Cross-border mobility,transnationality and ethnicity as resources: european Somalis’ post-migration mobility practices

Based on a qualitative study, this article explores post-migration mobility practices developed by Somali women and men who have settled in Europe. It focuses on the ‘politics of mobility’, considering cross-border mobility an unequally distributed resource through which people access different forms of capital, and thus an element of social differentiation. The article reveals that respondents invest resources in places other than those where they acquired them, benefiting from a favourable symbolic exchange rate between the different places. Furthermore, while a significant part of the economic, social and cultural capital of these migrants is acquired within ethnically diversified contexts, it is mostly reinvested in networks and places where their Somali ethnicity becomes an asset—either in ethnically homogeneous networks or in activities that address Somali people's needs. Cross-border mobility, transnationality and ethnicity become core resources that enable these migrants to mobilise their capital where it can be valued most highly and to access advantageous social positions, thus fostering upward social mobility. The article argues that these strategies are less the result of an identity-based ethnic preference than a compensatory mechanism implemented by people who have few prospects of having their assets valued within the wider networks in their country of residence.     

How political migrants' networks differ from those of economic migrants: ‘strategic anonymity’ among Iraqi refugees in Jordan

The study of migrant networks has led scholars to believe that political migrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, utilise social networks in similar ways to economic migrants. This assumption is based on empirical investigations of South–North migration in which the Western receiving context is held constant. I argue that the utility of social networks is influenced by the reason for displacement and regional geopolitical frameworks. Like economic migrants, political migrants believe that they would benefit from networks; however, some political migrants must exercise caution in the face of potentially harmful new relationships in receiving countries. These political migrants practise strategic anonymity to navigate social networks. This refers to proactive acts of withholding personal information to maintain security for oneself and one's family. I rely on 30 interviews conducted between 2009 and 2010 with Iraqi refugees in Jordan displaced after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.     

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

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

社会人类学的都市族群研究

从社会人类学的视角对都市族群研究进行文献综述和理论回顾,并对我国都市族群研究的可能性方向和研究方法进行探索,指出我国都市族群研究至少包括三个领域:(一)海(境)外华人在中国都市的族群认同、文化认同、国家认同表述研究;(二)少数民族融入大都市之后的族群、文化与社会认同表述研究;(三)新移民进入都市之后的族群性地域认同研究。都市族群研究内容包括认同建构研究、文化表述研究、大都市人意识与身份的形成过程研究。在研究中应注意族群内心情感问题、族群形成过程问题、认同的理性选择问题和历史记忆在认同建构中的作用问题。     

Risky business and geographies of refugee capitalism in the Somali migrant economy of Gauteng,South Africa

Research on migrant livelihoods in South Africa reveals links between social exclusion and migrant ‘cosmopolitan tactics’, including multi-sited socialities, diverse spatial business strategies and orientations precluding integration into a ‘xenophobic’ host society. Drawing on 10 months of ethnographic research, this study explores how Somali migrants’ business practices and tactics of mobility within and beyond Gauteng Province, South Africa (which encompasses Johannesburg and Pretoria) articulate with both broader transnational flows and investments in the local economy. Since the end of apartheid, Somalis and other migrants from the Horn of Africa have carved out an economic niche in peri-urban townships where high risk and frequent movement characterise workers’ lives. The Somali enclave in the neighbourhood of Mayfair, Johannesburg, links local and national circulations of people, goods and money to international circuits of the Somali ethnic economy—an economy that also involves non-Somali groups, mainly from Kenya and Ethiopia. These diverse dynamics of human mobility and financial circulation complicate bounded conceptualisations of transnationalism and also illustrate how tactical cosmopolitanisms may be grounded in spatial and social arrangements. The convergence of migrant mobility and financial flows produces distinctive patterns of livelihood embedded in a multi-scalar geography of movement, remittance, investment, risk and opportunity.     

‘I'm not like all these Ecuadorians’. Promises and dilemmas of immigrants’ selective ethnicity appropriation

This article revisits my translocal ethnography of Ecuadorian immigration to Italy, building on the notions of ethnicization and selective ethnicity appropriation. The salience of an ethnic dimension, in the daily lives of the migrants I met, is explored with regard to collective identification, alignment with co-nationals and interactions with natives. By de-constructing migrants’ ethnicity from within, a range of expectations and strategies towards the receiving society emerges. While processes of ethnicization affect them in cognitive, discursive and practical terms, immigrants selectively draw from their ethnicity patterns, as their previous identities and lifestyles interact with the mainstream overseas. Their ethnicity – as a shared repertoire of habits, ways of life and common sense ideas, supported by a communal identity and background – can be purposefully negotiated in several respects, as they strive to negotiate better life conditions overseas. Why this occurs, under what conditions, and producing what effects, are the questions to be approached in this article. As I shall argue, ethnicity-related attitudes and behaviours raise opportunities and dilemmas both for migrants’ incorporation overseas and for their transnational connections.     

From diversity to conviviality: intra-EU mobility and international migration to Denmark in times of economic recession

ABSTRACT

This article explores differences among EU and non-EU migrants in accommodating to the Danish flexicurity labour and welfare regime during times of economic crisis. We build our findings on a quantitative survey followed by semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with EU and non-EU migrants who moved to Denmark during the recession period (2008–2013). We argue that the lack of multicultural policies triggers individualised strategies of accommodation rather than ethnic or national group base integration, favouring a more homogenous group of high-skilled and educated group of workers and students of postgraduate/higher education, whom we describe as a ‘flexicurity diversity group’. Through patterns of conviviality, individual socialisation is based here on common interests, needs and lifestyles and not on pre-defined ethnic and/or cultural traits. The transition from diversity to conviviality that is initiated by this group remains however incomplete in light of the unequal opportunities and the differentiated scheme of rights that apply to EU and non-EU immigrants. Danish flexicurity has thus not had the desired inclusive effects but discriminates in terms of facilitating easy access to the labour market for all, and ‘securing’ social benefits and offering rights and protection only to the privileged group of EU migrants.     

The transnational career aspirations of France’s high-achieving second-generation Maghrebi migrants

This article examines the mobility aspirations of France’s high-achieving second-generation Maghrebi migrants. Drawing on in-depth, open-ended interviews with students and graduates of grandes ecoles, prestigious higher education institutions, it delves into the career trajectories they intend to embark on beyond the French borders. Three distinct mobility projects are envisioned by the respondents. While some contemplate intensifying their ties with their parents’ homeland, others envisage moving to a ‘third space’ in which they have commonly lived during their studies and established strong connections. Another group of informants seek to set up hyper-mobile careers spanning multiple global-cities. The article suggests that the threat of discrimination and the desire to defy the nation-based assimilationist rhetoric frame the desire to set up transnational pathways. It further disentangles the role of educational resources, social capital in the places envisioned, as well as gender processes in informing these distinctive ways of engaging with the transnational among second-generation migrants. Lastly, the article examines the specific trajectories of respondents who intend to remain in France.     

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

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

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.     

Social reproduction in Sicily’s agricultural sector: migration status and context of reception

This article illuminates the social reproductive experiences of migrants labouring in Sicily’s (Italy) greenhouses. Current global transformations in agricultural production are intersecting with longstanding local economic and social realities, as well as with the 2007 Global Financial Crisis and EU enlargement, to make migrants, male and female, indispensable to a sector resorting to intensified informality in pursuit of flexible and cheap workers. Understanding social reproductive experiences as configured by migrant status and context of reception, the article includes analysis of interview and observational data with two nationalities of migrants – Tunisians and Romanians – occupying different positions in Italy’s migration regime. The article concludes that the harsh context of reception posed by labour market conditions, alongside a familialistic Italian welfare regime, largely precludes opportunities for proximate social reproduction for Tunisians and Romanians. In response, migrants develop transnational resilience strategies resting on cross-border actions combining market-, family-, community and State-based practices, to navigate the social reproductive challenges encountered. Such strategies, however, are less feasible for irregular migrants whose socio-legal position exposes them to the most exploitative working arrangements, denies them access to State welfare and renders them immobile. Moreover, for some regular migrants, such transnational resilience strategies are not their strategies of choice.     

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.     

Precarious intimacies – Europeanised border regime and migrant sex work

This article examines the meaning of borders – the spaces where immigration policies and restrictions are materially condensed – in the lives of migrant sex workers. I provide a theoretical and conceptual framework to discuss the role of borders in creating living and working conditions for sex workers within the European border regime. This regime both restricts and enables a structural background for migrant sex work. I argue that sex work scholars should pay closer attention to the heterogeneity of non-citizenship and the effects of different immigration statuses on the working conditions and forms of intimacies migrants create. Borders need to be viewed as institutions that produce social relations. I categorise these relations as precarious intimacies to describe the ways in which intimacy, commerce and borders often intertwine in the lives of migrants engaged in commercial sex work. The article draws upon 18-month ethnographic fieldwork among and interviews with migrant sex workers in Finland.     

Ethnic penalties? The role of human capital and social origins in labour market outcomes of second-generation Moroccans and Turks in the Netherlands

In Western Europe, the children of Moroccan and Turkish migrants were found to be significantly disadvantaged in the labour market. This ethnic gap was found to persist after considering differences in schooling, which was argued to reflect ‘ethnic penalties’ driven by cultural, religious, or racial factors. This study uses data from the 1st Wave of the ‘Netherlands Longitudinal Life-Course Study’ (2009–2010) to revisit the analysis of ‘ethnic penalties’ for second-generation Moroccans and Turks. Unlike in previous research, empirical analyses not only consider differences in schooling, but also skills and social origins. Results show substantial ethnic inequalities in the labour market, with the exception of women from Moroccan origins. For men, these ethnic inequalities do not disappear when human capital factors are considered, but they do when accounting for the unprivileged social origins of ethnic minorities. For women, the disadvantage of second-generation Turks in achieving privileged occupations clearly disappears when human capital and social origins are considered. Yet, the chances of being unemployed among women of Turkish origins persist after controlling for education, skills, and social origins. Overall, this study has global academic and public policy implications to understand the socioeconomic integration of the Moroccan and Turkish second generation in Western Europe.     

Migrants in liminal time and space: an exploration of the experiences of highly skilled Indian bachelors in Amsterdam

ABSTRACT

This paper sheds light on the relationship between individual agency, transnational social relations, geographic place, and cultural constructions of life phase and gender among highly skilled Indian migrants to the Netherlands. Amsterdam is attracting an increasing number of Indian migrants who work primarily in the fields of information technology, engineering and business management. The nature of this highly skilled work requires mobile, flexible workers, and therefore mainly attracts single men between 25 and 34. Their migrant experiences and choices are marked by a ‘performance of liminality’: migration is part of a coming of age ritual that both structures their lives and is structured by circumstances and agency. The experience of bachelors in particular can be understood as a ‘double liminality’ in that it is both temporary and spatial. Many of our bachelor informants felt they were ‘betwixt and between’ the socio-cultural expectations they grew up with and what they perceive to be Dutch or Western culture, and between those that pertain to childhood and to adulthood. They live on a metaphorical threshold, shaped by their masculine ideals, beliefs about ‘Indian culture’, their expected life trajectories, and their experiences in and expectations of the Netherlands and the city of Amsterdam.     

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.     

都市外来回族穆斯林社会网络的建构——以桂林市为例

社会网络是社会学研究中的一个重要分支领域。自20世纪90年代中期以来,中国学者开始运用社会网络的理论和方法分析城市中流动人口的问题。在多元异质文化的都市社会,外来回族穆斯林通过各种方式建构自己独特的社会网络。本文以桂林市外来回族穆斯林为研究对象,对其语言、饮食等体现其族群边界的最为突出的符号和宗教活动进行分析,提出了其社会网络建构的特点和所具有的现实意义。     

Student-workers and tourist-workers as urban labour: temporalities and identities in the Australian cosmopolitan city

ABSTRACT

Ethnic and cultural difference have long been regularly encountered and produced in Australian cities. However, these processes have predominantly been understood through the lens of permanent ‘settler’ migration. Recent migration policies are seeing increasing numbers of transnational workers residing in Australia with various noncitizen statuses and uncertain temporal horizons. Among these are student-workers and tourist-workers, who, although constructed through transient mobilities of education and leisure travel, play increasingly important roles in Australian cities as migrant labour. Drawing on fieldwork with student-workers and tourist-workers in Melbourne and Sydney, this paper seeks to examine how the temporal and legal status of these mobile subjects is entangled in complex ways with particular sites of production, consumption and labour within the cosmopolitan urban environment. It looks in particular at how the identities of student-workers and tourist-workers are constructed through specific temporal and spatial boundaries within urban space as well as how they are implicated within hierarchies of labour and spaces of cosmopolitan consumption. This highlights some of the complex socio-spatial relationships between and citizen and noncitizen subjects both within and across ethnic boundaries in the cosmopolitan city.     

Caste,kinship and the realisation of ‘American Dream’: high-skilled Telugu migrants in the U.S.A.

ABSTRACT

Literature on the Indian diaspora domiciled in the U.S.A. largely portrays the group as educated, highly skilled migrants in pursuit of their American Dream, without critically engaging with the regionally particularised migration trajectories that predispose only certain groups to become skilled migrants from the global South to the North. Migration studies bracket skilled migrants as those who make rational choices and choose formal routes to migrate whereas unskilled migrants often rely on informal channels of kinship or ethnicity to migrate. Unsettling this proposition, in this article, based on an ethnographic study of the high-skilled Telugu professionals in the U.S.A. and their families living in Coastal Andhra, India, I show how aspirational and topographical migration pathways from Coastal Andhra to the U.S.A. are created and sustained through networks of kinship, caste and endogamous transnational marriage alliances. These high-skilled migrants (doctors, engineers and scientists) from the dominant castes have successfully manoeuvred spatial mobility and social upward mobility by utilising ‘caste capital’ within a transnational social field. Moreover, decades of migration from the dominant castes have shaped a caste-inflected transnational habitus among its members who see migration of their youth to the U.S.A. as desirable, and at times, also inevitable.     

Professional remittances: how ageing returnees seek to contribute to the homeland

ABSTRACT

This article uses ageing Taiwanese returnees to illustrate how older migrants draw on their accumulated knowledge, experiences, and networks in their host society to contribute to their home society. Drawing on data collected from life history interviews with ageing return migrants, I argue that changing notions of social membership across life stages, coupled with the working experiences that professional middle-class migrants accumulate in the destination society, motivate ageing expatriates to return and devote their later lives to their home society. Specifically, I highlight how ageing migrants seek to bridge the gap between their ancestral and destination societies, further prompting social and cultural changes transnationally. Nevertheless, the extent to which ageing returnees can change their home society is conditioned by structural constraints already in place. Many ageing returnees cannot make as many changes as they would like, since they, as individuals, have trouble bringing about structural changes that require collective efforts. It is against this backdrop that many older returnees develop narratives of Americanisation (and insufficient Americanisation) to explain the difficulties that they encountered when trying to contribute to Taiwan. These narratives point to a hierarchy that ageing returnees believe exists between American and Taiwanese society.