The journey of Central American women migrants: engendering the mobile commons

ABSTRACT

This article delves into the concept of the ‘mobile commons’ which is articulated within the Autonomy of Migration (AoM) approach. The AoM literature focuses on migrant agency by advocating that migrants practice ‘escape’ and ‘invisibility’. However, drawing on the stories of women migrants from the Northern Triangle of Central American (NTCA) (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras) travelling through Mexico, this article aims to engender and thereby trouble the concept of the mobile commons by questioning several taken-for-granted assumptions that are based on gender-neutral knowledge and dichotomous ways of thinking. Using women’s experiences to question the assumptions made with respect to ‘migrant knowledge’, I show that the knowledge among women migrants from the NTCA is influenced by gendered power imbalances that place women in subordinate positions. The analysis will first focus on explaining the mobile commons as a theoretical concept. Following this, I discuss how conceptualizing the mobile commons through a feminist perspective challenges the ideas of invisible knowledge and trust often integral to the ways in which the concept of the mobile commons is used. Finally, I outline the survival strategies that migrant women may use given their own knowledge of the migration context in Mexico, and reflect on what this means for the scholarly understanding of the ‘mobile commons’.     

The perceptions and practices of Thai health professionals providing maternity care for migrant Burmese women: An ethnographic study

BackgroundAcross the globe, many women including economic and humanitarian migrants receive inadequate antenatal care. Understanding the difficulties that migrant women encounter when accessing maternity care, including the approach of health professionals, is necessary because inadequate care is associated with increasing rates of morbidity and mortality. There are very few studies of migrant women’s access to and experience of maternity services when they have migrated from a low- to a middle-income country.AimTo examine the perceptions and practices of Thai health professionals providing maternity care for migrant Burmese women, and to describe women’s experiences of their encounters with health professionals providing maternity care in Ranong Province in southern Thailand.MethodsEthnography informed the study design. Individual interviews were conducted with 13 healthcare professionals and 10 Burmese women before and after birth. Observations of interactions (130 h) between health care providers and Burmese women were also conducted. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.FindingsThe healthcare professionals’ practices differed between the antenatal clinics and the postnatal ward. Numerous barriers to accessing culturally appropriate antenatal care were evident. In contrast, the care provided in the postnatal ward was woman and family centered and culturally sensitive. One overarching theme, “The system is in control’ was identified, and comprised three sub-themes (1) ‘Being processed’ (2) ‘Insensitivity to cultural practices’ and, (3) ‘The space to care’.Discussion and conclusionsThe health system and healthcare professionals controlled the way antenatal care was provided to Burmese migrant women. This bureaucratic and culturally insensitive approach to antenatal care impacted on some women’s decision to engage in antenatal care. Conversely, the more positive examples of woman-centered care evident after birth in the postnatal ward, can inform service delivery.     

Narrating Translocality: Dagong Poetry and the Subaltern Imagination

Abstract

In Chinese, ‘dagong’ means ‘working for the boss’. Dagong migrants constitute the most populous group of China's mobile population, so knowledge of their cultural practices is crucial to understanding how globalisation and mobility rework people's sense of locality. This paper is an analysis of poems by dagong workers – a cultural phenomenon that is relatively unknown both outside and inside China. Drawing on ethnographic insights into China's rural migrants, this paper engages the concept of translocality to explore three recurring themes in dagong poetry: alienation of the body in the industrial regime; displacement and homesickness; and disenchantment with the south. The analysis shows that, for the same reason that mobility itself is a stratified process, the means of addressing translocal desires and longings are also stratified.     

Mining mobility and settlement during an East African gold boom: Seeking fortune and accommodating fate

ABSTRACT

In light of Shiller’s concept of ‘irrational exuberance’, we interrogate migrants’ optimistic material expectations at artisanal and industrial gold mining locations during a period of exceptional mobility spurred by the international gold boom of 2000–2013. Our household survey and interview findings reveal miners’ and residents’ mobility and settlement patterns in three Tanzanian gold mining settlements, representing different stages and forms of mining along a trajectory of deepening gold extraction and increasing urbanization. Resident miners’, traders’ and service providers’ personal motivations, strategies and dilemmas surface. The constancy of migrants’ motivation for economic betterment and the contingency of their strategic thinking in the face of gold supply uncertainty emerges clearly. However, mining site residents’ highly mobile lives entail toleration of temporary, inadequate housing in infrastructurally deficient, polluted and unsafe mining environments, a situation at odds with their aims for lifestyle enhancement. Given the unpredictability of gold production, residents reconcile their expectations of striking it rich with the reality of sub-optimal outcomes. Those who gain satisfaction and esteem in their careers are likely to do so through high levels of mobility, ultimately rewarded with desirable housing and settlement locations, whereas others adapt to constrained mobility and unenviable settlement locations, or abandon mining.     

Driven to Care: The Car,Automobility and Social Work

Abstract

Welfare practices are invariably represented in static and sedentary ways and their mobilities ignored. This paper corrects for this by examining the car and auto‐mobility in social work. The car is not just a means to reaching vulnerable children and other service users quickly, and a mobile office, but a space where significant casework goes on and deeply meaningful ‘therapeutic journeys’ happen. The car carries similar emotional meanings and possibilities for workers as a space within which to contain the anxieties and emotions they routinely confront in their work. Drawing on mobile social science and psychoanalytic theory, the paper shows how the power and meanings of auto‐mobility in ‘car therapy’ are products of the design of cars and the distinct rhythms and mobilities they produce in themselves. The car in social work is conceptualised as a ‘fluid container’ for the processing of personal troubles, emotion and key life changes. The theoretical implications of this argument for the social science of mobilities are drawn out.     

The Movement Beyond (Lifestyle) Migration: Mobile Practices and the Constitution of a Better Way of Life

Abstract

This article revisits my ethnography of the British in rural France to question how mobility in post‐migration life was deemed intrinsic to the better way of life that they sought through their migration. Through the exploration of the migrants’ everyday lives, I reveal that the migrants’ mobile practices and their expectations of mobility contributed towards the perceived success of their new lives and were thus significant to the ongoing process getting to a better way of life. Beyond this example, the article also demonstrates how the findings of mobilities researchers may be mobilized in traditional anthropological fieldwork.     

Migration as hope and depression: existential im/mobilities in and beyond Egypt

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship has asserted that prolonged periods of ‘waiting’ or ‘stuckedness’ are becoming the condition of modern capitalism for many people. This article complicates this assertion by interrogating the affective life of migration, an act which offers the possibility of overcoming, but also reinforces, existential stuckedness. Using two ethnographies with young aspiring male migrants in Egypt, and older migrant men in the Netherlands, we reveal how migration, both before and after physical movement, is experienced through constant existential oscillation: between ‘‘amal’ (hope) that the good life is arriving, and ‘ikti’āb’ (an Egyptian understanding of depression) when a new blockage is met. Developing existing understandings of migratory experience and governance, the article argues that oscillation emerges out of ‘cruel’ migratory regimes which perpetually offer up the promise of the good life to aspiring migrants, while inhibiting the means of achieving it for the majority.     

Gender,marriage, and the dynamic of (im)mobility in the mid-Western hills of Nepal

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the relationship between gender, marriage, and (im)mobility in rural hilly areas of mid-Western Nepal, showing how (1) the mobility of men is predicated on the ‘immobility’ of women, with marriage being key to the gendered dynamic of (im)mobility, (2) how the construction of hegemonic masculinity, exemplified by a figure of a successful international migrant, is inseparable from an ideal of femininity vested in the figure of a virtuous domesticated housewife. Examining different scales of mobility, the paper cautions against posing a rigid dichotomy between ‘mobile men’ and ‘immobile’ women, illustrating that the ‘left behind’ wives experience an impressive degree of everyday mobility in contrast to their internationally mobile husbands.     

人口流动家庭化及其影响因素——以北京市为例

文章基于2006年北京市1‰流动人口抽样调查,考察北京市流动人口的家庭模式及其流动家庭化的影响因素。调查结果显示,北京市流动人口的家庭化率已达到60%。流动人口家庭模式是以一对夫妻户和一对夫妻加孩子户为主的核心家庭为主导,以一代户和二代户为主。3/4的已婚流动人口携带了配偶,有孩子的流动人口中有一半携带了孩子,这些孩子中有近20%是在北京出生的。流动人口的平均家庭规模为2人,明显小于全国农村的平均家庭规模(3.4人)。流动人口的个人特征及在京居住地显著影响人口流动家庭化,同时还发现非经济因素成为比经济因素更为重要的人口流动家庭化影响因素。     

Women from migrant and refugee backgrounds’ perceptions and experiences of the continuum of maternity care in Australia: A qualitative evidence synthesis

BackgroundWomen who were born overseas represent an increasing proportion of women giving birth in the Australian healthcare system.ProblemWomen from migrant and refugee backgrounds have an increased risk of poor pregnancy and birth outcomes, including experiences of care.AimTo understand how women from migrant and refugee backgrounds perceive and experience the continuum of maternity care (pregnancy, birth, postnatal) in Australia.MethodologyWe conducted a qualitative evidence synthesis, searching MEDLINE, CIHAHL, and PsycInfo for studies published from inception to 23/05/2020. We included studies that used qualitative methods for data collection and analysis, that explored migrant/refugee women’s experiences or perceptions of maternity care in Australia. We used a thematic synthesis approach, assessed the methodological limitations of included studies, and used GRADE-CERQual to assess confidence in qualitative review findings.Results27 studies met the inclusion criteria, representing women in Australia from 42 countries. Key themes were developed into 24 findings, including access to interpreters, structural barriers to service utilisation, experiences with health workers, trust in healthcare, experiences of discrimination, preferences for care, and conflicts between traditional cultural expectations and the Australian medical system.ConclusionThis review can help policy makers and organisations who provide care to women from migrant and refugee backgrounds to improve their experiences with maternity care. It highlights factors linked to negative experiences of care as well as factors associated with more positive experiences to identify potential changes to practices and policies that would be well received by this population.     

“If you don’t ask … you don’t tell”: Refugee women’s perspectives on perinatal mental health screening

ProblemNational guidelines recommending mental health screening in pregnancy have not been implemented well in routine maternity care. Women of refugee background are likely to have experienced traumatic events and resettlement stressors, yet are not often identified with mental health issues in the perinatal period.BackgroundGlobally, perinatal mental health conditions affect up to 20% of women. Many difficulties in accessing mental health care in pregnancy exist for women of refugee background including stigma, and cultural and language barriers. Technology can provide an efficient and effective method to overcome some of these barriers.AimTo determine if a digital perinatal mental health screening program is feasible and acceptable for women of refugee background.MethodsThis qualitative evaluation study used focus group and semi-structured telephone interviews with refugee and migrant women from four communities. Interpreters were used with women who spoke little or no English. Data were analysed using both an inductive and deductive approach to thematic analysis.FindingsUnder the three key themes: ‘Women’s experiences of perinatal mental health screening in pregnancy’; ‘Barriers and enablers to accessing ongoing mental health care’ and ‘Improvements to the program: the development of audio versions’, women found the program feasible and acceptable.DiscussionScreening using a mobile device offered women more privacy and opened up discussions with midwives on emotional health. Improvements in service coordination and access to further mental health management for women is required.ConclusionPerinatal mental health screening is an acceptable and feasible option for women of refugee background. Integrated models of care, case management, and patient navigators are options for improvements in uptake of referral and treatment services.     

Examining the rhythms of ‘urban elements’ on walking and driving routes in the city

ABSTRACT

The article follows Kevin Lynch’s renowned formulation of ‘urban elements’ to examine the mobilities, experiences and materialities on ordinary routes in the city. Utilizing route narratives and participant-produced visual data, the article focuses on various identifiable micro-temporalities and mobility rhythms on repeated walking and driving routes, building on Henri Lefebvre’s notion of ‘rhythmanalysis’. The article examines how a framework built around rhythm and urban elements can add to the analysis of contemporary urban sites from the perspectives of situated mobile contexts, noting sequences and polyrhythmia as central temporal characteristics in the body?environment relations.     

Producing Thailand as a transit country: borders,advocacy, and destitution

ABSTRACT

The space of the ‘transit country’ is increasingly depicted in policy and NGO rhetoric as a taken-for-granted space where migrants pass through on their way to seek protection in the Global North. Yet I argue that the ‘transit country’ is a contested space, a space where ‘temporariness’ may be produced purposefully in order to limit opportunities for protection. In this paper, I argue that Thailand produces itself as a transit country in order to manage and control refugee and asylum seeker populations. Through several discursive and material tactics, including security spectacles, legal maneuvering, and migrant destitution, Thailand maintains and exploits the status of a ‘transit country.’ The purposeful construction of a place where ‘no one will stay’ challenges depictions of migration as linear movements defined by sources and destinations, where transit spaces become only more distance to traverse. While the production of transit countries has always been political, the case of Thailand suggests that the politics involved need not center the migration deterrence efforts of traditional destination countries of the Global North, but have implications within states and regions of the Global South as well.     

The experiential knowledge of migrant women about vulnerability during pregnancy: A woman-centred mixed-methods study

ProblemWithin maternity care policies and practice, pregnant migrant women are regarded as a vulnerable population.BackgroundWomen’s experiential knowledge is a key element of woman-centred care but is insufficiently addressed in midwifery practice and research that involves migrant women.AimTo examine if pregnant migrant women’s experiential knowledge of vulnerability corresponds with sets of criteria of vulnerability, and to explore how migrant women make sense of vulnerability during pregnancy.MethodsA sequential two-phased mixed-methods study, conducted in the Netherlands, integrating survey data of 89 pregnant migrant women and focus group data obtained from 25 migrant mothers - living in deprived areas according to the Dutch socio-economic index.ResultsCriteria associated with vulnerability were reported by 65.2% of the participants and 62.9% of the participants reported adverse childhood experiences. On a Visual Analogue Scale, ranging from 0 (not vulnerable) to 10 (very vulnerable), participants self-reported sense of vulnerability showed a mean score of 4.2 (±2.56). Women’s experiential knowledge of vulnerability significantly correlated with the mean sum score of clinical criteria of vulnerability (r .46, p .002) and with the mean sum score of adverse childhood experiences (r .48, p < .001). Five themes emerged from the focus group discussions: “Look beyond who you think I am and see and treat me for who I really am”, “Ownership of truth and knowledge”, “Don’t punish me for being honest”, “Projection of fear” and “Coping with labelling”.ConclusionPregnant migrant women’s experiential knowledge of vulnerability is congruent with the criteria. Calling upon experiential knowledge is an attribute of the humane woman-midwife relationship.     

Legal and illegal immigrants: an analysis of optimal saving behavior

Savings of guest workers as well as of undocumented migrants represent important inflows of foreign exchange for some developing countries. This paper compares the saving behavior of these two types of migrants, assuming that the former are authorized to work abroad for a specific period of time, while the latter can stay until apprehended and deported by the immigration authorities. Due to the risk of deportation, the saving rate of an illegal immigrant is found to be initially above that of a documented migrant. This precautionary saving phenomenon is, however, short-lived. A key finding of the paper is that the total repatriated assets of an illegal migrant are always lower than those of a documented worker, provided that their duration of stay abroad is identical. This is because the undocumented migrant’s saving rate falls over time as her expected lifetime earnings are adjusted upwards every day that she avoids apprehension.     

Spatial Differentiation and Driving Forces of Migrants’ Socio-Economic Integration in Urban China: Evidence from CMDS

Migrants’ socio-economic integration is a major theme in migration research, which can provide economic and cultural benefits. And it will contribute to social stability. The investigation from the spatial perspective should also be considered. This paper aims to examine the spatial differentiation of the socio-economic integration of migrants and identify its driving forces to provide crucial evidence and policy recommendations to urban policymakers and further improve migrants’ socio-economic integration. Based on the latest China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this paper uses global Moran’s I index, hot spot analysis and GWR model to explore spatial differentiation and driving forces of the socio-economic integration of 155,789 migrants in 291 cities at prefecture level and above in China. The results show that: (1) The socio-economic integration of migrants consists of five dimensions, which are economic integration, cultural integration, social security, social relation and psychological integration. Among them, psychological integration is the highest (73.16) and economic integration is the lowest (13.38). (2) The socio-economic integration of migrants is mainly influenced by their own characteristics instead of the destination characteristics. Four factors (age, education, length of stay and population growth rate) positively affect migrants’ socio-economic integration, while three factors (inter-provincial mobility, proportion of tertiary industry in GDP, and ratio of teacher to student in middle school) negatively impact the socio-economic integration of migrants. (3) The socio-economic integration of migrants shows the distribution pattern of agglomeration. And the integration also presents a significant spatial heterogeneity. The driving forces of the socio-economic integration exhibit various zonal spatial differentiation patterns, including “E–W”, “SE–NW”, “NE–SW”, and “S–N”. Finally, some useful recommendations are given for improving migrants’ socio-economic integration.

     

Exploring the COVID-19 pandemic experience of maternity clinicians in a high migrant population and low COVID-19 prevalence country: A qualitative study

BackgroundAustralia experienced a low prevalence of COVID-19 in 2020 compared to many other countries. However, maternity care has been impacted with hospital policy driven changes in practice. Little qualitative research has investigated maternity clinicians’ perception of the impact of COVID-19 in a high-migrant population.AimTo investigate maternity clinicians’ perceptions of patient experience, service delivery and personal experience in a high-migrant population.MethodsWe conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 14 maternity care clinicians in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Interviews were conducted from November to December 2020. A reflexive thematic approach was used for data analysis.FindingsA key theme in the data was ‘COVID-19 related travel restrictions result in loss of valued family support for migrant families’. However, partners were often ‘stepping-up’ into the role of missing overseas relatives. The main theme in clinical care was a shift in healthcare delivery away from optimising patient care to a focus on preservation and safety of health staff.DiscussionClinicians were of the view migrant women were deeply affected by the loss of traditional support. However, the benefit may be the potential for greater gender equity and bonding opportunities for partners.Conflict with professional beneficence principles and values may result in bending rules when a disconnect exists between relaxed community health orders and restrictive hospital protocols during different phases of a pandemic.ConclusionThis research adds to the literature that migrant women require individualised culturally safe care because of the ongoing impact of loss of support during the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Mobility Regimes in Practice: Later-life Westerners and Visa Runs in South-East Asia

Abstract

Studies of Western migrants in South-East Asia emphasise the importance of privilege, work and location within national boundaries in the construction of contemporary subjectivities. This article examines the role and relevance of cross-border mobility through the eyes of older, Western ‘visa runners’ with limited financial resources. Drawing on migrant experience of dwelling in and moving through Penang, Malaysia, I address the ways in which the mobility regimes of immigration frameworks and visa regulations become a formative aspect or otherwise of social practice and belonging. In focusing on the personal and social experience of visa running, this article transcends a methodological nationalist focus on identities and subjectivities within national spaces and highlights the variable role of people, places and life history in the forming of multi-layered attachments across national spaces in South-East Asia.     

A user’s guide to Lisbon: mobilities,spatial apprenticeship and migrant urban integration*

This paper engages with the ‘mobility turn’ scholarship in order to provide tools for the study of migrants’ integration to urban space. The analysis of urban mobilities draws attention to the practical know-how that underlies mobility practices. I argue that migrants’ urban apprenticeship – that is, the ways migrants learn (to use) city spaces – shape their access to urban resources and their participation in urban life. Based on fieldwork conducted in Lisbon, Portugal, I explore how migrants’ urban knowledges play out in their everyday practices and resonate with broader concerns over migrant integration.     

城市房价、定居意愿与户籍差异——对农民工“流入而留不下”的一个解释

近年来中国城镇化的快速推进吸引了大量流动人口从农村流入城市,但是中国城镇化进程存在一个有别于西方国家农业人口迁移过程的现象尚有待解释:为什么有相当比例的农民工流入城市进行工作却不打算长期定居?利用中国地级行政区域宏观房价数据和流动人口动态监测微观数据建立模型,从房价对定居意愿影响的户籍差异角度,解释了大量农民工在城市工作却不打算长期定居的原因,实证结果发现:高企的房价抑制了农民工的定居意愿,但是对城-城流动人口并没有明显影响。从生活成本效应、财富效应以及稳定预期效应等三方面影响机制进行了解释:房价上涨引起的生活成本上升会降低流动人口的定居意愿;而房价上升会通过财富效应和稳定预期效应增强流动人口的定居意愿。对于农民工来说,由于生活成本效应在三种效应中起主导作用,因此房价上涨总体上降低了农民工定居意愿;而房价对城-城流动人口影响不显著的原因,一方面由于房价上涨能够给城-城流动人口带来更高的个人未来发展的稳定预期,另一方面则源于更小的生活成本效应。