“I know I belong to a kind of migration that is perceived [to be] less problematic, but still, I am [a migrant]!” Migrant self-identification and empathy amongst Italian, Greek and Turkish (privileged) migrants in Brussels

While the mediatization and the politization of the management of the European Union's physical borders has been exacerbated by the refugee reception crisis of 2015-2016, the expansion of 'symbolic' borders – which materialize through exclusionary attitudes towards migrants – deserves further attention, considering their crucial implications on social cohesion. This communication is based on a PhD thesis which more largely investigates the perceptions of (privileged) migrants from Italy, Greece, and Turkey living in Brussels vis-à-vis migrants and immigration in their country of origin. Amongst other things, this thesis seeks to highlight migrant categorization processes as powerful othering tools, which hierarchize migrants based on their perceived (un)deservingness and (un)desirability, along nationality, class, age, gender, race, ethnicity, and religious lines, amongst others. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which our Italian, Greek and Turkish respondents identify as migrants or not, and how the self-identification process of privileged migrants produces empathy and solidarity with socio-economically disadvantaged migrants, and, to a lesser extent, to othering and exclusion.