Migrants: keeping a foot in both worlds or losing the ground beneath them? Transnationalism and integration as experienced in the everyday lives of Polish migrants in Belfast,Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses transnationalism and integration as processes entangled in the everyday lives of Polish migrants. It acknowledges that the co-existence of transnationalism and integration can present an array of choices and enable migrants to lead a fulfilling life in the receiving country while they continue to maintain a foothold in their original homeland. Yet, it might also create a feeling of disjuncture, discontinuity of relations, and ceaseless negotiation between inclusion and exclusion. It is, thus, important to bear in mind that migration is a process involving individuals with all their unique life experiences, complexities and consequences of their choices, sacrifices, ambiguities and hopes associated with the move. All of these have a profound impact on changes in migrants’ perception of, and attitude to, their place of origin, the specificities of destination setting and interpersonal relations between the two milieux. The empirical grounds for this discussion originate in biographical narrative interviews with Polish migrants in Belfast, Northern Ireland. These narratives portray transnationalism and integration as multiple trajectories, emphasising the co-existence of non-linear relations between the time and the intensity/frequency of migrants’ connections to the two settings. These will be examined using the theoretical framework of interpretative sociology, viewing individuals as constantly engaged in the task of interpretation, which is intrinsically rooted in the processes of interaction.     

Transnational highly skilled Finnish migrants in Europe: Choosing one's identity

When transnational migration begins to resemble internal mobility, as is the case in the European Union, is there any need for integration into the country of destination, or do intra-European migrants adopt a European identity? This article is based on data collected about highly skilled Finns who have moved within the EU. Most of them continued to form their identity around their country of origin. Nearly 60% of the migrants of the study also identified with Europe, while only one-third identified with their country of residence. The article argues that, for such privileged migrants, the possibility of choice is central to identity formation. Neither the national identity of the new home country nor a European identity per se can substitute the former, more important identity received through socialization. However, moving abroad does have an impact on the ways these migrants ‘do identity’. Adding a dimension of Europeanness to their existing national identity is a way of belonging to a greater collective when the localized identification with the country of residence is not required.     

Transnational Orientation,Cosmopolitanism and Integration among Albanian-Origin Teenagers in Tuscany

Research on transnationalism and integration is increasingly focusing on the intersections between the two concepts. However, the debate is polarised between the country of origin and the host country when migrants' identity and belongingness are concerned. In the case of the children of migrants, the literature also largely lacks references to locality, mobility and cosmopolitanism. This paper explores the integration of Albanian-origin teenagers in Tuscany and the relationship between their transnational orientations and their integration strategies. Findings show that both the social and cultural institutions and the spatial ‘units’ to which these teenagers refer in their integration discourse go beyond their country of origin and their host country. Firstly, there is a translocal dimension to their references—to Florence, Prato and Tuscany and the place of their parental origin in Albania. Secondly, their views and perceptions of integration contain a strong cosmopolitan orientation—both conceptually and spatially. The qualities of space and locality impact on transnational ties, giving rise to cosmopolitan orientation and practices.     

The Capacity and Desire to Remit: Comparing Local and Transnational Influences

This article explores the relationship between transnationalism and integration by examining the determinants of remittance-sending practices. We base our analysis on the premise that remittance-sending is shaped by a combination of the capacity and the desire of migrants to remit. The capacity to remit depends on access to funds that can be remitted, be it through wages, other income or savings. The desire to remit determines how remittance-sending is prioritised in relation to alternative expenditures. We assume that capacity is shaped by circumstances in the country of residence while desire depends on attachment and commitments in both the country of residence and the country of origin. Our analysis is based on survey data on immigrants in Norway (N=3,053). We find that economic integration is important for remittance-sending, and point to different mechanisms through which this effect could operate. Migrants' socio-cultural integration, however, appears not to have significant effects on remittance-sending. Our approach and results illustrate how different aspects of integration can have divergent impacts on transnationalism.     

Je suis un Italien de Paris: Italian migrants’ incorporation in a European capital city

ABSTRACT

Italy has experienced a new wave of population outflows, in particular since the end of the 2000s, with France as one of the top destinations. This paper investigates the structural and socio-cultural integration of Italian migrants in Paris. The paper is based on a mixed-methods approach, using in-depth interviews, census data and an online survey. We found that the profile and incorporation patterns of post-crisis migrants reflects a long-term trend of middling migration out of Italy. Similar to other studies, we show that current Italian migrants are prevailingly highly skilled and employed in non-manual jobs. As for socio-cultural integration, the paper highlights the symbolic value of the host city, to which migrants are strongly attached. Moreover, the longer the Italian’s stay in Paris, the higher his/her integration in Italy-oriented activities, both within Paris and in Italy. This indicates a complex incorporation model that is at odds with assimilation but at the same time departs from ethnicised and community-based patterns. Italian migrants combine being both Parisian and Italian in a ‘synergistic balancing act’ (Erdal and Oeppen 2013. ‘Migrant Balancing Acts: Understanding the Interactions between Integration and Transnationalism.’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39 (6):867–884.) of integration and transnationalism.     

Social network evolution during long-term migration: a comparison of three case studies in the South Wales region

Ten years after Poland joined the European Union (EU), a sizable number of the once considered short-term migrants that entered the United Kingdom (UK) post-2004 have remained. From the literature, it is known that, when initially migrating, social networks composed of family and friends are used to facilitate migration. Later, migrants’ social networks may evolve to include local, non-ethnic members of the community. Through these networks, migrants may access new opportunities within the local economy. They also serve to socialise newcomers in the cultural modalities of life in the destination country. However, what if migrants’ social networks do not evolve or evolve in a limited manner? Is cultural integration still possible under these conditions? Using data collected from three case studies in the South Wales region – Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil and Llanelli – from 2008–2012, the aim of this article is to compare Polish migrants’ social network usage, or lack thereof, over time. This comparison will be used to understand how these social networks can be catalysts and barriers for cultural integration. The findings point to the migrants’ varied use of their local social networks, which is dependent upon their language skill acquisition and their labour market mobility in the destination country.     

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.     

EU post-accession Polish migrants trajectories and their settlement practices in Scotland

The presence and the apparent permanence of post-accession EU migrants in the UK is of significant interest to both academics and politicians. Studies have debated whether migration from new accession countries to the UK mark a new type of migration often described as ‘liquid’ and ‘open ended’, or whether these migrants will settle in the new destination countries. Based on a qualitative study of Poles who have lived in Scotland for at least six years, we observed four typologies of what we call migrants’ settling practices: (1) stayers, (2) over-stayers, (3) circular and transnational migrants and (4) economic migrants. The findings from this study demonstrate that Polish migrants do not have fixed ideas about the duration of their migration (in terms of a sense of permanence) but instead focus on diverse links, anchors or attachments in Scotland and Poland in describing their settling practices. Thus, the main contribution the article makes is to present an in-depth understanding of what settlement means from the perspective of migrants themselves. This paper concludes by providing a short comment on implications of the outcome of the Referendum on EU membership ‘Brexit’ in June 2016 on Polish migrants settling practices.     

Transnational heritage migrants in Istanbul: second-generation Turk-American and Turk-German ‘Returnees’ in their parents’ homeland

This paper addresses several less-explored dimensions of current scholarship on globalisation, migration and transnationalism: north–south migration streams, the role of second-generation ‘heritage migrants’ and the importance of social capital within unequal transnational social fields. We compare two circuits of second-generation migrants, Turk-Germans and Turk-Americans, engaged in ‘intensive transnationalism’ having independently moved to reside in their parents’ homeland. Istanbul becomes the site of homeland return for these distinct streams of educated heritage migrants. Cross-national comparison of the children of the more stigmatised Turk-German ‘guest workers’ with the socially less salient Turk-Americans of middle-class backgrounds offers insight into the way class networks and national capital are distinctly leveraged by adult children with immigrant parents of distinct contexts of homeland exit.     

Local deprivation and the labour market integration of new migrants to England

ABSTRACT

Using data on new migrants to England from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, we show how a key component of migrant integration - labour market progress in terms of wages and unemployment rates – is broadly positive in the early years after arrival across a range of migrant groups and across gender. However, the precise level of labour market success achieved varies considerably across groups reflecting both the initial entry-level and labour market trajectories after migration. Migrants from Western Europe and the Old Commonwealth countries have unemployment rates (wages) which are generally lower (higher) than other groups, particularly non-white groups, while migrants from the Accession countries experience relatively low unemployment but also low wages. Groups which have better outcomes on entry also tend to experience higher rates of progress over time in England. However, the extent of multiple deprivation in the local authority where migrants reside interacts with years since migration to dampen wage trajectories for some groups and accounting for deprivation highlights the importance of internal migration for access to employment. The results emphasise structural explanations for patterns of labour market integration of new migrants to England.     

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.     

The patterns of ‘care migrantisation’ in South Korea

Over the past couple of decades, researchers have documented a phenomenon called ‘migrantisation of care’, which is patterned by the national regimes of care and migration. By applying the ideas of social reproduction and care–migration intersections to the South Korean case, this paper investigates the interplay of care and migration policies through which migrants get involved for various care roles in different care settings. In the matrix of migration (regime) and care (regime) emerge two intersecting fields in South Korea: co-ethnic labour migrants in paid care work and marriage migrants in unpaid care work. The paper has found a growing demand for migrant care labour to address the care crisis in Korea, but the degree to which care work is migrantised varies significantly between childcare and eldercare as well as between home-based care and institution-based care. The paper not only geographically extends the care–migration intersection frame to an East Asian welfare state but widens its theoretical application to an under-explored pattern of care migrantisation, notably unpaid care provision by family migrants.     

Strategies for origin-based surveying of international migrants

This paper addresses methodological challenges of investigations of international migration, including difficulties in obtaining information about representative samples of migrants and both their origin and destination location. Our project used an origin-based sample with a destination-focused survey and interviewed 91% of migrants from a community in Nepal to any destination and shares techniques employed. Our procedures and high response rate constitute a significant improvement in survey methods that permit the creation of unbiased data on migrants and allow the study of migration in conjunction with origin communities.     

Emplaced mobilities: Lisbon as a translocality in the migration journeys of Punjabi Sikhs to Europe

The arrival in Portugal of recent migrants from the Indian subcontinent is normally a secondary movement from within Europe tied to the search for a regular pathway into legal integration in the EU. However, as favourable migration policy is not paired with easy economic integration onward migration is common. We argue that such complex migration strategies cannot be amply explored through an origin–destination model; instead we suggest that a translocal perspective provides a framework to examine connections and experiences of emplacement in places of passage/reception like Lisbon. Through a qualitative study of the migration journeys and emplaced practices of Punjabi migrants in Lisbon, our findings highlight relationality between multiple scales, elucidating how agency and structure interact at micro and macro levels in shaping migration experiences and outcomes. We show how the materiality of local community structures ensures the navigation of daily life in the city and provides pathways toward legality contributing to wider mobility regimes. Moreover, we illustrate how onward migration represents an individual strategy to realise different aspects of integration in other EU destinations challenging nation-state-bound understandings of citizenship/settlement and integration.     

Facilitating labour migration from Latvia: strategies of various categories of intermediaries

ABSTRACT

Within the broad category of migration industries, we focus on intermediaries between employers in Norway requiring migrant labour, and suppliers of Latvian workers willing to migrate. Mediation of labour power is a regulated domain in both countries, but regulations may change: regulations in Latvia have become more lenient, whereas in Norway, they have become stricter in response to increased migration. Intermediaries must be responsive to fluctuations in labour supply and demand, as well as to changing regulations. Today, destination countries are experiencing an overabundance of available migrant labour. This buyer’s labour market represents a challenge for intermediaries, spurring adjustments and side-stepping of regulations. Formal temp agencies are supplemented by informal ones, challenging the conceptualisation of intermediaries. Also work migrants may become agents, shaping new forms of intermediation and expanding the concept of ‘migration industry’ to encompass facilitation of labour migration through social networks. In this article, we construct typologies inductively, establishing categories meaningful in the complex context of labour migration from Latvia to Norway. We distinguish between mediation through formal versus informal agencies, establish characteristics of agencies versus individual social network-based mediation and discuss mediation through the posting of workers by companies.     

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.     

An ‘undeliberate determinacy’? The changing migration strategies of Polish migrants in the UK in times of Brexit

This paper reformulates classical questions regarding the plans and strategies of Polish migrants in the UK – such as decisions to leave or remain in the host country, or be ‘deliberately indeterminate’ about future plans – from a sociologically situated ‘rights-based’ perspective. This approach considers migrants’ attitudes towards specific ‘civic integration’ measures in a medium-term time frame, as well as in the new context created by the UK’s vote to leave the EU. Based on the quantitative analysis of original survey data, we investigate the factors behind Polish migrants’ migration strategies, and we argue that basic socio-economic and demographic factors are inadequate, on their own terms, to explain future migration and civic integration plans. Instead, we find that aspects such as interest in and awareness of one’s rights, as well as anxieties about the ability to maintain one’s rights in the future are stronger determinants.     

The Economic Integration of Ukrainian and Vietnamese Migrant Women in the Polish Labour Market

Through an analysis of Ukrainian and Vietnamese migrant women in Poland, we study the extent to which their economic integration is influenced by the legal framework—for example, the visa regime—and migrants' possession of, or access to, different forms of capital. The article is based on interviews conducted between 2005 and 2008 with female migrant workers from Ukraine and Vietnam. The women faced administrative obstacles in accessing the formal labour market; their overall initial poor financial status and family situation pressured them to accept work in the informal labour market. Another barrier was the limited ability to convert their cultural capital into economic capital. To overcome these barriers, the women adopted two distinct strategies of economic integration. The Ukrainian women used networks built on strong ties from country of origin and on weak ties in Poland, while the Vietnamese women used strong ties within their own ethnic niche.     

From origins to destinations: acculturation trajectories in migrants’ attitudes towards homosexuality

Many immigrants in Western countries hail from countries where attitudes towards gender relations and sexual norms are considerably more conservative than in the host countries where they eventually settle. This paper assesses whether immigrants and their children acculturate in this dimension, and how migrants’ cultural practices and economic integration influence this process. Presenting a conceptual and methodological innovation, this paper treats acculturation as a process by which immigrants (and their children) shift from the attitude distribution in the origin country to the one of the host country. Using a cross-classified hierarchical regression model and data on attitudes towards homosexuality in 83 countries of origin and 23 destination countries, I model the relative influence of origin and destination contexts on the attitudes of 15,000 immigrants and children of immigrants in Europe. In line with previous work, I find considerable evidence for acculturation across and within generations, but also important variation: respondents who use the home-country language, who are religious, or who are economically marginalised, show less acculturation in attitudes, though these effects vary between immigrants and the second generation.