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

ABSTRACT

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

Oiling the wheels? Flexible labour markets and the migration industry

ABSTRACT

The growing commercialisation of migration, often through a multiplicity of labour market intermediaries, is an issue of increasing academic interest. We seek to contribute to an emerging research agenda on the migration industries by exploring how one of the key actors that constitutes it, recruitment agencies, sits at the nexus between flexible labour market structures and migrant labour. Interviews with U.K. labour providers and low-wage employers form the evidence base for an analysis of the strategies developed by recruiters to derive commercial gain from connecting the so-called ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ sides of the flexible international labour market. We seek to contribute to understandings of the analytical categories within migration systems by illustrating how the migration industry interacts with other key stakeholders to structure international migration.     

Biała emigracja: variegated mobility of Polish care workers

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes migration of Polish healthcare and eldercare workers since Poland's accession to the European Union. The research indicates that while many Polish doctors, nurses, and caregivers ‘left’ Poland, they did not necessarily ‘stay’ abroad. Contemporary Polish migration has become ‘liquid’ and has often taken on a form of ‘pendulum’ or ‘circular’ migration and, in some cases, transnational commuting, especially in the early years following Poland's accession to the EU. These patterns are particularly evident among healthcare and eldercare workers whose flexible working schedules or life stages allow for retaining employment positions and households in Poland while taking short-term or prolonged leave of absence to work abroad. The research also suggests that different migration patterns are related to the characteristics of the place of migrant origin and the geographic distance or proximity of the destination countries. Residents of border towns can easily commute to cities on the other side of the frontier, while those who want to work in geographically more distant countries and cities must, by necessity, consider longer-term or permanent arrangements. The analysis of the variegated mobility of elder care workers is situated in the context of policy discussions related to care drain and care supply as well as quality of migrant care.     

Un/Free mobility: Roma migrants in the European Union

ABSTRACT

This special issue showcases work that theorises and critiques the political, economic, legal, and socio-historical (‘ethnic’ or ‘cultural’) subordination of the European Roma (so-called ‘Gypsies’), from the specific critical vantage point of Roma migrants living and working within and across the space of the European Union (EU). Enabled primarily through ethnographic research with diverse Roma communities across the heterogeneous geography of ‘Europe’, the contributions to this collection are likewise concerned with the larger politics of mobility as a constitutive feature of the sociopolitical formation of the EU. Foregrounding the experiences and perspectives of Roma living and working outside of their nation-states of ‘origin’ or ostensible citizenship, we seek to elucidate wider inequalities and hierarchies at stake in the ongoing (re-)racialisation of Roma migrants, in particular, and imposed upon migrants, generally. Thus, this special issue situates Roma mobility as a critical vantage point for migration studies in Europe. Furthermore, this volume shifts the focus conventionally directed at the academic objectification of ‘the Roma’ as such, and instead seeks to foreground and underscore questions about ‘Europe’, ‘European’-ness, and EU-ropean citizenship that come into sharper focus through the critical lens of Roma racialisation, marginalisation, securitisation, and criminalisation, and the dynamics of Roma mobility within and across the space of ‘Europe’. In this way, this collection contributes new research and expands critical interdisciplinary dialogue at the intersections of Romani studies, ethnic and racial studies, migration studies, political and urban geography, social anthropology, development studies, postcolonial studies, and European studies.     

Heritage corridors: transnational flows and the built environment of migration

ABSTRACT

In settler nations such as Australia, which have high migrant intakes, a category of cultural heritage practice has emerged that focuses on the material record of immigration. Currently, a nation-bounded approach tends to be taken to the recording and interpretation of this heritage, an approach that largely ignores the transnational social fields to which the immigrants who created the heritage places and buildings belonged. I propose the concept ‘heritage corridor’ to aid in conceptualising the transnational connectivity between migrant heritage sites in Australia and overseas locales as well as the bi-directional flow of ideas and capital that is often materially evident in the built environments, both rural and urban, encompassed by such a corridor. Focusing on Chinese overseas migration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I describe how transnational remittances were instrumental in the building of houses, temples, schools, shops, roads and bridges in Guangdong Province, many of which are now regarded as heritage items. As an example of how the field of heritage studies may productively dialogue with migration studies, new thinking on material agency is drawn upon to account for the way remittance-built houses become entangled in the lives and aspirations of those at opposite poles of a heritage corridor.     

Navigating the migration industry: migrants moving through an African-European web of facilitation/control

ABSTRACT

This paper approaches the African-European migration industry as a complex web of relations in which different actors liaise, objectives oppose each other, and roles overlap. Starting from this notion, the question emerges: How do migrants navigate this fuzzy web of migration facilitation/control? To answer this question, this paper uses a ‘trajectory ethnography’ that follows the im/mobility processes of migrants from West – and Central Africa to, and inside, Europe. In so doing, it particularly focuses on two practices that are related to the concept of social navigation. First, it concerns débrouillardise, a term that points to the power of improvisation, creativity and hustling. Second, it regards social negotiation, a term referring to the process of how migrants ‘massage’ their relations with important actors in the field. The findings stress the relational dimension of the migration industry in the sense that the functioning of one actor depends so much on the intentions and efforts of others. I conclude that we could enhance our knowledge on migration industries with studies that constantly shift between the perspective of the migrant, the social network, the facilitator and controller. Such a dynamic approach unpacks further the multiple efforts that produce migrant im/mobility.     

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

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

The EC hotspot approach in Greece: creating liminal EU territory

ABSTRACT

This article makes a theoretical argument stemming from our study of the European Commission’s hotspot approach to the management of migrant populations. It draws on empirical research findings from field research which took place on the island of Lesbos and in the city of Athens over the course of 20 months and links these to emerging critical studies of the new EU border regime. No clear definition exists of what comprises a hotspot: instead, the European Commission describes this as an integrated ‘approach’ for the enhancement of the capacity of member states to deal with crises resulting from pressures at the Union’s external borders. Effective in its ambiguity, the ‘hotspot approach’ therefore constitutes, as we argue, an integral part of the Europeanisation and institutionalisation of border management: a powerfully ambiguous dispositif in the EU’s emerging border regime. The article unpacks the notion of the hotspot from a historical perspective and explores the ways in which the hotspot contributes toward the culmination of European integration, paving the way for the flexible governance of mobility and asylum. We situate the hotspot within the historical shift of migration and mobility control from the border to the territory as a whole and conclude by arguing that the hotspot plays the role of a territorial incubator for the liminal EU territory: a paradigmatic space for a new form of governance that further disentangles territory from rights.     

Becoming cosmopolitan: encountering difference in a city of mobile labour

ABSTRACT

Many who move countries today do so for work, and labour mobility – both temporary and permanent – is the mechanism by which countless people (both movers and stayers) come into contact with cultural difference. The domain of mobile labour is thus an important context through which to consider the transformative possibilities of encounters with racial and cultural difference. Situated within debates on everyday multi-culture and vernacular cosmopolitanisms, this essay considers the question of intercultural encounter at work in relation to the layered histories of race and variegated citizenships of mobile labour in Singapore. Exploring the micro-nature of cosmopolitan practices, the paper considers under what labour conditions might an outward-looking cosmopolitan sensibility and a convivial openness to otherness emerge among migrant workers, as against a set of survival-based intercultural capacities. I reflect specifically upon two cases of ‘incongruous encounter’ in workplaces reliant on precariously employed migrant labour: a mainland Chinese man and a Filipina woman who, because of Singapore’s racialised system of work visas, find themselves working in South Asian restaurants in Singapore’s Little India. They both engage ‘cosmopolitan practices’, yet their sensibilities differ sharply. Their stories highlight how, in a place like Singapore, the ‘encounter’ needs to be understood within a regime of mobile labour, situated racial hierarchies, and a highly stratified system of work visas. I further suggest that situational factors such as the nature of work including its spatial and temporal qualities, the mixture of co-workers, and recognition relations with superiors all mattered in framing the affective atmospheres of encounter. In a context of forced encounter, I argue that learnt capacities to function and interact across difference should not necessarily be romanticised as a cosmopolitan sensibility.     

The microfoundations of diaspora politics: unpacking the state and disaggregating the diaspora

ABSTRACT

Recognising the need to unpack ?the ‘state’ and? ?problematise? the term? ‘diaspora’, in this special issue we examine the various actors within (and beyond) the state that participate in the design and implementation of diaspora policies, as well as the mechanisms through which ???diasporas?? are constructed by governments, political parties, diaspora entrepreneurs, or international organisations?. Ex??tant theories are often hard-pressed to capture the empirical variation and often end up identifying ‘exceptions’. We?? theorise these ‘exceptions’ through three interrelated? conceptual moves: First, ??we focus on? ??underst?udie?d? aspects of the relationships between states as well as organised non-state actors and their citizens or co-ethnics? abroad (??or at home – in cases of return migration).? Second, ??we? ??examine dyads of ?origin states and specific diasporic communities differentiated by time of emigration, place of residence, socio-economic status, migratory status, generation, or skills. T?hird??,? ?we ?consider? migration in its multiple spatial and temporal phases (emigration, immigration, transit, return??)? and ?how the???y?? inter?sect to?? constitute diasporic identities?? and policies. ??These? conceptual moves contribute to comparative research in the field and allow us to identify the mechanisms? connect?ing structural variable??s with ? specific policies by states ?(and other actors?) as well as responses? by the relevant ?diasporic ?communi?ties??.     

Real fake? Appropriating mobility via Schengen visa in the context of biometric border controls

ABSTRACT

Although the majority of illegalised migrants in the European Union are so-called visa overstayers who enter with a Schengen visa only to become ‘illegal’ once it has expired, this mode of illegalised migration has only received scarce attention in border and migration studies so far. This article takes the introduction of biometric visa as an opportunity to compensate for this neglect by asking: How do migrants appropriate Schengen visa in the context of biometric border controls? Drawing on the autonomy of migration approach (AoM), it investigates the visa regime from the perspective of mobility in order to elaborate on one set of practices of appropriation that involves the provision of falsified or manipulated supporting documents upon which the decision to issue a biometric visa is based. The article draws on this example to develop a conception of the notion of appropriation that addresses the two central criticisms which have been raised against the AoM. Besides contributing to the AoM’s development, the article thus introduces a concept in debates on migrant agency that highlights, better than existing concepts, the intricate intertwinement of migrants’ practices with the means and methods of mobility control.     

Gender and citizenship in academic career progression: an intersectional,meso-scale analysis in German higher education institutions

ABSTRACT

In tune with the fundamental shift in Germany’s skill-b(i)ased immigration policy since 2005, higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly becoming ‘magnets’ for a skilled migrant workforce. While ‘internationalisation’ is often understood as something to be celebrated and (further) accomplished, some observers speak of clear signs of discriminatory experiences among racialised and migrant academics. This is a new aspect, as social inequalities have by and large been considered in migration studies to be the sole terrain of labour mobility into less-skilled sectors of the economy. Meanwhile, abundant literature on gender and higher education shows that women academics have poorer access to career progression than men, demonstrating gender-based academic career inequalities. However, the insights generated in these two strands of scholarship have seldom been in conversation with one another. This paper takes stock of the lack of an intersectional perspective, focusing on citizenship and gender within HEIs as hiring meso-level organisations that are becoming increasingly transnationalised. It explores the intersectionality of citizenship and gender in accessing academic career advancement by examining three key career stages, that is, doctoral researchers, postdoctoral researchers, and professors, in two case-study HEIs.     

Debt,precarity and gender: male and female temporary labour migrants in Singapore

As one of Asia’s key hubs for transient workers, Singapore’s migration regime creates particularly gendered streams of labour, especially among lower skilled occupations, as is apparent in two key sectors – domestic work and construction work. Drawing on surveys with Bangladeshi construction workers and Indonesian domestic workers based in Singapore, as well as in-depth interviews with each group, this paper examines gendered issues of temporary labour migration, precarity and risk, as they occur against a backdrop of migrant indebtedness. In this paper, we argue that migrant indebtedness occurs along a spectrum that ranges from less visible, or what we call ‘silently’ incurred forms of debt, through to more ‘resonant’ types of debt that are acquired upfront and thus more readily quantifiable. Using this spectrum of migrant indebtedness, we aim to complicate debates about debt-financed migration by underscoring the ways in which notions of debt and unfreedom can be imbricated with both constraints and opportunities for migrants’ agency.     

Enabling,structuring and creating elite transnational lifestyles: intermediaries of the super-rich and the elite mobilities industry

ABSTRACT

This article considers how the migration industries lens can be usefully employed in understanding how professional intermediaries enable, structure, and create transnational migration lifestyles of the super-rich. In particular, we examine how intermediaries and their services (1) enable the continued sustenance of transnational migration lifestyles for this group of elites; and (2) structure and create elite transnational lifestyles. This article primarily draws on interviews with professional intermediaries who service the super-rich, and content analysis of their websites and brochures. Inspired by insights from the new mobilities paradigm (and in particular the politics of mobility), we argue for an expanded conceptualisation of the migration industries beyond the literature’s current focus on labour recruitment and migration management. Specifically, we suggest thinking of the migration industries as a collection of actors and services that enable, structure, and create different types of ‘migrants’, their spaces and their highly uneven transnational mobilities – including that of the super-rich and their elite transnational lifestyles. We conclude with suggestions for a research agenda that may help to better understand the role of intermediaries in the creation of differentiated mobilities.     

Pushed to Africa: emigration and social change in China

This essay explores the dynamics of recent labour migration from China to Africa through the prism of migrant narratives. Drawing on field research in Ethiopia and China the author links migrants’ motives for, and experiences of, migration to social transformation in China: most notably a shift away from the flurry of optimism and idealism to a mood of careful conformism fuelled by a prevailing yearning for a sense of security and a fear of ‘missing out’ in a competition for resources. Migrants expressed being ‘pushed’ to Africa. Their attitudes stand in relief to the dreams about ‘making it’ that have propelled many Chinese to the West. By examining how these migrants imagine time and space, displacement and emplacement, the author sheds light on the distinct characteristics of Chinese migration to Africa, as well as on the relationship between emigration and social change.     

Regimes of Mobility Across the Globe

Mobility studies emerged from a postmodern moment in which global ‘flows’ of capital, people and objects were increasingly noted and celebrated. Within this new scholarship, categories of migrancy are all seen through the same analytical lens. This article and Regimes of Mobility: Imaginaries and Relationalities of Power, the special issue of JEMS it introduces, build on, as well as critique, past and present studies of mobility. In so doing, this issue challenges conceptual orientations built on binaries of difference that have impeded analyses of the interrelationship between mobility and stasis. These include methodological nationalism, which counterpoises concepts of internal and international movement and native and foreigner, and consequently normalises stasis. Instead, the issue offers a regimes of mobility framework that addresses the relationships between mobility and immobility, localisation and transnational connection, experiences and imaginaries of migration, and rootedness and cosmopolitan openness. The introduction highlights how, within this framework and its emphasis on social fields of differential power, the contributors to this collection ethnographically explore the disparities, inequalities, racialised representations and national mythscapes that facilitate and legitimate differential mobility and fixity. Although the authors examine nation-state building processes, their analysis is not confined by national boundaries.     

Migrating rituals: negotiations of belonging and otherness among Tamils in Norway

ABSTRACT

By examining a funeral ritual devised by Tamil refugees living north of the Arctic Circle in Norway, I argue that the study of migrant rituals offers new insights into migrants’ senses of belonging, identity and wellbeing. Within a context of the exclusion and inclusion of cultural minorities, I describe the process of creating a funeral ritual that involves encounters between local Norwegians and Tamil refugees. The funeral followed the sudden death of a Tamil worker at the local fish plant as a result of a freak accident. The article focuses on how the Tamils’ work of devising and performing the funeral speaks to local migrant experiences of living on the boundaries between the Tamil and Norwegian life-worlds. A centrepiece of the case study involves a young widow, thus the analysis includes social and cultural dimensions of widow- and womanhood, while also highlighting issues of migration and the shared human condition. In conclusion, I underscore the way in which the migrant ritual, embodiment and (Othering) discourse cohere together to form a temporal phenomenon that responds to the present-ism of human life.     

Patterns of im/mobility,conflict and the re/making of identity narratives*

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the interrelationship between patterns of im/mobility on the one hand and the reconstitution of social collective identities and the related emergence or settlement of conflicts on the other. The main arguments are (1) that the im/mobility of a social or cultural group has major impact on how identity narratives, a sense of belonging and relationships to ‘others’ are shaped, and vice versa, and (2) that these dynamics are closely interlinked with mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion between groups and power structures that involve a broad variety of actors. Mainly looking at patterns of internal mobility such as ‘traditional’ or strategic mobilities and mobilities enforced by crisis, conflict or governmental programmes and regimes, the contribution provides the conceptual background for a special issue that aims to go beyond currently predominant issues of transnational migration. Established or emerging dynamics of (non-)integration and belonging, caused by im/mobility, are analysed on a cultural and political level, which involves questions of representation, indigeneity/autochthony, political rights and access to land and other resources. Conflict situations in contexts of mobility involve changes in the social understanding and renegotiation, reconstruction or reproduction of group identities and narratives with reference to certain socio-political and historical patterns. The legitimation of rights and access to various forms of citizenship and mobility need to be understood against the backdrop of emerging or established mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion between groups, which trigger or settle conflicts and make social identities to be constantly renegotiated.     

States and standardisation: constructing the co-ethnic migrant story in Germany

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the standardisation of stories about diaspora return (also called ‘co-ethnic migration’ or ‘repatriation’). Using the concept of ‘standards’, the author analyses how the German state distributes certain texts about diaspora history over others, forming a legible and homogenous narrative of co-ethnic migrant identity. The article is based on a critical discourse analysis of texts relating to Russian–German history and analysis of biographical narratives of co-ethnic Germans residing in Germany. The study identifies mechanisms by which states homogenise narratives, and to understand which co-ethnic history and identity constructions are reproduced by the state, and which are silenced. This approach enriches the study of diasporas in two ways: first, it sheds light on how states govern diaspora members who have migrated ‘back’ to their ‘origin’ countries; second, it departs from the state-centric approach prevalent in the study of diaspora governance by focusing on stories told by diaspora members.     

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.