The Migratory Imaginary: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Belonging and Aspirations of Racialized Migrant Youth

Contemporary scholarship has increasingly focused on the labor market experiences of racialized migrant youth in predominantly white localities. This research offers valuable insights into the impact of colonial processes, such as racialization, on these young people's migratory practices and labor market trajectories. However, there is a notable gap in understanding how experiences of coloniality shape these young people's future aspirations, particularly regarding work, and their sense of non/belonging to a place. This paper aims to fill this gap by introducing the concept of the "migratory imaginary." Drawing on Emma Pérez's notion of the "decolonial imaginary" and examining the experiences of Black African youth migrating to Australia, the paper conceptualizes the migratory imaginary as the practices racialized youth engage in to overcome feelings of exclusion and forge spaces of belonging. These practices involve envisioning themselves in places characterized by familial proximity, the presence of other Black Africans, and opportunities for inclusion that they associate with a fulfilling life, including access to employment opportunities and being part of a community. This paper argues that these practices are liberatory and represent these young people's efforts to counteract and dismantle the impacts of coloniality which seek to construct them as an excluded Other from their racialized migrant position. The paper concludes by reflecting on how the migratory imaginary offers a critical framework for sociologist to understand how experiences of coloniality shape the aspirations of the future of racialized migrant youth in relation to work and how this affects their sense of non/belonging to place.