Enabling,structuring and creating elite transnational lifestyles: intermediaries of the super-rich and the elite mobilities industry

ABSTRACT

This article considers how the migration industries lens can be usefully employed in understanding how professional intermediaries enable, structure, and create transnational migration lifestyles of the super-rich. In particular, we examine how intermediaries and their services (1) enable the continued sustenance of transnational migration lifestyles for this group of elites; and (2) structure and create elite transnational lifestyles. This article primarily draws on interviews with professional intermediaries who service the super-rich, and content analysis of their websites and brochures. Inspired by insights from the new mobilities paradigm (and in particular the politics of mobility), we argue for an expanded conceptualisation of the migration industries beyond the literature’s current focus on labour recruitment and migration management. Specifically, we suggest thinking of the migration industries as a collection of actors and services that enable, structure, and create different types of ‘migrants’, their spaces and their highly uneven transnational mobilities – including that of the super-rich and their elite transnational lifestyles. We conclude with suggestions for a research agenda that may help to better understand the role of intermediaries in the creation of differentiated mobilities.     

The transnational phase of Chinese organisational development in Australia

This article aims to contextualise the new phase of Chinese organisational development in Australia in the academic tradition of transnationalism, explore the concrete forms of transnational activities undertaken by overseas-oriented Chinese organisations in economic, socio-cultural and political domains and analyse their policy relevance for both China and Australia. It argues that while these transnational activities could be seen as deliberative attempts to cater to the policy imperatives of the People's Republic of China, they also have the potential of furthering the national interest of Australia, which looks to enhance its economic and political standing in Asia. Underlying the triadic interactions of the Chinese transmigrants is the situational representation of ‘Chineseness’ and ‘Westernness’, which allows them to achieve a strategic balance in addressing the policy objectives of Australia and China and accumulate the greatest amount of ethnic capital in the process. Though primarily driven by self-interest and surely not free from controversies and tensions, these new forms of Chinese organisational activism are gradually taken into account by policy-makers of both countries to develop policy responses in multiple areas.     

Incongruent migration categorisations and competing citizenship claims: ‘return’ and hypermigration in transnational migration circuits

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarly interventions propose that the principle of jus nexi (effective connections) or jus domicile (domicile) should replace birthright or birthplace considerations when assigning citizenship status and political membership. Nonetheless, both views privilege notions of territorial presence and the ideal of political community. This paper focuses on Mainland Chinese return migration from Canada to metropolitan cities in China. The dual citizenship restriction enforced by China means those that naturalised in Canada have relinquished their right to Chinese citizenship. Should they be considered returnees, immigrants or transnational sojourners in their ancestral homeland? It is this incongruence in migration categorisations compared to migrant life-worlds that this paper aims to examine. The paper also highlights the interface of competing claims to citizenship in the context of Chinese internal migration and new (African) immigration in China, as well as the returnees’ own transnational migration across the lifecourse. It argues that the ordering mechanisms that characterise normative conceptions of citizenship focus on isolated types of migration trends whereas what confronts us more urgently are intersecting migration configurations that underline the incongruence of migration categorisations and the complexity of competing citizenship claims spatially and temporally.     

The precarious path of student migrants: education,debt, and transnational migration among Indian youth

The drive to internationalise campuses is an important dimension of the globalised neoliberal university, and it is leading to large numbers of students crossing national borders to pursue their education. As key global consumers of higher education, middle-class students from India migrating overseas to study are at the centre of this trend. Drawing from ethnographic research conducted at a public university in New York, this article considers how notions of obligation become critical to these students’ movements, their practices of place-making, and their futures. I use the term educational debts to capture the different forms of indebtedness that not only structure these young people’s educational migration, but also inform the sensibility shaping their negotiations of everyday life as overseas students. Attending specifically to their experiences with work, both the part-time labour they provide on campus and their search for work after they receive their degrees, I argue that educational debts position them precariously in the linkages between global education and labour markets. Elucidating how particular experiences of precarity are produced through the process of educational migration, this article offers insights into the differences that exist among the transnational class formations of Indian high-skilled migrant populations in the neoliberal era.     

Senegalese migration to Spain: transnational mothering practices

This article analyses the relationship between pre-migration fostering practices and the transnational strategies of a group of Senegalese mothers living in Spain. In Senegal, large households, residential separation of couples, and collective fostering are the norm; it is not unusual for children to be under the care of women other than their mother, even for long periods of time. Drawing from data collected during 2 years of transnational multi-sited fieldwork that followed Senegalese mothers between their households of origin and destination, we argue that these women sought to reproduce the Senegalese mainstream mothering ideology in Spain. They did this by adopting two main strategies: long-distance mothering and circular mothering. These strategies were used depending on the age of the child, the constraints imposed on mother and children by migration legislation, and the social capital available to the migrant. This article seeks to integrate a wider range of experiences and the influence of pre-migratory mothering ideologies, kinship systems, and household structures on transnational mothering practices into the existing literature on transnational mothering.     

Professional remittances: how ageing returnees seek to contribute to the homeland

ABSTRACT

This article uses ageing Taiwanese returnees to illustrate how older migrants draw on their accumulated knowledge, experiences, and networks in their host society to contribute to their home society. Drawing on data collected from life history interviews with ageing return migrants, I argue that changing notions of social membership across life stages, coupled with the working experiences that professional middle-class migrants accumulate in the destination society, motivate ageing expatriates to return and devote their later lives to their home society. Specifically, I highlight how ageing migrants seek to bridge the gap between their ancestral and destination societies, further prompting social and cultural changes transnationally. Nevertheless, the extent to which ageing returnees can change their home society is conditioned by structural constraints already in place. Many ageing returnees cannot make as many changes as they would like, since they, as individuals, have trouble bringing about structural changes that require collective efforts. It is against this backdrop that many older returnees develop narratives of Americanisation (and insufficient Americanisation) to explain the difficulties that they encountered when trying to contribute to Taiwan. These narratives point to a hierarchy that ageing returnees believe exists between American and Taiwanese society.     

‘In England,they don’t call you black!’ Migrating racialisations and the production of Roma difference across Europe

This article draws on long-term fieldwork among Slovak Roma migrants, identifying processes through which a haunting figure of the Roma migrant emerges across Europe, to argue for more differentiated accounts of continuing and emerging forms of racialisation. It explores how the movement of Roma (whose bodies are marked by their racialised ‘darkness’ in Slovakia) to Britain granted them a temporary escape from this modality of branding while simultaneously exposing them to different categorisations within a re-configuring classificatory matrix. The article develops the concept of ‘migrating racialisation’ in order to empirically trace how historically developed forms of racialisation in Slovakia migrate across Europe through the movement of Roma and non-Roma migrants from Eastern Europe, as well as through particular forms of knowledge circulating within transnational fields constituted not only by Roma migrants themselves but also by various institutions for ‘managing’ or ‘researching’ ‘the Roma’. This concept allows us to analyse how the recent forms of racialisation simultaneously draw on heterogenous histories and nation-state formations, social conditions and sedimented bodily dispositions, which are re-adjusted to new social conditions, discourses and emerging forms of knowledge produced about Roma migrants over the last decade in British and European contexts.     

Breaking borders,changing structures – transnationalism of migrants from Poland as anti-state resistance

ABSTRACT

Among the many meanings of transnationalism(s), the political significance of transnational action from the perspective of individual migrants does not always gain enough attention. It is usually framed as a way transnational migration processes affect the state, how social movements formed in the diaspora compete for the stake in the home country or how a particular state manages its diaspora through various policy means. This article will call for a more actor-centred approach in which individuals’ choices and strategic decisions have an anti-state frame of reference dominating their individualised agendas and norms of behaviour. These are not overtly political, thus falling outside a typical political science lens, but follow what James Scott refers to as ‘small scale resistance’ or ‘weapons of the weak’ of structurally subordinate groups. In the case of Polish migrants I discuss, this follows a long-lasting tradition of contestation of the state normative and institutional structures, its surveillance, migration regimes and ways in which institutions aim to control human actions. With the advent of increased mobility within the European Union due to EU integration processes and the subsequent volume of these flows, these types of behaviour and cultural attitudes gain particular prominence offering a variety of means and opportunities to manoeuver between structural constraints, contesting them and at times even changing them to individual advantage. I argue that these culturally and structurally mutually reinforcing features of anti-state culture make migrants from Poland a particular type of agents in the European web of transnational social fields.     

Transnational patterns among Asian American and Latina/o American children of immigrants from Southern California

A growing literature has examined the prevalence of transnational engagement among children of immigrants. However, few studies have been equipped to analyse underlying dynamics that serve to impede or perpetuate transnational practices among them in the United States. In this article, we compare transnationalism narratives between 1.5- and second-generation children of immigrants to more fully adjudicate enduring transnational ties over time. Our analysis of 134 interviews from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study suggests that children of immigrants from Southern California conceptualise transnational experiences in diverse but remarkably similar ways. The meanings attached to transnational behaviours and identities employ certain patterns, and are often related to strength of kin-based ties, ethnic language fluency, and levels of structural access to the homeland. Moreover, findings indicate that the second-generation is nearly as transnationally engaged as the 1.5-generation. This provides novel but limited evidence in support of claims that transnational ties are sustained across generations.     

Foreign policy priorities and ethnic return migration policies: group-level variation in Greece and Serbia

ABSTRACT

Why do ethnoculturally defined states pursue favourable policies to integrate some returnees from their historical diasporas while neglecting or excluding others? We study this question by looking at members of two historical diasporas that, in the 1990s, returned to their respective ethnic homelands, Greece and Serbia, but were not treated uniformly by their respective governments. Utilising a wide range of primary sources, we consider evidence for a number of plausible explanations for such policy variation, including the economic profile of an ethnic returnee group, its status in internal ethnic hierarchies, its lobbying power, and dynamics of party politics. We find, instead, that the observed variation is best explained by the role that each particular group played in the ruling elites’ ex ante foreign policy objectives. Elites discouraged the repatriation of co-ethnics from parts of the world they still had claims over, by pursuing unfavourable repatriation policies. Conversely, absent a revisionist claim, states adopted favourable repatriation policies to encourage their repatriation and facilitate their integration upon return. Methodologically, the article illustrates the importance of focused comparisons across dyads of states and particular sub-diaspora groups.     

The anti-policy of European anti-smuggling as a site of contestation in the Mediterranean migration ‘crisis’

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the European anti-smuggling agenda as an anti-policy that derives legitimacy from fighting ‘bad things’, in terms that mask political disagreement. By juxtaposing the agenda to the experiences and understandings of those whom such measures affect most directly – people migrating without authorisation to the EU – it uncovers the productivity of anti-smuggling and the political contestations surrounding it. Based on a qualitative analysis of 257 interviews carried out with 271 people who travelled – or sought to travel – across the Mediterranean Sea by boat using smuggling networks, the article highlights the complicity of governing authorities and officials with smuggling networks and practices, as well as the diversity and ambivalences of relationships between smugglers and the smuggled. Going further, the article points to the specific ways in which anti-smuggling is contested by those on the move, which expose a central political disagreement over the legitimacy of mobility across borders.     

The ‘new Chinatown’: the racialization of newly arrived Chinese migrants in Singapore

Studies of racism tend to rely on a presumed dichotomy between whites and ‘Others,’ whether Black or Asian. Even as many scholars have established that whiteness is manufactured, ethnographic studies of racism still have not escaped the color paradigm, basing their studies on the enactment of racism by white people on Others. Using the case study of Singapore, this article challenges the color paradigm by exploring racism between co-ethnic Chinese. I show that Singapore’s modernity is highly tied to place and that the ‘new Chinatown’ is used to ‘place’ and racialize newly arrived Chinese migrants. The racialization discourse, in this case, is subtle, and renders it a form of new racism - one that is reinforced by the media as well as state structures inherited from the nation’s colonial past. The aims of the article are two-fold: first, the paper aims to show parallels between the racialization of Chinese migrants in Singapore and colonial racism. However, this is not to say that locals are merely emulating colonial discourse which leads to the second aim of the paper: to locate this particular racialization process as a product of the intersection of global capital with Singapore’s local modernity. I conclude that although Singaporean-Chinese may enact racism against Chinese migrants, they do not hold unimpeded power. Rather, Singaporean-Chinese' construction of a ‘new Chinatown’ ironically acts to displace them.     

Palestinians and the Arab Uprisings: political activism and narratives of home,homeland, and home-camp

This article examines the ways in which Palestinians have been affected by the Arab Uprisings and their aftermath, especially in light of their statelessness and protracted refugeedom. It does so by analysing the narratives of 49 Palestinians who were based in France, Sweden, and the UK at the time of interview between 2012 and 2014. We show that the forms of mobilisation and/or identifications that Palestinians in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and beyond engaged in with regard to the Arab Uprisings, transcended the link between the host state and the homeland. They extended to a plurality of in-between spaces such as Palestinian refugee camps, Arab host states, and Arab countries experiencing the uprisings. We argue that these in-between spaces became salient to broader conceptions of Palestinian identity and activism because Palestinian-ness is shaped not only through attachment to place, but also through particular experiences that are associated with Palestinian identity.     

Navigating the city: internal migration of Oaxacan indigenous women

The relationship between migration and gender roles has received increased attention in recent decades but most of the literature has focused on transnational migration while the relationships between transnational and internal migration, and gender roles and internal migration have not been widely studied. In this paper, I analyse internal migration as a ‘transborder experience’. I argue that indigenous women from Zegache who engage in internal migration to Mexico City pose greater challenges to ‘traditional’ gender roles in their community because their experience as single young women navigating Mexico’s capital and their reliance on female social networks allow them to obtain social legitimation by claiming migration experience and courageousness. I contrast migration to Mexico City with transnational migration. Although transnational migration challenges, to some extent, existing gender roles, women from Zegache who migrate transnationally often do so as part of couples and within gendered social networks.     

Mobility and security: the perceived benefits of citizenship for resettled young people from refugee backgrounds

In recent decades, the meaning and value of formal state citizenship has shifted dramatically. In the same period, scholarship on citizenship has drawn attention to the proliferation of alternative forms of sub-, supra- and transnational citizenship, at times obscuring the ongoing importance of formal state citizenship. For refugees, however, formal state citizenship remains a critical and widely shared goal. Drawing on interviews with 51 young people from refugee backgrounds in Melbourne, Australia, this article explores the intersecting themes of mobility and security that were identified by participants as the most important benefits of acquiring formal state citizenship in the country of resettlement. In contrast to the insecurity of forced migration, formal state citizenship provides a privileged mobility that enables refugee-background youth to maintain and create transnational identities and attachments and to be protected while doing so, while also granting a secure status within the nation state and insurance against further displacement in an uncertain future. In offering these forms of mobility and security, formal state citizenship contributes to a sense of ontological security among refugee-background youth, providing an important foundation for building national and transnational futures.     

Imagining mobility: the prospective cognition question in migration research

Most migration research is focused on migrant experiences after mobility and settlement. We argue that empirical researchers would benefit from studying how cognitive migration, the narrative imagining of oneself inhabiting a foreign destination prior to the actual physical move, influences migration behaviour. This article notes a gap in our current understanding of the process by which individuals decide to cross international borders and offers an agenda for remedying this. The interdisciplinarity of migration research has not fully extended to social psychology or cognitive social sciences, where a dynamic research agenda has examined human decision-making processes, including prospection and the connections between culture and cognition. The study of socio-cognitive processes in migration decision-making has been largely overlooked because of the after-the-fact nature of data collection and analysis rather than an aversion to these approaches per se. We highlight a number of strategic findings from this diverse field, provide examples of migration scholarship that has benefited from these insights, and raise questions about the sides of migration process that have received insufficient attention. A more nuanced understanding of prospective thinking—imagining potential futures—can shed light on the classic puzzle of why some people move while others in comparable situations do not.     

Reconciling transnational mobility and national social security: what say the welfare state bureaucrats?

The welfare state was constructed to ensure the well-being of a sedentary population, consisting of citizens living within the territorial boundaries of the nation. However, mobility patterns change, and more people lead lives that criss-cross national borders while drawing on different sources of transnational social protection – the welfare state included. Now, the daily work of bureaucrats involves delivering national social security benefits to transnationally mobile recipients. Through encounters and casework processes, these welfare state bureaucrats observe how ‘transnationals’ deal with complex regulations and make use of the social security system. This article explores bureaucrats’ perceptions of individuals’ agency and behaviour as they reconcile their transnational mobility with national social security. It builds on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in the Norwegian welfare administration, including 36 interviews, participant observation and informal conversations. The analysis identifies an institutional perspective of transnationals’ agency as shaped by their level of regulatory awareness and compliance. The bureaucrats observe some types of transnational behaviour to be more prevalent than others. As the article concludes, these bureaucratic perspectives have major implications for transnational social security delivery and how the welfare state accommodates transnational mobility.     

The public and the private in guestworker schemes: examples from Malaysia and the U.S.

While discussions of state involvement in migration generally focus on restriction, states are actively involved in the promotion of labour migration through guestworker programmes, among other examples. While these programmes are state-sponsored, they often rely heavily on private actors in order to function. Drawing on the examples of the H-2 visa in the United States and the recruitment of foreign workers to Malaysia, this paper examines the common elements of state direction of migration combined with a focus on temporariness and an outsourcing of recruitment and supervision that are present in both guestworker schemes. In drawing on the geographically, economically, and politically distinct contexts of the U.S. and Malaysia we look to how these schemes contain a mixture of state and private authority which permits an especially potent form of control over the lives of guestworkers that is greater than what either state or private actors could produce individually. Such control raises important questions about the nature of public/private governance within migration more broadly.     

Borders of home: Roma migrant mothers negotiating boundaries in home encounters

The borders of Europe do not only operate at territorial limits. This article argues for those identified as Roma, UK immigration control has shifted from gate-keeping at the territorial border to gate-keeping access to services through child welfare. Three factors have interrelated to foreground boundary-making in home encounters: European Union expansion, development of a post-welfare state and governmentalisation of vulnerable children. First this article examines how these three processes converge to activate the border through assessments of mothering in the home. Due to mothers’ particular migrant status, they are confronted with a choice between loss of motherhood or movement from the national territory. Second it illustrates how mothers engage in strategies of self-representation to negotiate bordering processes, requiring intensive work with a variety of actors. These actors are themselves located within racialised and gendered hierarchies. This article illustrates through ethnographic vignettes how the home is recast as a site of negotiating access to state forms where judgements of ‘good motherhood’ produce bordering effects. This represents a governing logic applied both to mothers and frontline workers resulting in stratified reproduction based on hierarchies of values.