“Tel Aviv Is Not Foreign to You”: Urban Incorporation Policy on Labor Migrants in Israel1

This article addresses the growing disjuncture between urban and national policies regarding the incorporation of labor migrants in Israel. Drawing on fieldwork, in‐depth interviews with Tel Aviv municipal officials, and archive analysis of Tel Aviv municipality minutes, we argue that urban migrant‐directed policy elicits new understandings of membership and participation, other than those envisaged by national parameters, which bear important, even if unintended, consequences for the de facto incorporation of non‐Jewish labor migrants. The crux of the Tel Aviv case is that its migrant‐directed policy bears especially on undocumented labor migrants, who make up approximately 16 percent of the city's population and who are the most problematic category of resident from the state's point of view. In demanding recognition for the rights of migrant workers in the name of a territorial category of “residence,” and by activating channels of participation for migrant communities, local authorities in Tel Aviv are introducing definitions of “urban membership” for noncitizens which conflict sharply with the hegemonic ethnonational policy. We suggest that the disjuncture between urban and national incorporation policies on labor migrants in Israel is part of a general process of political realignment between the urban and the national taking place within a globalized context of labor migration.     

When Battlefields become Marketplaces: Migrant Workers and the Role of Civil Society and NGO Activism in Thailand

The vast majority of migrant workers in Thailand are employed predominantly in low‐paying occupations commonly described as “3‐D jobs” (dangerous, dirty, and difficult). Currently, there are nearly two million documented and undocumented migrant workers, mostly from neighbouring Burma, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and Cambodia, employed in various industries, including domestic service, throughout the country. While over half a million migrants are officially registered to work in the country, both documented and undocumented migrant workers remain unprotected primarily due to the lack of concrete measures to monitor, implement and enforce laws regarding working and living conditions. Regardless of where they are employed, migrant workers face common problems: low wages; harmful working conditions, poor living conditions; discrimination and harassment, the threat of arrest and deportation; and lack of access to basic resources such as medical care and legal assistance. Based on preliminary research conducted in the summer of 2005, this article looks at the situation of migrant factory and domestic workers in Thailand and explores the ways in which local activists, NGOs, community‐based organisations, and international bodies have been looking to assist and protect migrant workers. Successful migrant workers’ struggles and ongoing efforts of mobilization have been made possible with the help of these support groups, and raise the possibility that union and NGO activity have the potential to improve the situation of migrants in Thailand. This also raises the question of whether advocacy groups should be acting in lieu of the state rather than alongside the state, especially when it appears that they are fulfilling their civic duty as enforcer and monitor of migrant workers’ problems.     

Consuming the transnational family: Indonesian migrant domestic workers to Saudi Arabia

Abstract There is heated debate in contemporary Indonesia about the rights and regulation of transnational women migrants, specifically about the ‘costs to families’ of women working overseas, but little attention has been given to women migrants' own views of family or women's own motivations for migration. In this article, which is based on field work in a migrant‐sending community in West Java, I focus on migrant women's narratives of transnational migration and employment as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. I contribute to the literature on gender and transnational migration by exploring migrants' consumption desires and practices as reflective not only of commoditized exchange but also of affect and sentiment. In addition, I show in detail how religion and class inflect low‐income women's narrations of morally appropriate mothering practices. In conclusion, I suggest that interpreting these debates from the ground up can contribute towards understanding the larger struggles animating the Indonesian state's contemporary relationships with women and Islam.     

Christian Zionists in the Holy Land: Evangelical Churches,Labor Migrants,and the Jewish State

In this article we trace the creation of Evangelical churches created by and for Latin American undocumented migrants in Israel. First, we relate to the social significance of religious practices and beliefs for migrants' individual and collective identity in the host society and the ways through which non-Jewish labor migrants in Israel are creating alternative spaces that operate simultaneously as a new community of belonging. We consider the possibilities latent in the churches as “free spaces” for foreigners in the Jewish State, along with the limitations that participation in such a church entails for the migrant community. The second theme involves the universe of meanings through which believing migrants interpret their existence and place in the Jewish State. Here we probe how religion becomes a way of legitimizing the migrants' presence in a Jewish state and a means of channeling their claims for inclusion in the host country. We delve into the modes whereby the theological position of Christian Zionism is translated into a sociological position of Christian migrants in a Jewish state.     

NeoLiberalism and the Challenges of Managing Labour Migration in Urban Malaysia

Labour migration into Malaysia has increased rapidly in recent decades and this has affected Malaysia's government policy in managing migrants’ movement. Interestingly, Malaysia has attracted a high degree of unskilled labour, accompanied by unabated rise of undocumented migrant workers. Mitigating undocumented migration is the main aim of Malaysia's labour migration policy and therefore the focus of Malaysian government. This has impacted on how enforcement agencies work out strategies. These agencies are the forefront of Malaysia's labour migration policy but they faced a number of challenges, such as documentation, finance and manpower capability, and political intervention, which impede their ability to optimize their capabilities in enforcing the Malaysian government labour migration policy. Resolving these challenges and moving towards a long‐term labour migration policy will benefit the Malaysian state, its citizens and the labour migrants.     

Protection of Migrants' Human Rights: Principles and Practice

In principle, migrants enjoy the protection of international law. Key human rights instruments oblige the States Parties to extend their protection to all human beings. Such important treaties as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights have been ratified by more than 140 states, but many political, social or economic obstacles seem to stand in the way of offering those rights to migrants. In an attempt to bridge this protection gap, the more specifically targeted International Convention on the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families was created and adopted by the United Nations in 1990. This treaty is not yet in force, but the number of States Parties is increasing towards the required 20. In the past few years the human rights machinery of the United Nations has increased its attention towards migrants' human rights, appointing in 1999 the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants. Governments, as the acceding parties to international human rights instruments, remain the principal actors as guardians of the human rights of all individuals residing in their territories. Receiving countries are in a key position in the protection of the migrants that they host. However, active defence of migrants' rights is politically difficult in many countries where anti‐immigrant factions are influential. Trafficking in migrants is one example of the complexity faced by states in formulating their migration policies. On the one hand, trafficking has made governments increasingly act together and combine both enforcement and protection. On the other, trafficking, with its easily acceptable human rights concerns, is often separated from the more migration‐related human smuggling. The latter is a more contentious issue, related also to unofficial interests in utilizing cheap undocumented immigrant labour.     

Toward a Critical Phenomenology of "Illegality": State Power, Criminalization, and Abjectivity among Undocumented Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, Israel

Given the vast scope and magnitude of the phenomenon of so‐called “illegal” migration in the present historical moment, this article contends that phenomenologically engaged ethnography has a crucial role to play in sensitizing not only anthropologists, but also policymakers, politicians, and broader publics to the complicated, often anxiety‐ridden and frightening realities associated with “the condition of migrant illegality,” both of specific host society settings and comparatively across the globe. In theoretical terms, the article constitutes a preliminary attempt to link pressing questions in the fields of legal anthropology and anthropology of transnational migration, on one hand, with recent work by phenomenologically oriented scholars interested in the anthropology of experience, on the other. The article calls upon ethnographers of undocumented transnational migration to bridge these areas of scholarship by applying what can helpfully be characterized as a “critical phenomenological” approach to the study of migrant “illegality” (Willen, 2006; see also Desjarlais, 2003). This critical phenomenological approach involves a three‐dimensional model of illegality: first, as a form of juridical status; second, as a sociopolitical condition; and third, as a mode of being‐in‐the‐world. In developing this model, the article draws upon 26 non‐consecutive months of ethnographic field research conducted within the communities of undocumented West African (Nigerian and Ghanaian) and Filipino migrants in Tel Aviv, Israel, between 2000 and 2004. During the first part of this period, “illegal” migrants in Israel were generally treated as benign, excluded “Others.” Beginning in mid‐2002, however, a resource‐intensive, government‐sponsored campaign of mass arrest and deportation reconfigured the condition of migrant “illegality” in Israel and, in effect, transformed these benign “Others” into wanted criminals. By analyzing this transformation the article highlights the profound significance of examining not only the judicial and sociopolitical dimensions of what it means to be “illegal” but also its impact on migrants' modes of being‐in‐the‐world.     

The State Connection in China's Rural‐Urban Migration1

This study explores the role of China's rural local state‐owned and urban state‐owned units in its rural‐urban migration process. Most studies on Chinese migration have focused on migrants moving from rural to urban areas through informal mechanisms outside of the state's control. They therefore treat the Chinese state as an obstructionist force and dismiss its facilitative role in the migration process. By documenting rural local states' “labor export” strategies and urban state units' employment of millions of peasants, this article provides a corrective to the existing literature. It highlights and explains the state connection in China's rural‐urban migration.

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Unequal networks: comparing the pre‐migration overseas networks of Indonesian and Filipino migrant domestic workers

Previous studies of Asian migrant domestic workers' pre‐migration overseas networks have tended to be ethnographic, small‐n case studies such that it is unclear if network differences between migrants are due to individual‐ or country‐level differences or both. This article draws from an original survey of 1,206 Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers in Singapore and Hong Kong to reveal statistically significant differences in the pre‐migration overseas networks of these two nationality groups even after controlling for migrants' educational attainment, marital status, employment status, age, year of first migration, and survey location. Multiple regression analysis highlights how Filipino respondents are more likely than Indonesian respondents to have known existing migrants prior to their first migration from their homeland. Filipino respondents' overseas networks are also significantly larger, more geographically dispersed, and comprise more white‐collar contacts. These findings open up new terrain for migration scholars to study the impact of these nationality‐based network differences on the two groups' divergent migration experiences and aspirations.     

Migrant Membership as an Instituted Process: Transnationalization,the State and The Extra‐Territorial Conduct of Mexican Politics1

How should we conceptualize membership, citizenship and political community in a world where migrants and their home states increasingly maintain and cultivate their formal and informal ties? This study analyzes the extra‐territorial conduct of Mexican. politics and the emergence of new migrant membership practices and relations between migrants and home states. Standard globalist, transnationalist or citizenship theories cannot properly contextualize and analyze such practices. I propose that we rethink the concept of membership in a political community not only as a Marshallian status granted by states, but also as an instituted process embedded within four other institutions and processes: home state domestic politics; the home state's relationship to the world system; a semi‐autonomous transnational civil society created in part by migration; and the context of reception of migrants in the United States. A main conclusion is that the state itself plays a key role in creating transnational political action by migrants and new migrant membership practices. The article draws on printed sources and interviews and ethnography done since 1990.     

“Now I am also Israeli”: From Illegality to Legality ‐ Life experiences and identities of migrant workers’ children after receiving civil status in Israel

In 2006 and 2010, following demands from local and international civil society organizations, Israel granted civil status to approximately 1500 undocumented migrant workers’ children. This was considered a “one time humanitarian gesture,” not to be repeated. Thousands of other children, who did not fulfill the required criteria, were left without civil status. Within the context of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people, this mixed‐methods study explored how the children's life experiences have been constructed and reconstructed since the inception of their new civil status. According to the findings, 80 per cent of migrant workers’ children reveal a high degree of belonging to Israeli society, defining themselves as Israelis. For them, receiving civil status has four practical implications: being able to serve in the Israeli army; the ability to travel abroad; better access to the job market; and freedom from fear of deportation. Our study also revealed difficulties due to their religious and ethnic identities, reflected in the children's understandings of what it means to be Israeli. The complex manifestations of their newly acquired civil status is embedded in the concept of “freedom,” i.e. to do and to be what they really want to be.     

Housing Seasonal Workers for the Minnesota Processed Vegetable Industry*

Abstract The place where we live and work is a reflection of a complex set of economic conditions and social relationships. Very little information is available regarding housing for Minnesota's migrant workers. It is estimated that approximately 20,000 people migrate to Minnesota each summer to work in the production and processing of green peas and sweet corn. Obtaining adequate, affordable short‐term housing for these workers and dependents accompanying them is a challenge. Many migrants end up living in over‐crowded, substandard conditions that place financial burdens on their limited incomes. Using secondary sources, including a survey of 282 migrant workers, government documents, and media reports, this study provides a review of migrant workers' housing in four Minnesota counties where vegetable production and processing occur. The findings are then examined using Mitchell's Labor Theory of Landscape providing a potential explanation of the context and meaning of these housing conditions.     

Empowering,invasive or a little bit of both? A reflection on the use of visual and narrative methods in research with migrant sex workers in South Africa

Although migration plays a critical role in the economic landscape of the world, government officials and researchers do not sufficiently include migration and/or migrants in research studies and development policies. In South Africa, many migrants – both internal and cross-border – engage in informal livelihood strategies, including sex work (see Richter et al. 2012). Currently, the bulk of research that is being conducted in South Africa in the areas of migration and sex work rely heavily on the use of traditional research approaches and focus mainly on concerns surrounding issues of public health, with increased attention to HIV (for example, see SANAC 2013; Scheibe, Drame and Shannon 2012; Scorgie et al. 2011). While this work is invaluable, there is a need for research that can counter the stigma that sex workers overwhelmingly face in light of HIV/AIDS. Participatory visual and narrative research approaches – as part of mixed method study designs – that examine the lived experiences of migrant sex workers can provide important insights that ‘move beyond the polarized and simplistic arguments that have circulated in South African about migrant sex workers’ (Nyangairi and Palmary, 2014, 132). This methodological approach makes important and necessary contributions to national and international discourses on migration and sex work (see Oliveira and Vearey 2015). In addition, these methods provide a unique platform where the normative discourses that portray migrants as a homogenous vulnerable and apolitical group of people can be contested (Palmary 2006). In this article, I present and discuss three participatory visual and narrative research projects that have been conducted with migrant men, women and transgender persons who sell sex in two Provinces of South Africa and examine the suitability of these approaches.     

Migrant family visits and the life course: interrelationships between age,capacity and desire

Migrant visits to the country of origin play a crucial role in transnational family cohesion and migrant well‐being; the research on them so far has focused primarily on the relationship between migrant integration and transnational engagement. In this article, I extend the discussion by adding a life course perspective to Carling and Hoelscher's (2013) framework for studying transnational activities, which incorporates capacity and desire. I explore whether age has an independent effect on migrants' family visits and how it relates to socio‐economic resources, migration status and transnational ties. Using data from a survey of Peruvian migrants around the globe (n=7,741), I show that migrants' stage in the life course has a partial effect on their propensity to travel through the interrelationship between age, capacity and desire. The findings show that the capacity and desire of migrants to visit their country of origin are particularly strong after reaching retirement age, suggesting a favourable combination of resources at later stages in life. However, whether this expresses a positive approach to ageing, or is a strategy to balance transnational family obligations and to postpone return decisions, remains open for future research.     

Canada's Migrants without History: Neoliberal Immigration Regimes and Trinidadian Transnationalism

Temporary migration programmes have re‐emerged as a preferred mechanism for regulating labour migration in many migrant‐receiving countries in the past decade. In this paper, I consider the role of shifting Canadian immigration policies, notably the expanded streams for temporary workers, in the changing flow of migrants from Trinidad to Canada. Temporary programmes can bring workers to Canada relatively quickly, but they limit access to permanent residency and citizenship, in sharp contrast to most of Canada's earlier immigration policies. Ethnographic fieldwork reveals that Trinidadians actively seeking to make the move to Canada have little interest in new temporary work programmes. Rather, they continue to plan futures in Canada that they expect to be years in the making. I consider some reasons for this apparent refusal to submit to the new migration realities. I show that present‐day Trinidadian emigrant desires and practices are deeply connected to individual, familial and national emigration and immigration histories. Trinidadians are declining to participate in new immigration regimes and are restricting their migration practices to those forms that are historically familiar and have been proven successful. I attempt to show how ethnographic approaches that take seriously migrants' agency can assist in developing a fuller understanding of the ways in which migration flows are changing. These approaches reveal what are otherwise the silences and invisibility surrounding those whose previous access to permanent migration streams has been diminished through neoliberal restructuring of migration policy. I argue that temporary worker policies disregard long‐standing histories of migration and engagement with capitalist processes for people in particular regions of the world, rendering them, for policy purposes, effectively “people without history” (Wolf, 1982).     

“The EU Should Talk to Germany” Transnational Legal Consciousness as a Rights Claiming Tool among Undocumented Migrants

Migrants must often negotiate their rights while being hampered by their precarious resident status, within contexts where the overlap of migration, welfare, labour and gender regimes lead to incoherent and contradictory institutional set‐ups that hinder their claiming of rights. The analysis of the legal consciousness of undocumented migrants in Germany reveals a complex set of orientations. On some occasions they waive their rights, accepting lower working conditions in order not to lose their jobs – a finding that confirms existing research. At the same time, they also informally “enact” rights and access to institutions themselves. They appeal to the experiences of undocumented migrants with laws and access to social services in other countries. The finding of relatively widespread transnational legal consciousness adds a new dimension to the scholarship on migrant legal consciousness and claims‐making, which has hitherto portrayed undocumented migrants as living in a legal limbo between their countries of origin and destination.     

Migrant Health Policies. Actors and Levels in a Multi‐Level Perspective

Until recently, migrant health policies have been overlooked as a topic of policy analysis. Although interest in the issue has developed in parallel with the progressive acknowledgement of the presence of unhealthy migrants and the transformation of welfare states and policy dynamics in Europe, studies on migrant health policies have often focused on the state as a unique unit of observation while hindering the role played by other institutional and non‐institutional actors taking part in the migrant health multi‐level governance. This contribution will bridge this gap, deconstructing the various actors and levels involved in migrant health policymaking from a multi‐level perspective. By critically reviewing migrant health policy research and discussing it with the new MIPEX Health Strand, this contribution suggests a more encompassing perspective in the analysis of migrant health policies and processes, looking at the different players at stake in this multifaceted policy field.     

The Economics of Transnational Living1

Migrants' long‐distance economic relations with their homelands have been the subject of an extensive, albeit fragmented, multidisciplinary inquiry. Most existing studies have been primarily concerned with the north‐south flow of monetary remittances that migrants send to their homelands. Using a transnational perspective informed by economic sociology tenets, this article argues that this north‐south, monetary‐centered approach is too limited, for it fails to heed the multiple macroeconomic effects of migrants' transnational economic and noneconomic connections and, thus, underestimates migrants' agency and their influence at the global level. Using the concept of transnational living, the study presents new vistas of transnational migration that question accepted notions about the relationship between labor mobility and capital mobility.     

Eastern Europe and Community of Independent States

This article reviews the literature on migration, HIV/AIDS, and sexually transmitted diseases in Eastern Europe and the Community of Independent States (CIS): Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the former Yugoslavian countries; and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. There is little in-depth research on the prevalence of HIV/AIDS. After the collapse of the USSR, the opening up of borders presented greater options for the spread of HIV. During 1991-1996, HIV-infected persons increased from 0.3/100,000 to 7.8/100,000. Syphilis and gonorrhea also spread in the 1990s. The increased prevalence is attributed to changes in sexual behavior due to increased travel and migration, disruption among families, and changes in sexual mores; and changes in the structure, availability, and effectiveness of health services. Many migrants in the CIS are young people. Mobile populations in the CIS include labor migrants, refugees, persons displaced by armed conflicts, repatriates, forced migrants, resettlement of formerly deported persons, and ecological migrants. It is general knowledge that migrants are poorly informed about HIV/AIDS. Condoms are not readily available in the CIS. Eastern Europe has high rates of HIV among migrant sex workers.     

Understanding Transnational Labour Market Trajectories of African‐European Migrants: Evidence from the MAFE Survey

Labor market trajectories of migrants are seldom explored in a longitudinal and comparative perspective. However, a longitudinal approach is crucial for a better understanding of migrants' long‐term occupational attainments, while comparative research is useful to disentangle specificities and general processes across destination and origin countries. This article explores the labor market outcomes of migrants from Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ghana in different European countries, using the MAFE data to compare their occupational attainments before migration, upon arrival and during the first 10 years of stay in Europe in a longitudinal perspective. Results highlight different pattern of migrants' selection across destinations, influenced by prior employment status and education, gender and colonial legacies, and which impact subsequent trajectories into the European labor markets. Our analyses also show a severe worsening of migrants' occupational status in Europe compared to their situation prior to migration, which is the resultant of a dramatic downgrading upon entry and of a slow occupational recovering during the first 10 years of stay in Europe. Results suggest that the educational–occupational mismatch of skilled workers might represent a long‐lasting “price” for migrants, unless (further) educational credentials are achieved in destination countries.