Drawing upon 120 semi‐structured interviews with irregular migrants in Belgium, this article focuses on their aspirations and the resources needed in order to realize these. It is demonstrated that specific aspirations require specific forms of capital. A typology is constructed, based on three types of aspirations with corresponding resources. First, investment migrants, who aspire to return and invest in upward social mobility in their country of origin, require job competencies (cultural capital) and social leverage (social capital). Second, legalization migrants, who aspire to obtain legal residence, require different forms of capital, depending on the marriage market they are active in. Third, settlement migrants, aiming at residing legally or illegally in the receiving society, require both social support and social leverage (combined social capital). These findings indicate it is important to adopt a contextualized approach studying the mechanisms through which various forms of capital lead to different outcomes for irregular migrants.

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In western countries irregular immigrants constitute a sizeable segment of the population. By combining quantitative and qualitative research methods, this article describes and explains irregular immigrants' patterns of spatial concentration and incorporation in the Netherlands.So far these spatial patterns have not been described and explained systematically, neither in the Netherlands nor elsewhere. The article shows that illegal residence is selectively embedded in the (urban) social structure in various ways. The authors argue that irregular immigrants are likely to be spatially concentrated and incorporated in other western countries in similar ways; now and in the foreseeable future.

In the Netherlands the English word 'loverboys' describes pimps who use their seductive skills to exploit young girls as prostitutes. Public interest and concern has been enormous. But no images of or interviews with loverboys have appeared in the media. This article examines the 10-year-long history of the phenomenon as a classic moral panic constructed by the media, social workers and politicians. Our analysis also seeks to get behind the media representations, using discovery research methods from urban ethnography to show that a subculture has grown in the world of prostitution where this recruiting method is used. Our dual track investigatory approach demonstrates that both developments -the rise of a moral panic and the emergence of a new type of prostitution -are inexorably intertwined.Keywords moral panic, pimping, urban ethnography, youth subculture Loverboys, do they exist?For more than a decade now, the Netherlands has been plagued by the criminal practices of what are referred to as loverboys. This English term has a unique definition in Dutch: loverboys are young men who use their seduction skills to eventually exploit young girls as prostitutes. From the start, the term has been ethnically loaded. Loverboys are portrayed as second-generation Moroccan and black Antillean Dutchmen. Their victims are predominantly white Dutch girls. It seems to be an exclusively Dutch phenomenon, since no other language appears to have a special term for this type of prostitution.The loverboys phenomenon has been the focus of an enormous amount of media attention. When we recorded the first results of our study on this phenomenon in 2006, it had generated

This article describes an empirical study into processes of homegrown radicalization and de-radicalization of young people. Researchers in Denmark and the Netherlands set out to answer the question regarding what pathways in and out of extremism (mainly far-right or Islamist) look like "from the inside." The analysis is informed by grounded theory, based on interviews (N D 34) with "formers" and their family members on their life courses. The study shows that radicalization often concurs with distinct social-emotional developmental challenges that young people face in the transition between youth and adulthood. A practical implication of the marked transitional sequences in these processes is that each type of radical journey may call for a different type of (re) action.What do pathways into and out of extremism look like based on accounts by former homegrown radicals and their families? Although many books and articles cover the problems of radicalization, extremism, and terrorism, 1 there is a lack of empirical studies on radicalization that start from the information by persons who hold or held radical violent views themselves and their relatives. Therefore, this study approached formers and their families in Denmark and the Netherlands to discuss their journey into and out of extremism. 2 Radicalization is understood by many as the process by which a person becomes increasingly hateful toward a part of society and anyone who defends the status quo. 3 It is a process by which people increasingly adopt more extreme attitudes and behavior that might involve approval of the use of violence by others or displaying this violence themselves to stimulate fear in the general population in an attempt to instigate changes in a society. Some scholars notice that no universally accepted definition exists, even though radicalization has been subjected to many scientific studies. 4 In order to account for the relative meaning of radicalization, the definition used in this research was based on existing definitions and on the conversations we had with our respondents. In this study, radicalization is considered to occur when a child or adolescent starts to develop political or religious ideas and agency that are