Key remarks and research notes on national boundaries, kinship and migration

With this conclusive chapter, the multiple strands of analysis developed across the various chapters are rearticulated in an effort to frame some key remarks and notes for a research agenda on nation, kinship and migration. Focusing on the connection between national boundaries and identity, the analysis stresses the need to more systematically consider how and when categories of nationality may be effectively imposed among migrants and minorities as criteria of exclusion despite their incoherent and controversial character. At the same time, the chapter addresses the highly complex relationship between kinship and nation. This point highlights in particular the way national metaphors draw on the sphere of loyalty and recognition represented by kinship to accrue meaning and forge collective imaginaries. It therefore reveals how, in contemporary contexts, mobility engages the state-kinship relationship in an ever more pressing way, thereby invoking processes of classifying and certifying nation-state belonging. Lastly, exploring the nexus between nation, mobility and kinship, migrant agency is considered not as a simple act of resistance but rather as a complex articulation that emerges at the intersection of the state, the law, identity and intimacy.