Trans-regional institutional cooperation as multilevel governance: ECOWAS migration policy and the EU*

ABSTRACT

Regional economic integration in West Africa establishes the framework for the movement of persons within the highly mobile region. Eighty-four per cent of the migratory movements is directed towards another country within the region. This article analyses the role of trans-regional institutional cooperation on intra-regional migration policymaking, exploring the role of the European Union (EU) in the formulation of regional migration policies in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) specifically in labour migration, refugee protection, and return/readmission. It examines the normative role of the EU in influencing policies of third countries and argues that in the case of ECOWAS, networks are increasingly important in enabling formal and informal diffusion. The article uses multilevel governance as the lens to examine migration governance between the EU and ECOWAS, concluding that power relations equally play a key role in trans-regional institutional cooperation. Included in this mix are bilateral agreements which stand between trans-regional and intra-regional institutional cooperation, exerting a strong influence on inter-institutional EU- ECOWAS relations.     

Living in mobility: trajectories of Brazilians in Belgium and the UK

Within the social sciences, migration has traditionally been conceived of as a unidirectional, purposeful and intentional process from one state of fixity (in the place of origin) to another (in the destination). By mapping the trajectories of Brazilians who currently reside in Belgium or the UK, this article draws attention to a group of people whose mobile practices do not fit this definition. On the contrary, their experiences are marked by an ongoing mobility that consists of a multiplicity of potential routes, which are often unstable and which may be accompanied by changes in status. These Brazilians tend to ‘live in mobility’ in order to improve the quality of life at home. As such, leaving home becomes a strategy of staying home, which challenges what is usually evoked by the concept of ‘migration’, whereby ‘building up a new life elsewhere’ and ‘integration’ are seen as key. Whereas our respondents themselves have a more circular or mobile perspective, the receiving society discursively frames migration as one-way, and thus as a ‘threat’ that calls for social integration, control and the maintenance of national identity.     

Islam in Argentina: Deconstructing the Biases

Islam in Argentina: a title that may startle or evoke wonder, as it is a subject we know very little about. This paper attempts to undertake a critical analysis of the concept and the process of identity construction within the Muslim community in Argentina. It will take into account factors, such as migration and politics, in order to help identify the possible boundaries created by the community in terms of sameness and otherness within the Argentine society. Argentina has been chosen for this study because, when it comes to the exploration of image, discrimination, stereotyping, and ethno-religious identity of a minority group in a Western migratory setting, Argentina—and Latin America as a continent—has been forgotten in the post-9/11 hysteria surrounding Muslims and Islam. The Muslim community in Argentina, along with the Diaspora across Latin America and worldwide, has been subject to the Western media’s biased and faulty inferences about Muslims. This article will help to deconstruct such biases by taking us on a journey through the history of Muslims’ arrival in Argentina.     

Emigration 2.0? Young Moroccans,emigration and the Internet*

This article examines the relationship between young Moroccans’ uses of the Internet and their migratory project to Europe. It frames its analysis within key debates on international migration and makes the case for a more systematic exploration of the symbolic dimensions of emigration. The research conducted, (2011/2012) including qualitative interviews, focus groups and a survey, shows that although an increasing number of young Moroccans are using the Internet to migrate into Europe, the majority are, unlike the findings of previous empirical research [Sabry, T. (2003). Exploring Symbolic Dimensions of Emigration: Mental and Physical Emigrations, Ph.D. thesis, University of Westminster] have shown, less keen to emigrate. The research also shows how young Moroccans are more interested in communicating with other young Moroccans on social media than they are with young people from Europe or in other parts of the world. Qualitative material has also shown how young Moroccans’ interactions with Arabs from the Gulf, using social media, has exposed serious contradictions between profane and sacred Islam. The story that emerges is not one of heightened global or westernised consciousness, but one of localization par excellence.     

Onward migration from Spain to London in times of crisis: the importance of life-course junctures in secondary migrations

This study examines one response of migrants to the challenging economic conditions caused by the 2008 financial crisis in Spain: onward migration. Focusing on Colombians and Ecuadorians who mobilise their newly acquired Spanish citizenship to migrate to London, I argue that their new migration is part of their migratory careers and that this process is different from that of Spain-born emigrants because it is marked by the first socioeconomic incorporation. Acknowledging that the crisis is the main driver of this new move, I draw a typology based on life-course junctures to show the differences in how onward migrants understand this new move and what their expectations are. There are three broad types of onward migrants: (1) mature, reluctant migrants, (2) mid-life, career advancement migrants and (3) young, independence-seeking migrants. What they do have in common is that, through their first migration, they have acquired a certain migratory knowledge of the process that shapes their paths and expectations.     

International Migration: Virtue or Vice? Perspectives from Cameroon

This article argues that both global and national power differences play a crucial role in shaping local imaginaries of international migration among youths in two Cameroonian cities—Bamenda and Yaoundé. While Yaoundé is the national capital, Bamenda is the headquarters of the Anglophone north-west, an area generally opposed to the ruling regime and claiming historical as well as contemporary political marginalisation. Physical mobility has long been associated with social mobility and viewed rather positively. In both areas more critical perspectives on international migration are emerging. This is reflected in differences in envisioned destinations as well as in terminologies and concepts. Thus, in Yaoundé ‘the dangers of illegal migration’ have become the topic of the day—a theme publicised by international organisations in collaboration with local NGOs. Conversely, youths in Bamenda consciously compare their conceptualisations of the advantages and disadvantages of life abroad on the basis of imparted experiences of migrant family members and friends. These discourses influence not only youths' perception of different forms of migrancy but also their assessment of their future in Cameroon. International migration is thus viewed in a broad discursive spectrum from virtue to vice, and perceptions are shaped by regional, national and international political discourse.     

Germany and its immigrants: a socio-demographic analysis

"Germany is today, along with the USA and Russia, one of the three most important immigration countries worldwide. The authors examine how the immigrant population of Germany has risen despite the fact that the German government has sought to restrict it. They analyse six major streams of migration: refugees and expellees who came immediately after World War II, German resettlers from Eastern Europe (?Aussiedler'), emigration of (West) Germans, migration between East and West Germany, foreign labour migrants and asylum seekers. The dynamics of immigration within each of these channels was remarkably different. As far as absorption and integration are concerned the authors argue that different groups of immigrants should be treated more equally."     

The Power of Ethnic Nationalism: Foucault's Bio-power and the Development of Ethnic Nationalism in Eastern Europe

Although the ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ brands of nationalism are frequently contrasted, the origins of the civic/ethnic dichotomy remain under-theorised. By building upon Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, this article argues that, during the eighteenth century, the articulation of power shifted across the board from a pre-modern control over the ending of life, to a modern expression of power as control over the production of life (dubbed ‘bio-power’ by Foucault). Given the Foucauldian claim that power is built upwards from ‘its most infinitesimal mechanisms’, it is suggested that expressions of bio-power were first enacted in that social structure most amenable to biological manipulation—the family—and then expanded upwards towards the widest understanding of a kin collective—the ethnic group. As the shift to bio-power took hold, so too did visions of the political nation-state begin to take shape in Eastern Europe. A fusion of doctrines of self-determinism with the expression of power as ‘control over the production of life’, then saw the ethnic nation-state gain credence as a social and political construct in Central and Eastern Europe. This article takes Romania as a case study through which the mechanisms of this exploratory argument can be illustrated.     

Social structure,relationships and reproduction in quasi-family networks: brokering circular migration of Vietnamese sex workers to Singapore

This article proposes an ethnographic examination of the inner workings of unsanctioned informal networks that facilitate the circular migration and labour of Vietnamese sex workers to Singapore. These operations are coordinated by brokers who sell migration services to their clients. I conceptualise them as ‘quasi-family networks’ because kinship bonds, the fact that brokers (‘mothers’) and sex workers (‘daughters’) operate under the framework of a family ethos which allows them to establish intimate and unequal relationships, and socialising and reproductive processes inscribed in the family form, are defining structural features. The study of these organisational and operational traits allows us to consider a new network model in the field of transnational unsanctioned migration for sex work, and to discuss issues of network structure, adaptability and reproduction in repressive market environments in relation to the family form.     

Migration,gender and low-paid work: on migrant men’s entry dynamics into the feminised social care work in the UK

The literature on workers in gender atypical occupations has been dominated by a focus on women doing men’s work. Much less attention has been paid to men in women’s work, and even less to the impact of migration. Based on 28 in-depth interviews with migrant men having experiences of working in hands-on social care in England, this article is a contribution to the understanding of migrant men’s entry dynamics into a female-dominated occupation. Focusing on migrant life experiences, it discusses how they actively engage in three entry dynamics: (1) facing barriers and negotiating them, (2) ‘stumbling upon’ women’s work, then developing compensating strategies and (3) migratory/temporary settling into the sector. The article suggests a theory about lifelong ‘travelling’ when entering women’s work: a continuing process of negotiating work options within a specific historical sector context, the intersection of gender and migration being part of this.     

Reflections on liberalism,policulturalism, and ID-ology: citizenship and difference in South Africa

How do nation-states in the twenty-first century, nation-states increasingly forced to come to terms with the ethnic heterogeneity of their citizens, deal with the problem of cultural difference? How, in particular, does the Constitution of post-apartheid South Africa — widely believed to be the most enlightened in the contemporary world, the most tolerant of diversity — strike a balance between the ‘One Law’ of ‘The Nation’ and the plurality of customary beliefs sustained, as a matter of right, by the various peoples who make up this postcolony? What happens, in the course of everyday existence, when Constitution and Custom appear to contradict one another — and to do so in such a manner as to raise questions of basic human rights, of freedom of belief, even of life-and-death? These questions are addressed in the paper through a critical, broadly situated analysis of the confrontation between the Constitution of South Africa and the Kingdom of Custom that continues to prevail in one of its provinces, the North West. By exploring a complicated case that drew the State, via its Human Rights Commission, into open conflict with a Tswana chiefdom — a case about death rituals argued, before a high court judge, in the lexicon of modern jurisprudence — it shows how a ‘living constitution’, tolerant of everyday ambiguity, is being forged in the space of strategic engagement opened up by the alternative languages and cultures of legality that exist in this ‘policultural’ postcolony. And in others like it.     

Labour and life in the global Asian city: the discrepant mobilities of migrant workers and English teachers in Seoul

ABSTRACT

Transnational mobilities are often conceived as interconnected with cities as ‘magnets’ for migrants, ‘nodes’ in mobility trajectories or ‘destinations’ for settlement. This paper frames the urban as critical to conceptualising the manner that mobility is actively and contingently assembled across the border and in the constitution of migrant lives. This argument builds on understanding the relationship between urban life and migration regimes in South Korea where the state and infrastructures of migration play a strong role in moulding the forms and outcomes of transnational mobilities in the everyday spaces of cities. The paper examines the urban lives of two differently positioned mobile populations in the Seoul Metropolitan Region: migrant workers in the manufacturing industries and English teachers working in schools, private academies and universities. Drawing on Said’s ‘contrapuntal’ analysis, the paper explores the ways in which these migrant lives overlap and diverge: in recent political-economic transformations and the regulation of migration, the urban geographies of labour and life, and the timing of migration. In doing so, the paper offers a window into Seoul’s emerging reliance on and differential incorporation of migrants and demonstrates the critical interlinkages between the governmental technologies of border crossing, everyday life and possibilities for the future.     

Liquid migration,grounded lives: considerations about future mobility and settlement among Polish and Spanish migrants in Norway

The 2004 EU extension and the 2008 financial crisis triggered new migration flows within Europe, and subsequent debates about what the novelty of these migration flows consists of. We draw on adult Polish and Spanish migrants’ in Norway’s considerations about future mobility and settlement, and explore how these situate themselves in relation to conceptualisations of intra-European migration as ‘liquid’. Family concerns, economic factors and working life conditions in countries of origin appear as significant in migrants’ reflections about the future. This seems to contrast with conceptualisations of intra-European migration as ‘liquid’ in the sense of increasing individualisation, lifestyles of mobility and a migrant habitus. Rather a ‘normal life’ is emphasised by migrants’ underscoring desires to lead more grounded lives, under less ‘liquid’ conditions. Migrants’ already established lives in Norway, together with deregulated labour markets in Poland and Spain, are experienced as reasons not to return. Migrants’ considerations about the future suggest that key characteristics of South–North and East–West intra-European migration flows to Norway, appear to be converging: with a trend of transition to longer-term settlement and a wish for more grounded lives, where dignity is central and ongoing mobility is less prominent.     

The Great Departure: Rethinking National(ist) Common Sense

This article argues that, in order to overcome the national(ist) common sense that continues to haunt everyday political and scholarly interpretations of mobility, scholars need not diagnose nationalism with greater vigour, but should rather move beyond facile diagnoses of nationalism. The article calls for a meticulous tracing of relations and practices of emplacement and displacement that ubiquitous national(ist) interpretive frames both co-opt and exceed simultaneously. The argument is elaborated on the basis of an analysis of historical articulations of emplacement and displacement in Latvian understandings of ‘the good life’. The article pays particular attention to the ways in which the figure of the migrant has emerged historically as an aberration to Latvian understandings of the good life. It also considers how this ethical configuration is being unsettled through massive labour migration to Western Europe—or ‘the Great Departure’.     

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.     

Intercultural crossings in a digital age: ICT pathways with migrant and refugee-background youth

This article problematises the uptake and use of digital technologies by migrant and refugee-background young people, through the lens of a site-based arts pedagogy program, Culture Shack (CS), in Melbourne, Australia. It argues that online pedagogies including animation, Facebook, photoshop, mobile phones and Youtube can be used effectively for bridging cultural, gender and educational gaps, if the ways in which they are applied engage with communication preferences and discourses of culture, ethnicity and digital media technology – including issues related to technological determinism. Drawing on Dimitriadis’ attention to the power of public pedagogies and cyberculture theorists such as Leung and Nakamura, this article frames creative ICT use as not merely a tool but a contested, negotiated space in which young participants shape educational transits of being and becoming, and arts-based digital learning as twenty-first century global pedagogies.     

转型期西蒙古牧区社会生活变迁的实证研究——基于内蒙古与青海蒙古牧区的实地调查

本文基于对西蒙古牧区社会实地调查的材料,首先从牧民的人口和家庭模式、定居点建设、家庭收入渠道、生活设施以及牧民财富观念的转变、社会交往和信息流通等方面分析和描述了西蒙古牧区社会生活在各个方面发生的巨大变化;其次,对西蒙古牧区社会转型时期出现的增长的人口与有限的草场之矛盾、日益扩大的贫富差距、草场纠纷以及传统文化面临的困境等进行了描述;最后,为如何协调好转型期越来越突出的人口、生态、经济、文化之间的关系,提出了五个方面的对策性建议,为牧区社会转型和发展提供参考和思路.     

Migrant Balancing Acts: Understanding the Interactions Between Integration and Transnationalism

In this article, we explore ways of understanding the interactions between migrant integration and transnationalism, based on a review of quantitative and qualitative literature. Integration is taken as the starting point, and the assumption that integration and transnationalism are at odds with one another is questioned. When considered as constituents of a social process, we argue that there are many similarities between integration and transnationalism. A typology for understanding these interactions is developed, based on an acknowledgment of migrants' agency in straddling two societies—as a balancing act. This typology is presented as a tool to enable migration scholars to move beyond simply acknowledging the co-existence of transnationalism and integration and towards an analysis of the nature of interactions between the two—understood in relation both to particular places and contexts and to the human beings involved and their functional, emotional and pragmatic considerations.     

Generating social identity in times of war and terror

The social-political analysis in this paper addresses many of the ambiguities that a critique of ideology and values, especially in the fields of education, media and morals, tends to evoke. Crises in identity and values accompanying the Jewish State since the beginning of the twentieth century have characterised the modern history of Israel as a continuing conflict between Israeli and Palestinian societies. In the search for a new post-colonial identity, Post-Zionism has emerged as a global ethos that challenges the ethno-religious Zionist ethos. Another aspect of the modern Israeli phenomenon is the Israeli addiction to power making the use of military power unavoidable. This appears on centre stage in terms of both public life and the Israeli psyche and resulted in the rise of the concept of power in the Israeli ethos.