Migration and Culture
... Exploring the motivations of migrants and how cultural beliefs and social patterns influence the decisions of people to move or to remain at home (Schewel, 2015;Schewel & Fransen, 2020), an increasing number of scholars has drawn the attention on the role of certain cultures of migration (Cohen & Jónsson, 2011;Cohen & Sirkeci, 2011;de Haas, 2011;Kandel & Massey, 2002;Hahn & Klute, 2007;Massey et al., 1987) and "culture of staying" (Stockdale & Haartsen, 2018) as determinants on individual and household mobility decisions in the countries of origin. Drawing from their studies on Mexican migration to United States, Massey et al. (1993: 452-453;Cohen, 2004) state that a culture of migration emerges when: "at the community level, migration becomes deeply ingrained into the repertoire of people's behaviours, and values associated with migration become part of the community's values". ...
This report provides an overview of existing theoretical and empirical findings regarding the drivers of international migration and how they operate differently across contexts, interacting with each other. The study of the migration drivers is intended as one of the elements of the formulation of FUME’s future international migration narratives and the basis for the evidence-based population projections. The aim of the report is to support the formulation of better-informed migration scenarios through the integration of knowledge regarding the factors at micro, meso and macro levels that shape international migration processes.
The integration of Turkish-speaking migrants into Belgian society presents multifaceted challenges, particularly concerning language acquisition and cultural adaptation. Despite Belgium’s multicultural landscape, newcomers often struggle with learning local languages, hindering their integration and limiting their opportunities in the labour market. This study aimed to explore the critical role of language proficiency and cultural understanding in the integration process, aiming to provide insights into effective integration strategies for Turkish-speaking migrants in Belgium. The research involved 59 Turkish-speaking participants from a mixed social integration course, divided into six focus groups. Additionally, in-depth interviews with 14 experts provided insights into the integration process, highlighting their experiences, expectations, challenges, and ambitions. Key findings indicate that language barriers and cultural differences impede integration, underscoring the need for tailored language training and professional development courses. Informal gatherings and focus groups emerged as effective tools for providing peer support, fostering mutual understanding, and addressing cultural anxieties. The study also identified the limitations of current integration efforts, noting that highly educated migrants adapt more easily due to their openness to new challenges and previous language learning experiences. However, those from closed communities, particularly women with low education levels, face significant barriers due to limited access to support services. By analysing individual perspectives and expectations of Turkish-speaking migrants, this study offers practical insights to inform the development of both formal and informal integration strategies. These findings highlight the importance for policymakers and community leaders to comprehend the challenges encountered by Turkish migrants, guiding the creation of tailored interventions to facilitate their successful integration into the host country, and ultimately contributing to a more inclusive and cohesive society.
This study examines the relationship between socio‐economic factors and migration aspirations among Moldovans using a mixed‐methods approach. It combines quantitative analysis of demographic and economic variables with qualitative interviews to explore the factors that drive migration considerations. The findings show that economically disadvantaged individuals are less likely to migrate due to concerns about social costs, while wealthier individuals are more inclined to move. Contrary to expectations, social capital, remittances, and overseas networks play a limited role in encouraging migration, often reinforcing the decision to stay. These results challenge existing migration theories and highlight the need to consider Moldova's unique socio‐economic context when analyzing migration aspirations.
Historians of the ancient Near East and Biblical Scholars have shown interest in movement and migration as features of ancient texts and ancient lived experience, but few have appreciatively integrated theoretical groundings from mobility or migration studies in their analyses. Through the addition of both theory and data, mobility and migration studies hold promise as interlocutory fields that can enrich understandings of movement and migration at various scales. Mobility and migration studies admittedly stand as dauntingly large fields. This article, therefore, provides initial guidance on what theoretical groundings from mobility and migration studies can be most useful for modeling and interpreting movement in the ancient Near East and in biblical sources. This necessary (re)focus on fundamental conceptual categories and terminological frameworks will further guide ongoing interdisciplinary studies of mobility and migration in the ancient past.
This paper explores Moldovas unique context within migration studies, highlighting its potential to enhance theoretical frameworks on migration. Despite its small size, Moldova has a significant portion of its population working abroad, offering insights into both migration and immobility. The study examines Moldova's dual migratory flows toward the European Union (EU) and Russia, influenced by cultural, historical, and economic ties. Contrary to conventional views, the context of Moldova reveals that financial accessibility and robust social networks do not always result in increased migration aspirations in migration decisions. It also addresses the interconnected issues of human trafficking and migration, emphasizing often-overlooked social dimensions. Positioning Moldova as a valuable “migration laboratory,” this study aims to generate academic interest and propose new research directions to refine migration theories.
This article explores the role played by migration and mobilities practiced while young in subsequent professional development, focusing on the example of research careers in Portugal. The first half of the discussion introduces theoretical issues, including the proposition that time spent abroad provides a means of generating distinction. This belief, alongside other ideas associated with Bourdieu, helps explain why certain people have sought to spatialize their careers in the past. However, the multiplication and fragmentation of mobilities changes this situation, democratizing but diluting the value of spatial experiences for youth transitions to and within the labour market. The second part of the article looks at the evolution of what is termed a mobilities/transitions nexus, using evidence from 48 biographical interviews conducted with researchers in Portugal during 2022 and 2023. Taking a temporally cross-sectional view of this evidence, change in the efficacy of migration and mobilities for incipient researchers during the youth phase is illustrated, ranging from examples of distinction generating success among individuals who migrated at a time when such practices were relatively exceptional to others who moved after the multiplication and fragmentation of mobilities, also noting the emergence of hybrid forms of circulation.
Executive Summary
This paper examines the cultural influences on irregular migration to South Africa from the Kembata-Tembaro Zone of Ethiopia. It reports on a mixed methods study, with a cross-sectional household survey ( n = 316) to examine indicators about society’s perceptions, cultural values, and the impact of remittances on migration. In-depth interviews ( n = 24) with migrant returnees and experts in the Kembata-Tembaro Zone Labor and Social Affairs Office explored their experiences and perceptions of irregular migration. The study established a connection between cultural influences and irregular migration of Ethiopians to the Republic of South Africa.
Overall, the study demonstrates that the culture of migration among the Kembatas is primarily driven by a cumulative migration experience facilitated through migrant social networks. Economic incentives, such as prospects of better income and improved living conditions, are the main drivers for individuals to embark on this migratory journey. In addition, social factors, including familial networks, community ties, and remittances from migrants, significantly influence households’ attitudes toward migration. The paper ends with recommendations to address the problems related to irregular Ethiopian migration to South Africa, to enhance the well-being of Kembata emigrants, and to maximize the benefits of migration.
Since Estonia joined the European Union in 2004, there has been a steady growth in transnational mobility for work or study among Estonian young adults, a phenomenon further boosted by the economic recession of 2008–09. This article analyses the factors that have influenced or would potentially influence their return to Estonia, following an online survey of over 2,000 participants from Estonia aged 20–35 years with a recent experience of living abroad. By deploying an analysis of logistic regression, we developed two models concerning the ‘actual return factors’ (comparing the stayers with those who have returned) and the ‘aspirational return factors’ (how the migrants imagine their future location). Some of the highlights of our results demonstrate that the likelihood of return migration is significantly lower for those whose prime reasons for leaving Estonia were related to living conditions and salary abroad. The extent of people’s ties and connections to Estonia does not play a significant role in actually returning to Estonia. However, these connections do play a role, albeit limited, in envisioning one’s future in Estonia. The outcomes of our analysis suggest that diaspora policies cannot be implemented without addressing the sending country’s internal sociopolitical situation, which influences the living conditions and economic opportunities of its citizens, scrutinized particularly carefully by those who have left the country before deciding whether or not to return.
Despite the popular narrative that the United States is a “land of mobility,” the country may have become a “rooted America” after a decades-long decline in migration rates. This article interrogates the lingering question about the social forces that limit migration, with an empirical focus on internal migration in the United States. We propose a systemic, network model of migration flows, combining demographic, economic, political, and geographic factors and network dependence structures that reflect the internal dynamics of migration systems. Using valued temporal exponential-family random graph models, we model the network of intercounty migration flows from 2011 to 2015. Our analysis reveals a pattern of segmented immobility, where fewer people migrate between counties with dissimilar political contexts, levels of urbanization, and racial compositions. Probing our model using “knockout experiments” suggests one would have observed approximately 4.6 million (27 percent) more intercounty migrants each year were the segmented immobility mechanisms inoperative. This article offers a systemic view of internal migration and reveals the social and political cleavages that underlie geographic immobility in the United States.
Internal migration in Italy has been characterised by deep changes in its composition, because of the growing share of high-skilled migrants (the emigration of which contributes to widening the internal brain drain) and the decreasing proportion of low-skilled migrants. Furthermore, recent interest in the literature in the role played by noneconomic elements in affecting migration decisions has highlighted the importance of a nonpecuniary factor, namely social capital (SC). For these reasons, this paper empirically investigates the role played by SC in interprovincial selective migration, considering migrants according to two education levels using data on 103 Italian provinces (2004–2012). The main findings reveal that provincial SC mainly contributes to reducing the migration flows of low-skilled individuals, albeit while also deterring the emigration of high-skilled individuals. Control variables confirm that better income conditions represent an important determinant of high-skilled migrants most likely because they seek to earn more, while better socioeconomic conditions such as labour market efficiency mostly influence those with a lower level of education.
Within the field of international migration, most studies focusing on home‐based migrant social networks tend to focus on family relations, whereas the role of the friends who stay behind is largely neglected. This study explores how friendships affect and are affected by, international migration. Via an ethnographic approach, we have analysed the experiences of 16 young adults who stayed behind in the sending region of Essaouira, Morocco. In contrast with the pressures experienced within family relations, friendships emerged as an important source of socio‐emotional support for migrants, thereby functioning as safe spaces. Building on the findings, we argue that for a more comprehensive understanding of the social embeddedness of migration, friendships should be considered along with family relations.
Migration is considered a meaningful strategy whereby both migrants and nonmigrants can improve their well-being and their livelihoods. The paper emphasizes the migrants' own perspective and sheds light on movers' noneconomic drivers. The concept of aspirations is treated as a 'missing link' that allows research into migration at its intersection with social inequalities, hierarchies and diversity. The paper's main aim is therefore to elucidate Romanian migrants' aspirations and to illustrate how these aspirations are informed by their agency and reflect their well-being both during and after the economic recession in Greece. Romanian migration provides sufficient grounds to invoke a more nuanced approach to migrants' well-being, which takes their 'dreams of fantasy' into account, along with their subjective experiences of inequalities and multiple belonging. This paper frames migrants' well-being theoretically as a relational process, but also in terms of the socio-spatial arrangements of migrant mobility/immobility acts. Romanians' narratives are analysed in relation to their social trajectories, spatial movement(s) and settlement patterns during their international and internal journey(s).
The World Bank notes that officially recorded remittances reached 529 billion to low‐ and middle‐income countries. While these figures are mind‐boggling and potentially render the act of migration as a clear decision, they do not communicate the social challenges that result for movers and nonmovers around migration and remitting. Our article is organized to better understand the complexities that surround remittances and the act of remitting. Based on research in Mexico and Tajikistan, we argue that while remittances are critical to household successes and can create a pathway to growth and economic success, they can also destabilize and undermine local practices as movers and nonmovers rethink life; engage in new kinds of labor; and reconsider their roles, responsibilities, and more. In the second part of our article, we argue that the dynamic effects of remittances are minimized and ignored, while their role in driving economic development is celebrated. Understanding remittance practices demands that we rethink academic boundaries and use ethnographic work to reconsider the centrality that development and economic growth often hold in our evaluations.
This work foregrounds changing state development policies in Thailand as a way to consider the complex drivers and motivations within internal migration. Using uncertain outcomes of state development and broader socio-cultural divisions as structure, ethnographic data detail the ways personal agency marks one's aspirational character and possible futures in the pursuit of well-being and economic security. Ultimately, I argue that ongoing state development efforts to reduce poverty, increase socio-economic equity, and facilitate people's capacity to cope with daily life confront enduring challenges. Reframing development must address people's existential needs and consider how structural precarity interrelates with persistent socio-cultural inequities and prejudices.
Context: Humans constantly respond to environmental stressors challenging their somatic stability. Allostasis, an evolved neuroendocrine/physiological stressor response system, is our main pathway for doing so. Effective allostasis returns somatic systems to their current optima; over a lifetime of stressor responses, related systems fail, effectiveness declines, and physiological dysregulation (i.e.: allostatic load) increases. Global Climate Change (GCC) multiplies environmental stressors on human populations and is likely to increase allostatic load.
Objectives: As a population-level stressor, GCC increases risks for multiple stressors, including sociocultural instability and food and water insecurity, while also motivating migration. We predict GCC increases risk for elevated allostatic load. Here, we review pathways by which GCC increases climatic and social stressors contributing to greater stress and allostatic load.
Methods: Based upon published sources and primary ethnographic case studies, we examine how GCC, by multiplying climate-related stressors, likely increases social instability, food and water insecurity, and migration. Thereby, we propose GCC contributes to allostatic load.
Results: GCC multiplies stressors on local populations. Those experiencing social insecurity related to GCC during growth and development are expected to show the largest influences on their lifetime allostatic load. Similarly, as GCC increases food and water insecurity, it likely will increase allostatic load in those affected and is likely to propel migrants to seek improved living circumstances. These stressors may be continued among their descendants via historical trauma or epigenetic responses.
Conclusion: GCC accentuates effects of environmental and sociocultural stressors on human populations. Those exposed to GCC are likely to show lifelong elevated allostatic load.
Research shows that migration plays in role in shaping intergenerational mobility pathways for migrants and their children. Absent from existing scholarship is an examination of intergenerational mobility pathways across multi-generational families with migrant and non-migrant members. Drawing from a mixed methods analysis of interview and survey data on 50 Mexican families comprised of return migrants and their non-migrant parents and children, I identify occurrences of intergenerational mobility via school and work outcomes and compare these results with educational and occupational data from non-migrant families. My findings indicate that return migrant families experience intergenerational occupational change, which may lead to mobility for some. I also identify and explore three mechanisms that shape intergenerational mobility pathways among return migrants and their children: the occupational mobility of returnees through human capital transfers, financial remittances, and the life course stage of children during their parents’ first trip abroad. My findings illustrate international migration’s potential to disrupt social class reproduction and highlight the implications of migration for the future socioeconomic success of migrant families with low levels of traditional human capital.
This paper extends interdisciplinary research into young people’s experiences of studying abroad. Whilst there is ample evidence for the growing significance of international student mobility in shaping young people’s identities and future life chances, few efforts have been made to account for the perspectives of young people who have no first-hand experiences of travelling abroad. Building on the concept of imaginative geographies, this paper flips around the analytical lens used to explore representations of international student mobility and develops a nuanced understanding of the ways in which mass-mediated images and discourses shape understandings of self and others. Drawing on field research conducted with Nepali university students in Kathmandu, the first part of the analysis makes evident that a greater degree of global connectivity between young people studying at home and abroad does not necessarily translate into a fuller understanding of distant places and people, as these connections are always underpinned by local status hierarchies. The second part of the analysis calls attention to the various ways in which dominant imaginaries of mobility and place are being internalised and reworked differently depending on people’s social identities and their lived experiences. The findings presented in this paper therefore contribute to broader debates in geographical research on the uneven power relations that underpin mobility practices and shape people’s identities in an interconnected world.
We examine the lived experiences of foreign domestic helpers (FDH) working with community-dwelling older people in Hong Kong. Unstructured interviews were conducted with 11 female FDHs, and thematically analyzed. The theme inescapable functioning commodity represented the embodied commodification of FDHs to be functional for older people in home care. Another theme, destined reciprocity of companionship, highlighted the FDHs’ capacity to commit to home care and be concerned about older people. The waxing and waning of the possibilities of commodified companionship indicated the intermittent capacity of FDHs to find meaning in their care, in which performative nature for functional purposes and emotional engagement took turns to be the foci in migrant home care. This study addresses the transition of FDHs from task-oriented relation to companions of older people through care work. Discussion draws on the development of a kin-like relationship between FDHs and older people with emotional reciprocity grounded in moral values.
This paper introduces and sets the context for a special issue on “New European Youth Mobilities: Motivations, Experiences and Future Prospects,” which derives from the European Union-funded H2020 “YMOBILITY” project on current youth migrations and transitions across the European Union. It first introduces the YMOBILITY programme and its multimethod, comparative research effort. This is followed by a brief review of secondary data on the changing profile of youth migration and mobility in Europe. Then, we explore definitions of key terms central to the project, such as “youth,” “youth transition,” “mobility,” “skill,” and the notion of the “learning migrant”. The final part of the paper introduces the 6 articles that make up the special issue, highlighting their most significant findings and outlining their value as an integrated set that offers new insights into the role of mobile young people as students and workers within European societies.
New human aDNA studies have once again brought to the forefront the role of mobility and migration in shaping social phenomena in European prehistory, processes that recent theoretical frameworks in archaeology have downplayed as an outdated explanatory notion linked to traditional culture history. While these new genetic data have provided new insights into the population history of prehistoric Europe, they are frequently interpreted and presented in a manner that recalls aspects of traditional culture-historical archaeology that were rightly criticized through the 1970s to the 1990s. They include the idea that shared material culture indicates shared participation in the same social group, or culture, and that these cultures constitute one-dimensional, homogeneous, and clearly bounded social entities. Since the new aDNA data are used to create vivid narratives describing ‘massive migrations’, the so-called cultural groups are once again likened to human populations and in turn revitalized as external drivers for socio-cultural change. Here, I argue for a more nuanced consideration of molecular data that more explicitly incorporates anthropologically informed mobility and migration models.
In this article, I consider how and why some non-migrants partially inhabit migrant subjectivities. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Central Java, Indonesia, I describe the experiences of those who embarked on pre-departure migration processes, but failed to leave the country. Men were often victims of fraud; women typically ran away from the confines of training centres. When redirected away from the border spaces of airports and recruitment centres, they typically identify themselves and are perceived by kin and neighbours as ‘former’ transnational migrants. I analyse how migration infrastructure – intersecting institutions, agents and technologies – produces such subjectivities in-between conventional migrant and non-migrant categories. These positions in between leaving and staying illuminate the infrastructural conditions that enable, constrain and mediate transnational mobilities. These cases of non-departure show the expansive social and spatial effects of migration infrastructure beyond the facilitation of transnational movement. Such less considered (im)mobilities of non-migrants point to the diverse ways in which migration institutions and agents mediate the circulation of persons between and within national borders.
This paper uses the case study of rural–urban migration from the small island of Paama, Vanuatu over a period of almost 30 years to argue that longitudinal restudies offer valuable insights into processes of continuity and change. Between the early 1980s and 2011, there was great continuity in Paamese demography and rural social organization, circular mobility had decreased, the trend towards urban permanence had continued, and gendered mobility norms had altered. The dialectic nature of mobility was manifest in these changes and continuities, which both reflected and contributed to wider social, economic and political trends over the period. Significantly, many of the mobility trends noted above would not have been apparent without longitudinal data, the use of which allowed for detailed analysis of mobility behavior beyond general observations. Furthermore, while existing restudies tend to focus on change, it is argued that recognizing continuity is also important, and emphasizes the processual nature of mobility.
How do ongoing histories of physical mobility in economic and political life affect rival state authorities’ claims over a disputed territory? In the conflict over Western Sahara, wide-ranging strategies of mobility challenge familiar tropes of migration scholarship, in which states constrain people's movements while subjects seek to escape such control. Both the Moroccan state and its rival, the liberation movement Polisario Front, have curbed mobility while their mobile Sahrawi subjects evade their authority. Simultaneously, however, both these state authorities encourage people to circulate in order to support claims over territory, while Sahrawis move to strengthen their position vis-à-vis either state authority. Mobility, then, emerges as an ambivalent means of mediating and transforming power relations, especially between governing authorities and their subjects. ¿Cómo afectan las historias actuales de movilidad física, en la vida económica y política, a las pretensiones de dos autoridades estatales sobre un territorio en disputa? En el conflicto sobre el Sahara Occidental los tropos familiares de la investigación sobre migraciones se ven desafiados por amplias estrategias de movilidad, en las que los estados intentan restringir los movimientos de la gente mientras que los sujetos tratan de escapar a ese control. Tanto el estado marroquí como su rival, el movimiento de liberación Frente Polisario, ponen trabas a la movilidad, mientras que sus móviles sujetos saharauis escapan a su autoridad. Sin embargo, simultáneamente estas dos autoridades estatales animan a las personas a circular para apoyar pretensiones sobre el territorio, mientras que los saharauis se mueven para reforzar su posición frente a cualquier autoridad estatal. La movilidad aparece, entonces, como un medio ambivalente para mediar con las relaciones de poder y transformarlas, especialmente entre autoridades gubernamentales y sus sujetos. [movilidad, Estado, soberanía, territorio, Frente Polisario, Sahara Occidental, Marruecos].
Aims: This paper discusses the ways researchers may become open to manifold interpretations of lived experience through thematic analysis that follows the tradition of hermeneutic phenomenology.
Background: Martin Heidegger’s thinking about historical contexts of understandings and the notions of ‘alētheia’ and ‘techne’ disclose what he called meaning of lived experience, as the ‘unchanging Being of changing beings’. While these notions remain central to hermeneutic phenomenological research, novice phenomenologists usually face the problem of how to incorporate these philosophical tenets into thematic analysis.
Design: Discussion paper
Data sources: This discussion paper is based on our experiences of hermeneutic analysis supported by the writings of Heidegger. Literature reviewed for this paper ranges from 1927 - 2014. We draw on data from a study of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong to demonstrate how ‘dwelling’ in the language of participants’ ‘ek-sistence’ supported us in a process of thematic analysis. Data were collected from December 2013 to February 2016.
Implications for Nursing: Nurses doing hermeneutic phenomenology have to develop self-awareness of one’s own ‘taken-for-granted’ thinking to disclose the unspoken meanings hidden in the language of participants. Understanding the philosophical tenets of hermeneutic phenomenology allows nurses to preserve possibilities of interpretations in thinking. In so doing, methods of thematic analysis can uncover and present the structure of the meaning of lived experience.
Conclusion: We provide our readers with vicarious experience of how to begin cultivating thinking that is aligned with hermeneutic phenomenological philosophical tenets to conduct thematic analysis.
Achieving food security has become a critical development issue. It is more so for Nepal, a country facing serious social and economic problems. In recent years, Nepal has seen rising temporary-work migration of people to foreign countries with implications for food security, even in distant rural places. In this article, we examine differential effects of transnational labour migration on food security and food sovereignty in migrant-sending rural areas. In so doing, we draw on the fresh insights gained from case studies carried out in villages representing two distinct geographical regions of Nepal – Tarai (Plains) and Hills. Findings show complex and contradictory effects of transnational labour migration. We argue that this form of migration has led to improved food security on a short-term basis through remittances and migration-induced rural employment. At the same time, it has also caused erosion in food sovereignty through generating adverse effects on local food production, and thus creating growing dependence on food imports and threatening poor people's access to food. Rather than considering food security and food sovereignty as rival frameworks, this paper suggests that combining the two concepts offer rich and broader understandings of the impacts of migration on rural people’s access to food. © 2016 Discipline of Anthropology and Sociology, The University of Western Australia
The issue of rural poverty continues to shape critical academic and policy discourses in the global South. In such discourses, some scholars and policy-makers highlight non-agrarian pathways leading to prosperity, while others continue to emphasize the significance of land and farming for poverty reduction. However, such analyses tend not only to obscure strong linkages between agriculture, migration and rural labour, but also stay silent on how rural people interpret changes or continuities in their livelihoods. In this paper, I focus on the case of rural Nepal to unfold how some rural people, but not others, improve their livelihoods through international labour migration, farming and rural labour. This paper reveals that many poor people have experienced improved livelihoods pursuing a diverse portfolio of agricultural and non-agricultural activities including labour migration. However, the dispossession of poor people from land and their adverse incorporation into the local and international labour markets continue to perpetuate chronic poverty.
Advocating research of the "ethnographic present," the article portrays the recent evolvement of two constituencies in Israeli urban society conceived as new socio-economic-cultural and spatial social "banks": Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia residing in ethnically segregated urban neighborhoods; the gradual concentration in Tel Aviv's downtown neighborhoods of authorized and undocumented labor migrants from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan. It reports on the growing protest by local Israeli residents, the government's efforts to limit the presence of "uninvited strangers," as well as the active response of the unwelcome aliens. I posit that the emergence of these new ethnic enclaves converges with other critical changes in Israeli institutional life. Major transformations in the texture and tenets of Israeli citizenry, its spatial construction and national identity are steadily progressing.
The role of international labour migration in processes leading to the (re)production of rural poverty in the rural South continues to shape critical academic and policy debate. While many studies have established that migration provides an important pathway to rural prosperity, they insufficiently analyse the profound effects that migration and remittances have on agrarian and rural livelihoods. This article uses the case of rural Nepal, where over half of the households are involved in foreign labour migration, as a ‘window’ to understand the processes shaping how migration effects poverty. The paper analyses how migration generates outcomes across the domains of rural people's changing relationship to land and agriculture, their experience of migration, and rural labour markets to advance our arguments. First, it argues that migration leads to the commodification of land, generating changes in patterns of land uses and tenancy relations. With respect to rural people's engagement with agriculture, migration generates both processes of ‘deactivation’ and ‘repeasantization’. Second, foreign migration offers an exit from poverty for some while also creating processes of deeper impoverishment for others. Third, migration leads to structural changes in rural labour markets, reducing the supply of agrarian labour. Consequently, in contrast to the simplifying ‘narrative’ accounts of a migration pathway out of poverty, this paper concludes that the effects triggered by migration are highly contradictory, providing an exit from poverty when linked to diversification strategies, while engendering rising inequality and rural differentiation.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2015.1041520#abstract
This article analyses the composition and evolution of migrants’ personal networks during their settlement process. Migration studies have emphasized the relational dimension of the migration process, but the topic has rarely been analysed systematically using social network analysis. Based on ego-network analysis and interviews with Ecuadorian and Moroccan immigrants in Catalonia, this article shows the diversity of configurations of migrants’ personal networks and their evolution: over the years only some migrants break their ties with the society of origin and substitute them with contacts with locals; others maintain or increase transnational ties; and yet others create co-ethnic ties in the host country. This diversity is explained in the article by examining migrant characteristics and circumstances prior to migration, such as the details of their migration projects and the features of their pre-migratory contacts. The results show that the interaction of gender with the organization of the migration process seems to have a strong impact on the evolution of these networks. At a methodological level, social network analysis proves to be a fruitful strategy for analysing the diverse incorporation of migrants into the host society.
This article explores the life stories of five low-income Latina immigrant domestic workers who were activists at the time of the study (2002-2010) in Montgomery County, Maryland, to understand the structural factors that influence their civic mobilization for collective rights. All of the stories intersect in the context of a women's program at an NGO tending to the needs of the Latino community in Maryland.
This article examines the temporalities of citizenship – how the meanings and significance of citizenship change with time – through the cases of Malaysian-Chinese skilled migrants in Singapore and returnees to Malaysia. Drawing from the narratives of five respondents, this paper focuses on how the subjective, emotional, and rational understandings they ascribe to their citizenship(s) shift and change with time during their stays in Singapore or after their return to Malaysia. This article concludes by arguing that citizenship needs to be theorized and contextualized to time by simultaneously paying attention to firstly, the individual life course; and secondly, citizenship constitutions at the national scale.
This paper explores the implications of inherited multiple citizenships for young Canadian adults as they experienced key life course transitions. These young adults acquired Canadian citizenship through birth but they also inherited EU and/or American citizenships through their parents. While there is a growing literature exploring state policies towards dual citizenship, this article focuses on the meanings, relationships and opportunities that two sets of siblings associated with their multiple citizenships. Navigating this kind of volatile terrain is, I argue, as likely to involve happenstance and improvisation as a careful interpretation of, or identification with the formal properties of citizenship.
Canadian media coverage of sexual orientation and gendered identity (SOGI) refugees presents a relatively uniform story of these queer newcomers. While LGBT media have identified problems in some Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) decisions, the hegemonic narrative remains one of ‘migration to liberation nation’. In this article I argue that this hegemonic narrative is produced in relation to particular socio-cultural and juridical-legal categories which are themselves historically produced in and through the bureaucratic machinery of the state, human rights organizations, and some legal scholarship. The effect of this model narrative is to reinscribe what Ahmed (2010) calls the ‘happy migrant’, that is, someone who espouses national ideals which are couched in terms of empire, the new twist being that sexual diversity is now held aloft as justification of empire’s liberation from abjection. Based on interviews with SOGI refugee claimants in Toronto.
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