DOI: 10.4324/9781003194316-30 255 26 MIGRANTS AND THEIR CULTURAL WORLD When things teach us about lives Amin Moghadam Introduction The notion of culture recurs in a variety of social and political felds. But as it is open to many interpretations, its use in the social sciences is often problematic, for example, when ana- lysing migratory and diasporic phenomena. The appropriation of concepts such as culture, cultural diversity, and cultural integration from the social sciences by the media, politics, and the policy domain makes using them tricky in epistemologically scienti fc analysis – so much so that, even when tackling the cultural dimension of migrations, some academics have abandoned them in favour of less politically charged notions, more compatible with the complexity of migratory processes. However, most researchers conducting cultural analysis of migration are together in crit- icising a deterministic cultural approach, under which culture is seen as an immutable pack- age or the geographical origin of an individual or group as the only factor explaining their situation in the context of their countries of destination (Cohen and Sirkeci 2021; Cuche 2016; Dubucs 2015; Levitt 2010, 2016). But they do not throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. By proposing complex, dynamic defnitions that refect how individuals and groups act, bring into play a range of meanings, and engage in certain practices, analysis of the cultural dimension of migration goes well beyond a view of culture as a common denominator to describe individuals or groups. Referring to Alexander and Smith’s (2014) defnition of culture, Peggy Levitt (2016, p. 144) adds: Culture is context: the discourses, regimes and assumptions embedded in institutions, and the repertoires of meanings that are marshalled to respond to dilemmas and oppor- tunities. It makes certain actions possible by providing the building blocks with which to enact them, and by marking them as socially appropriate, while restricting others by rendering them unacceptable…Thus culture is more likely a contingent clustering of diverse elements that is often on the move rather than a packageable, stable set of beliefs and practices rooted in a particular place.