Emplaced mobilities: Lisbon as a translocality in the migration journeys of Punjabi Sikhs to Europe

The arrival in Portugal of recent migrants from the Indian subcontinent is normally a secondary movement from within Europe tied to the search for a regular pathway into legal integration in the EU. However, as favourable migration policy is not paired with easy economic integration onward migration is common. We argue that such complex migration strategies cannot be amply explored through an origin–destination model; instead we suggest that a translocal perspective provides a framework to examine connections and experiences of emplacement in places of passage/reception like Lisbon. Through a qualitative study of the migration journeys and emplaced practices of Punjabi migrants in Lisbon, our findings highlight relationality between multiple scales, elucidating how agency and structure interact at micro and macro levels in shaping migration experiences and outcomes. We show how the materiality of local community structures ensures the navigation of daily life in the city and provides pathways toward legality contributing to wider mobility regimes. Moreover, we illustrate how onward migration represents an individual strategy to realise different aspects of integration in other EU destinations challenging nation-state-bound understandings of citizenship/settlement and integration.     

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.     

The Great Departure: Rethinking National(ist) Common Sense

This article argues that, in order to overcome the national(ist) common sense that continues to haunt everyday political and scholarly interpretations of mobility, scholars need not diagnose nationalism with greater vigour, but should rather move beyond facile diagnoses of nationalism. The article calls for a meticulous tracing of relations and practices of emplacement and displacement that ubiquitous national(ist) interpretive frames both co-opt and exceed simultaneously. The argument is elaborated on the basis of an analysis of historical articulations of emplacement and displacement in Latvian understandings of ‘the good life’. The article pays particular attention to the ways in which the figure of the migrant has emerged historically as an aberration to Latvian understandings of the good life. It also considers how this ethical configuration is being unsettled through massive labour migration to Western Europe—or ‘the Great Departure’.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Migration decision-making and migration industry in the Indonesia–Malaysia corridor

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the involvement of migration industry (MI) in the migration system of Indonesia and Malaysia. The two countries share an extensive border and have much in common in culture and history but they are very different in geographical size, population and economic development, the latter being a main cause for labour migration from Indonesia to Malaysia. The changing context of government policies generates new niches for migration services taken up by formal and informal intermediaries, thereby confronting migrants with a varied migration-decision field and thresholds during their migration process. Much of the migration is legal, but a large part of it also takes place outside the control of the national governments. While taking mental processes in migration decision-making as starting point, we analyse how the MI, by way of fostering, facilitating and controlling geographic mobility and localised employment, connects to the production and negotiating of three migration decision thresholds faced by migrants.     

The unseen protagonists. Ecuadorians’ daughters between Ecuador and Southern Europe

Scholars consider Latin American migration toward Europe to be a case study in the feminization of international migration. However, these studies have not focused on second-generation girls. Beginning from a gender and intergenerational approach, this paper stresses the agency role played by the reunified teenage daughters of Ecuadorian migrants both in Ecuador as well as in Southern Europe. The discussion is based on two transnational ethnographic studies conducted with Ecuadorian children aged 13–18 and their families in two medium-sized Southern European cities, Genoa and Seville, and in Ecuador between 2008 and 2011. First, the paper shows that girls carry out an essential task as caretakers in the transnational household, both in the point of origin and destination. Despite these responsibilities, they show a higher commitment to school, both in terms of time spent in school and their results. Secondly, it analyses how girls negotiate their role both inside and outside of the family, challenging the parents’ moral and sexual control strategies. The results disclose an identity struggle in the everyday lives of these girls: they participate in the migration project of the transnational family, but simultaneously they implement practices of resistance and renegotiation addressing the traditional division of gender roles.     

Pursuing the capabilities approach within the migration–development nexus

The ‘migration–development nexus’ has become an established development mantra with debate surrounding the ability of migration to promote economic growth and reduce poverty. The optimism of this debate is paired with a push to control migration through the promotion of temporary migration programmes and initiatives considered to support the regular movement of migrants. This dominant paradigm has come under criticism, however, for overlooking the multidimensional costs of migration for migrants and their families. As evidence on the costs of migration gathers, debates within policy and scholarly arenas have turned to how to integrate human rights into migration and development initiatives. The discourse surrounding this debate largely draws on the capabilities approach, which sees expanding human capabilities as the central role of development. In this paper, we analyse the resulting discourse and implementation of this approach to demonstrate how this theoretical framework is utilised to conceptualise diverse outcomes for migrant worker rights within global governance priorities for managing migration. We argue that greater attention is needed in the application of the capabilities approach in order to resonate with policy-makers without compromising the integrity of the approach or separating migrants from their intrinsic human rights.     

Motivations for mobility and settlement of Polish female migrants in Barcelona and Berlin

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on individual perceptions that shape migration decisions and investigates how the process of migration or settlement itself is framed by a variety of personal considerations. It is a comparative study of Polish female migrants in Barcelona and Berlin who moved for the sake of economic and educational opportunities, because of family reunification and formation considerations (‘move for love') – as well as other reasons. It is argued that the factors influencing women's decisions about continuous mobility or settlement are negotiated within social, cultural and economic transnational spheres and exchanges. In most cases, Polish women formed families with foreigners or Polish migrants in the host countries which contributed to their settlement decisions. Complex perceptions of life abroad juxtaposed with previous experiences and present ideas about life in Poland also influence decisions to move or settle. It is argued that the specific cultural, intellectual, economic and professional capital as well as the potential of these privileged EU migrant women accounts for their opportunity to choose and their specific freedom to make migration related decisions. A balancing of premises related to life-projects in both localities is an important aspect of the gendered experience of migration within Europe. It also brings attention to individual agency in a globalized world. The study is based on ethnographic research in Barcelona and Berlin that has been conducted since 2010.     

Citizenship in hard times: intra-EU naturalisation and the Euro crisis

Demarcated by growing austerity, economic uncertainty, and EU-exits, the past decade witnessed monumental shifts across the political and economic landscapes of Europe. Citizenship is a stabilising force in this era of crisis, particularly for intra-EU migrants. In this contribution, I examine how the Euro crisis impacted citizenship acquisition among these migrants. Building upon the model proposed by John Graeber’s article [2016. ‘Citizenship in the shadow of the Euro crisis: explaining changing patterns in naturalisation among intra-EU migrants.’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42 (10): 1670–1692], I discuss the relative importance of citizenship in times of crisis from global and regional perspectives. I argue Graeber’s theory presents a strong model for citizenship acquisitions during the crisis, yet leaves the core dyadic structure and several inconsistent findings unexamined. I replicate these models and introduce a dyadic model using bilateral data from 21 receiving and 23 sending states in Europe between 2007 and 2013. Contrary to Graeber’s theory, I find citizenship acquisitions among intra-EU migrants primarily coincide with increased in-migration, rather than influences of the Euro crisis. I conclude that while economic sending and receiving contexts matter, the Euro crisis did not appear to restructure intra-EU migrant citizenship incentives.     

Strengthening migration governance: the UN as ‘wingman’*

ABSTRACT

The plight of desperate migrants crossing the Mediterranean reached an inflection point in 2015 when an estimated 800 migrants drowned in a single day, painfully exposing dysfunctions in how States, regions, and the international community as a whole seek to govern a world with increased mobility of persons. By examining the response to the migration and refugee crises of recent years through the lens of the United Nations (UN), this article describes how States and the UN system are challenged to reconsider traditional hierarchies of power and influence since unilateral State action will not solve the migration problem. Migration solutions, particularly those providing greater protections for migrants in vulnerable situations, will require ‘coalitions of the willing’ between States, inter-governmental organisations, local governments and non-state actors. Still emerging, such coalitions are interdependent; and their objectives will be the result of negotiating and bargaining amongst their members. They reflect multi-level governance in the collective handling of migration, revealing a more complex interaction, one in which local authorities and non-state actors are in some instances bypassing State-led interventions. For its part, the UN – armed with recent institutional changes that provide it with more centralised ‘orchestration’ capacities – is best suited to serve in a ‘wingman’ function, buttressing rather than leading such coalitions.     

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.     

On the threshold: becoming Romanian Roma,everyday racism and residency rights in transition

ABSTRACT

This article examines the reaction of welfare state actors and ‘Romanian Roma’ migrants to the political environment on migration in the UK. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork between January 2013 and March 2014, the article focuses on how processes of everyday racism infused understandings of the legal framework for European migrants’ residency rights. The article first explores how state actors developed ideas about ‘Romanian Roma families’ as opposed to ‘Romanian-not-Roma families’ in a context marked by pervasive uncertainty about legal entitlements, welfare restructuring and decreasing resources. Second, I draw on new migrants’ accounts to identify their perceptions and understandings of discrimination placed within their previous experiences of racism and state violence. The article argues that processes of racialisation are subtly enfolded into everyday life shaping the narratives through which both welfare state actors and new migrants understand their situated experiences and future plans. The article reveals the small and mundane practices that reproduce racialised hierarchies which maintain the notion of ‘Roma’ as a group with particular proclivities and the affects for their socio-legal status as European migrants in the UK.     

The patterns of ‘care migrantisation’ in South Korea

Over the past couple of decades, researchers have documented a phenomenon called ‘migrantisation of care’, which is patterned by the national regimes of care and migration. By applying the ideas of social reproduction and care–migration intersections to the South Korean case, this paper investigates the interplay of care and migration policies through which migrants get involved for various care roles in different care settings. In the matrix of migration (regime) and care (regime) emerge two intersecting fields in South Korea: co-ethnic labour migrants in paid care work and marriage migrants in unpaid care work. The paper has found a growing demand for migrant care labour to address the care crisis in Korea, but the degree to which care work is migrantised varies significantly between childcare and eldercare as well as between home-based care and institution-based care. The paper not only geographically extends the care–migration intersection frame to an East Asian welfare state but widens its theoretical application to an under-explored pattern of care migrantisation, notably unpaid care provision by family migrants.     

Local deprivation and the labour market integration of new migrants to England

ABSTRACT

Using data on new migrants to England from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, we show how a key component of migrant integration - labour market progress in terms of wages and unemployment rates – is broadly positive in the early years after arrival across a range of migrant groups and across gender. However, the precise level of labour market success achieved varies considerably across groups reflecting both the initial entry-level and labour market trajectories after migration. Migrants from Western Europe and the Old Commonwealth countries have unemployment rates (wages) which are generally lower (higher) than other groups, particularly non-white groups, while migrants from the Accession countries experience relatively low unemployment but also low wages. Groups which have better outcomes on entry also tend to experience higher rates of progress over time in England. However, the extent of multiple deprivation in the local authority where migrants reside interacts with years since migration to dampen wage trajectories for some groups and accounting for deprivation highlights the importance of internal migration for access to employment. The results emphasise structural explanations for patterns of labour market integration of new migrants to England.     

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.     

Transnational highly skilled Finnish migrants in Europe: Choosing one's identity

When transnational migration begins to resemble internal mobility, as is the case in the European Union, is there any need for integration into the country of destination, or do intra-European migrants adopt a European identity? This article is based on data collected about highly skilled Finns who have moved within the EU. Most of them continued to form their identity around their country of origin. Nearly 60% of the migrants of the study also identified with Europe, while only one-third identified with their country of residence. The article argues that, for such privileged migrants, the possibility of choice is central to identity formation. Neither the national identity of the new home country nor a European identity per se can substitute the former, more important identity received through socialization. However, moving abroad does have an impact on the ways these migrants ‘do identity’. Adding a dimension of Europeanness to their existing national identity is a way of belonging to a greater collective when the localized identification with the country of residence is not required.     

Onward migration from Spain to London in times of crisis: the importance of life-course junctures in secondary migrations

This study examines one response of migrants to the challenging economic conditions caused by the 2008 financial crisis in Spain: onward migration. Focusing on Colombians and Ecuadorians who mobilise their newly acquired Spanish citizenship to migrate to London, I argue that their new migration is part of their migratory careers and that this process is different from that of Spain-born emigrants because it is marked by the first socioeconomic incorporation. Acknowledging that the crisis is the main driver of this new move, I draw a typology based on life-course junctures to show the differences in how onward migrants understand this new move and what their expectations are. There are three broad types of onward migrants: (1) mature, reluctant migrants, (2) mid-life, career advancement migrants and (3) young, independence-seeking migrants. What they do have in common is that, through their first migration, they have acquired a certain migratory knowledge of the process that shapes their paths and expectations.