Müller, Tanja R.2024-09-032024-09-032021-05-03Müller, T. R. (2022). Labour market integration and transnational lived citizenship: Aspirations and belonging among refugees in Germany. Global Networks, 22: 5–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.123211471-0374https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12321https://hdl.handle.net/10315/42286This article is published under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license.Transnational lived citizenship has gained prominence as a means to analyse mobility and foreground activist notions of citizenship over legal status. I argue that lived citizenship and transnational movements are strongly intertwined with aspirations and belonging. I use the material example of labour market integration as the space of enactments of citizenship and analyse the patterns of belonging those create and contest. I develop my argument through the empirical example of labour market integration of refugees in Germany. I demonstrate how such integration transforms social, and more importantly, economic location and in turn creates complex and often contradictory forms of transnational allegiances. I ultimately argue that lived citizenship can in important ways advance aspirations of refugees and migrants. At the same time, transnational lives and multiple allegiances are often hindered by state-based citizenship and the rights this confers. Legal status thus remains an important marker of citizenship.Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 InternationalAspirationsBelongingGermanyLabour market integrationRefugeesTransnational lived citizenshipArticle