Return Visits as a Marker of Differentiation in the Social Field

Abstract

This article sets out to examine how differences within a migrant community are expressed through return visits, and particularly through visitors’ narratives about their country of origin. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Burundians living in Norway and the UK, I argue that the Burundian social field is characterized by two opposing positions regarding the possibility of return, and that the political field in the country of settlement plays an influential role in how those two positions are defined. Two narratives called ‘instability and alienation’ and ‘progress and opportunities’ from return visits are used to express support for one or the other of these two positions. I also argue that Bourdieu’s conceptualization of social practice is highly relevant for migration research because it allows for analysing differences within a migration community, and that the advantages of combining habitus, capital and field should be further explored, both theoretically and comparatively.     

Challenging the comfort zone: self-discovery,everyday practices and international student mobility to the Global South

This paper scrutinises the underlying motivations of short-term international students by unpacking the notion of ‘leaving the comfort zone’ for self-discovery and self-change. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Canadian exchange students volunteering and studying in the Global South, the paper contributes to scholarship on everyday and emotional geographies of international student mobility and wider debates in mobility by examining how emotions of comfort and discomfort as well as everyday practices are productive for self-discovery, belonging, home-making and distinction. It reveals how students align the boundaries of their comfort zone and an un/reflexive self along the international and imaginative borders of the Global North/South. Contrary to tourism and mobility studies, I argue that students view everyday life and their relative immobility while abroad as both a distinctive and reflexive exercise. I suggest that students want to extend the boundaries of their comfort zone and their sense of ‘home’ to the Global South.     

Transnational Mobilties in Snowboarding Culture: Travel,Tourism and Lifestyle Migration

Abstract

Drawing upon global ethnographic methods conducted in six countries over seven years, this paper offers the first in-depth examination of the transnational flows and corporeal mobilities in the contemporary physical culture of snowboarding. Focusing on the travel and migration experiences of various groups of snowboarders (that is, tourists, professional athletes and lifestyle sport migrants), and engaging recent work by human geographers, as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s key concepts of field, capital and habitus, this paper reveals fresh insights into the lived transnationalism and global migration of contemporary youth facilitated by the ‘action’, ‘alternative’ or ‘extreme’ sports economy.     

Transit boundaries: race and the paradox of immobility within mobile systems

ABSTRACT

The central city is once again hot. Many city areas where poor minorities were left behind during the decades-long suburban growth are experiencing a revival. New high-rise condominiums and other developments are drawing tens of thousands back to city spaces that were once considered undesirable. These ‘return to the city’ trends are supported in part by growth machine engines, such as Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and TIF (Tax Increment Financing) districts, often to the detriment of lower-income minority residents, who still find themselves trapped within the boundaries of spatial inequalities in the city. Drawing on six years of ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago, I show how public transportation is used to buttress the city’s growth machine, while simultaneously maintaining the boundaries of spatial and other types of inequalities. In doing so, I highlight how public transit is used to create and support growth along race (and class) lines. Specifically, I show how mobility and growth for Whites and predominantly White spaces in the city are proactively shaped through favorable new public transit development and revitalization initiatives such as TOD and TIF. At the same time, in predominantly Black and Latinx spaces, where intracommunity public transportation usage is high, new transit related development is below sparse or completely lacking, further fortifying transit and other spatial boundaries.     

Forum 2: the migrant climate: resilience,adaptation and the ontopolitics of mobility in the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT

While modernist or ‘top-down’, ‘command-and-control’ approaches to climate and migration worked at the surface or ontic level of the redistribution of entities in time and space, resilience approaches call for a different approach to mobility. These discourses construct mobilities that are more transformative; in fact, ones that question traditional liberal modernist notions of time and space and of entities with fixed essences. These mobilities do not concern moving entities in space but rethinking mobility in relation to space. Mobility then becomes more a matter of changing the understandings and practices relating to spaces and entities than of moving things from one place to another. Becoming ‘mobile’ thus would apply to the development of capabilities or ‘response-abilities’ to sense, adapt, recompose, repurpose and reimagine problems and possibilities; taking responses to crises beyond the static and binary conceptions of mobility and space.     

When People Stay and Things Make Their Way: Airports,Mobilities and Materialities of a Transnational Landscape

Abstract

This article explores different meanings of mobility and place by examining the interweaving of people, things and airports in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two airports – of departure and arrival of this migratory route – I look at the practices of sending and receiving objects by migrants in Lisbon and their kin in Bissau. The transnational yet grounded setting helps to provide a better understanding of the complexity associated with different forms of mobility – including corporeal, imagined and desired – and their key role in socially and relationally constructing a lived airport space, as well as wider social landscapes. Bringing in evidence from a less-explored setting – a small airport in a West African country – will particularly challenge some of the assumptions that tend to associate mobility with ‘modernity’ and fixity with ‘tradition’. It will show how people in Guinea-Bissau are, as much as migrants abroad, dynamically involved in global practices of movement – materialised in trading and reciprocating objects between two continents – through local performances of mobility that do not necessarily involve corporeal travel across borders.     

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.     

Environmental influences on African migration to Canada: focus group findings from Ottawa-Gatineau

There is limited empirical evidence of how environmental conditions in the Global South may influence long-distance international migration to the Global North. This research note reports findings from seven focus groups held in Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada, with recent migrants from the Horn of Africa and francophone sub-Saharan Africa, where the role of environment in migration decision-making was discussed. Participants stated that those most affected by environmental challenges in their home countries lack the financial wherewithal to migrate to Canada. Participants also suggested that internal rural–urban migration patterns generated by environmental challenges in their home countries underlay socioeconomic factors that contributed to their own migration. In other words, environment is a second- or third-order contributor in a complex chain of interactions in the migrant source country that may lead to long-distance international migration by skilled and educated urbanites. These findings have informed the scope and detail of a larger, ongoing empirical study of environmental influences on immigration to Canada.     

Multiple Migration Flows of Romanians

Abstract

Most studies on international migration examine population movement between a country of origin and a destination. This article aims to show that migrants often change destinations, a less studied pattern of ‘multiple migrations’. This article explores how such migration occurs and analyses the variables accounting for it. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork research amongst Romanian migrants in Portugal, the article concludes that the growth in multiple migrations of Romanian migrants throughout Europe can be explained by a combination of migration policies and social networks, mediated by migrants’ level of education and type of occupation at the destination.     

Everything changes to stay the same: persistent global health inequalities amidst new therapeutic opportunities and mobilities for Filipino nurses

ABSTRACT

The global migration of Filipino nurses has received significant attention, yet little is known of these healthcare workers’ experiences and mobilities within the Philippines. I explore the experiences and narratives of Filipino nurses living in Manila, some of whom have no desires to migrate. I uncover the often novel forms of therapeutic mobilities undertaken by these nurses, focusing on call centre nursing and entrepreneurship as key alternative career pathways within the realms of ‘therapeutics’. Through interrogating the various mobilities undertaken by nurses – physical mobilities and migration, socioeconomic mobilities and occupational mobilities in the form of a career change – it becomes clear that international physical mobility is no longer key. Nevertheless, Filipino nurses continue to provide care in global contexts in novel ‘therapeutic’ industries and doing so allows them to increase their socioeconomic mobility.     

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 maternity experiences of women seeking asylum in high-income countries: a meta-ethnography

ProblemThe maternity care experiences and perinatal outcomes of women seeking asylum in high-income countries (HICs) are poorer than the general population of pregnant women in that HIC. There is a paucity of literature on the maternity experiences of women seeking asylum in HICs.BackgroundThere is an increasing number of women seeking asylum in HICs due to escalating violence and human rights abuses. Asylum-seeking women are a distinct group whom are likely to have different needs to refugees or migrants as a result of their undocumented status.AimThis literature review aimed to explore the emotional, physical and health information needs of women seeking asylum in the perinatal period in HICs, to provide insights to better address their maternity needs.MethodA meta-ethnography described by Noblit and Hare, was applied to analyse the studies, to reflect the voices of women seeking asylum, hosted in HICs in their perinatal period.FindingsEight studies were included in the review. The overarching theme was ‘just having to survive.’ Four sub-themes were revealed which highlighted the vulnerability of asylum-seeking women. They included: ‘I was never sure if I had understood’, ‘feeling ignored and alone’, ‘ongoing dislocation and recurrent relocation’ and ‘knowing there’s someone who cares for you’.DiscussionImproved maternity care for women seeking asylum requires culturally appropriate respectful maternity care and supportive strategies such as consistent access to language services.ConclusionIt is recommended that future research is targeted to explore the maternity experience of women seeking asylum in HICs, such as Australia.     

Enacting Music Scenes: Mobility,Locality and Cultural Production

Abstract

Cluster theories assume ‘locality’ to be a bounded and fixed spatiality characterized by shared worlds-of-life, strong ties and co-presence. This paper contests the immobility of such a definition. Drawing on the case of Santiago’s experimental music scene, in Chile, I argue for a mobile, transient and fluid approach to localized (cultural) economies. The empirical evidence indicates that Santiago’s experimental music scene – an innovative and productive de facto cluster – performs (and unrolls) a decentered, episodic and itinerant geography enacted by porous, technologically mediated and contingent projects. These results call for new perspectives when thinking about economic innovation in general and cultural clusters within transitional cities in particular.     

Push-factors in Emigration: The Case of the Province of Zeeland in the Nineteenth Century

Despite a low emigration rate compared to other European countries in the last century, Dutch emigration has been well studied, mainly because of the very fine state of the records. This paper seeks to contribute to general issues in emigration by considering data from a limited but important area, the province of Zeeland in The Netherlands, which was one of the principal contributors to Dutch emigration to North America during the nineteenth century. The subject-matter is the motivation of those emigrants, and the analysis concentrates on factors in the place of origin. ‘Pull-factors’ that attract emigrants to their destinations are acknowledged to be important, but are not studied here; a wide range of social, economic, and political variables in Zeeland are computed. Two sets of factors are found to govern the ‘push’ : the first are deprivation factors, such as epidemics, bad harvests, poverty, and persecution. At the same time, it is posited that many emigrants left for precisely the opposite reason : that things were going well in the home country. Besides revealing something of the migration process itself, this approach has the advantage of increasing our understanding of the country of origin or ‘push-area’, where other sources may be incomplete or ambiguous.     

Ludic Mobilities: The Corporealities of Mobile Gaming

Abstract

Traditional critiques of computer and video games argue that the ‘magic circle’ defines the parameters of game‐play, marking off a temporary world wherein particular game rules apply. In this view, to play a game means, materially or conceptually, ‘entering’ the magic circle of the game. Yet, increasingly, online multiplayer games, mobile location‐based games (LBGs) and hybrid reality games (HRGs), erode the notion of a magic circle or dedicated game‐space. In this paper I examine the hybrid ontologies and realities that typify networked and mobile location‐based and hybrid reality games, exploring some of the phenomenological, embodied or somatic aspects of the practices and perceptions of ‘mixed reality’ gamers. A number of alternative corporeal and ontological metaphors for game worlds are proposed as substitutes for the magic circle, including the porous and organic cell membrane, the permeable window or frame, and the network. The composite, interconnected and dynamic ontology of the network trope, it is suggested, provides a more authentic figuration of the game environments specific to LBGs and HRGs, and also helps us to interpret the ‘playful turn’ in contemporary new media culture and the infiltration of a ludic sensibility into the mobilities and practices of everyday life.     

The Reconstruction of a Social Network Abroad. An Analysis of the Interaction Patterns of Erasmus Students

Abstract

Most studies of interaction patterns of international students focus on ‘degree mobility’ and flows from ‘non-Western’ towards ‘Western’ countries. Nevertheless, in Europe, the shorter alternative of ‘credit mobility’ is more prevalent. However, empirical evidence on social network formation within this specific group of international students remains limited. Therefore, in this article, we study the formation of interaction patterns of students who study for a delineated period in another European country, based on a research project conducted in Austria, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Poland and the UK. The results show that specific interaction patterns can be explained from a flow perspective. Moreover, our study shows that students’ networks abroad are already formed before actual departure. In addition, we provide empirical evidence that institutional as well as group practices encourage or impede interaction between exchange and local students. Two transversal dimensions are especially relevant in the explanation of how groups are formed abroad: language proficiency and shared social spaces.     

Digital navigation and the driving-machine: supervision,calculation, optimization,and recognition

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I explore the navigational implications of a possible driving world. In the last few years, autonomous vehicles (AVs) have garnered significant attention, with much of this scrutiny centered on the technical possibilities, legal restrictions, and utilitarian ethics of AVs. In this paper, I look at how AVs are radically transforming the nature of navigational decision-making. Research into the automation of industrial processes and aircraft fly-by-wire systems suggests that navigational supervision, by humans, will become a significant duty, recalibrating navigation itself. I draw out the implications of automation through three navigational practices of the ‘driving-machine’ I refer to as route-calculation, terrain-optimization, and object-recognition. Attending to these practices assists in the ongoing interrogation of the machinic rendering of automobile space.     

Lifestyle Mobilities: The Crossroads of Travel,Leisure and Migration

Abstract

This article examines how the mobilities paradigm intersects with physically moving as an ongoing lifestyle choice. We conceptualise a lens of ‘lifestyle mobilities’ that challenges discrete notions of and allows for a wider grasp of the increasing fluidity between travel, leisure and migration. We demonstrate how contemporary lifestyle-led mobility patterns contribute to and illustrate a breakdown in conventional binary divides between work and leisure, and a destabilisation of concepts of ‘home’ and ‘away’. We unpack issues of identity construction, belonging and place attachment associated with sustained corporeal mobility, and conclude by suggesting avenues for the further study of lifestyle mobilities.     

The im/mobilities of ‘sometimes-migrating’ for abortion: Ireland to Great Britain

ABSTRACT

This paper furthers the concept of im/mobilities through an investigation of the reproductive mobilities of women migrating for abortion from Ireland (north and south) to Great Britain. Where more often the focus of reproductive mobilities concerns the movement of people and matter in order to reproduce, there is less (although some) attention to movement aligned with the prevention of reproduction. We consider the variegated im/mobilities of conception not brought to birth, in the frictional movement of people, things, ideologies and imaginations in staying with and moving beyond the dichotomy of mobility and immobility. We engage in transdisciplinary dialogue between mobilities and migration studies. Hence, underlying this exploration is the concept of the ‘sometimes-migrant’, used to challenge binary oppositions between mobility and immobility, broader conceptualisations of ‘migrants’ as ‘exceptional’, and more specifically the notion of travelling for abortion as ‘abortion-tourism’. We adopt the call to focus on different incarnations of the ‘sometimes-migrant’ in the form of women travelling temporarily across national borders of intermittent porosity in order to seek care that is not available in their own country. Intersections of migration and mobilities reveal the ways women are im/mobilised through geopolitical and cultural practices at local and global scales.     

Gambling Drivers: Regulating Cultural Technologies,Subjects, Spaces and Practices of Mobility

Abstract

In this article, we analyse intersections between gambling and driving as everyday cultural practices of mobility. Building on Nikolas Rose’s argument that subjects in post‐industrial democratic societies are governed through appeals to ‘freedom’ rather than through overt forms of coercion or organised campaigns of state propaganda, we explore the different ways that producers, regulators and consumer advocates involved in gambling and driving appeal to our ‘powers of freedom’. We demonstrate that promotional and regulatory discourses of driving and gambling rely on a concept of freedom as self‐regulation. And we argue that the cultivation of social responsiveness is needed to address some of the problems created by individualising practices, spaces and technologies of mobility currently offered by automobiles and poker machines.