly from the south. Consequently, Tunisian male workers who arrived in the late 1960s provided predominantly family-run local businesses with a crucial labour force, replacing local workers.

The exponential growth in profits within the local agricultural sector, described as the ‘miracle of the green gold’ by local economic figures, was largely attributed to the expansion of greenhouse farming. Unlike other agricultural districts in Italy, Vittoria's cultivation of vegetables under plastic and polyethylene covers enabled year-round production, mitigating seasonal risks. However, the crucial role of migrant labour in this sector's success is often overlooked in economic narratives.

Blog post by Aaron Winter, Lancaster University, UK and Co-Editor, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power

Hitler has been making headlines a lot in recent years – often because of others’ politics, words or high-profile hand gestures. The most recent headline, though, was about Hitler himself on 13 November, only two days following Remembrance Day, when the media reported that new research and analysis of Hilter's DNA taken from blood on the sofa where he killed himself in 1945 at the end of the war showed that Hitler had Kallmann Syndrome. This is a genetic disorder that impacts the progression of puberty and, it is claimed, may have impacted the development of his sexual organs and ability to form sexual relationships. The news arrived in advance of the Channel 4 documentary Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator, which according to reports also contains claims that he had a high genetic propensity to autism, ADHD, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.