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.     

‘Surrounded with so much uncertainty’: asylum seekers and manufactured precarity in Australia

In Australia, nearly 30,000 asylum seekers have the legal right to work, but their temporary and conditional migration status exposes them to work-related precarity. This article draws on a small qualitative study that examined asylum seekers’ experiences of seeking work and achieving economic security. Over an 18-month period, 29 semi-structured interviews with asylum seekers who had work rights in Australia were conducted. It provides insights into how restrictive immigration policies manufacture precarity through short-term, conditional visas, resulting in employer risk aversion, segmentation into insecure work, and in-work instability and mistreatment. Asylum seekers manage their experiences and feelings of pervasive insecurity through individual coping and survival strategies.     

Diaspora as aesthetic formation: community sports events and the making of a Somali diaspora

This paper uses the concept of aesthetic formation to examine the practices through which diasporic imaginations become tangible and experienced as ‘real’. The authors interpret sport as an embodied aesthetic practice through which diasporas materialise, with important implications for identification and belonging. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on a transnational community-based sports event, the Amsterdam Futsal Tournament, the paper discusses how articulations of Somali diasporism become tangible and embodied in subjects who participate in this event. The authors conclude that these materialisation practices can simultaneously elicit multiple forms and levels of belonging that also foster a sense of integration and belonging to the nation.     

Im/mobile highly skilled migrants in Qatar*

Most studies on the mobility of highly skilled migrants have been examined with a framework of global talent mobility and under conditions of neoliberal governance and economic globalization. In this study we challenge the notion of the hypermobile knowledge worker. Utilizing mixed methods, we examine the factors that attracted highly skilled migrants to Qatar and the conditions under which they might leave in the future. Rather than finding a group of footloose migrants attracted primarily to high-wage jobs, a lack of taxation or amenities, and with multiple alternative locations of residence, we find that highly skilled migrants exist on a spectrum of immobility. More significantly, this immobility depends on the migrant’s region of origin. For Asian and Western migrants immobility is attributed to the Kafala system or employer sponsorship, which hinders occupational and spatial mobility and ties workers to their sponsors. Arab highly skilled migrants are especially affected by lack of security and stability in their home countries, which makes these workers involuntarily immobile. The former group seem to be willing to accept a reduced level of agency and mobility for high income, whereas for the latter security and stability are more fundamental to their decision to come to Qatar.     

‘Refugees welcome?’ The interplay between perceived threats and general concerns on the acceptance of refugees – a factorial survey approach in Germany

The on-going migration of refugees to Europe has fuelled debates about the indigence of refugees and the perceived legitimacy of individual claims for asylum in different receptive countries. With a substantial body of research that has investigated the antecedents of attitudes towards immigrants, evidence on whether those underlying assumptions hold true for refugees as well remains scarce. The paper applies the framework of Intergroup Threat Theory to arrive at competing hypotheses with regard to the acceptance levels of refugees. We use pooled data from two probabilistic samples drawn in the German city of Dresden and apply a confounded factorial survey design to extend previous research on attitudes towards refugees. We find that natives perceive political persecution and war as justified reasons for seeking asylum in Germany, while socio-demographic characteristics of respondents and refugees are of minor importance. Foremost, the individual level of respondent’s fear of crime represents a crucial moderator of the perception of refugees as threatening.     

EU post-accession Polish migrants trajectories and their settlement practices in Scotland

The presence and the apparent permanence of post-accession EU migrants in the UK is of significant interest to both academics and politicians. Studies have debated whether migration from new accession countries to the UK mark a new type of migration often described as ‘liquid’ and ‘open ended’, or whether these migrants will settle in the new destination countries. Based on a qualitative study of Poles who have lived in Scotland for at least six years, we observed four typologies of what we call migrants’ settling practices: (1) stayers, (2) over-stayers, (3) circular and transnational migrants and (4) economic migrants. The findings from this study demonstrate that Polish migrants do not have fixed ideas about the duration of their migration (in terms of a sense of permanence) but instead focus on diverse links, anchors or attachments in Scotland and Poland in describing their settling practices. Thus, the main contribution the article makes is to present an in-depth understanding of what settlement means from the perspective of migrants themselves. This paper concludes by providing a short comment on implications of the outcome of the Referendum on EU membership ‘Brexit’ in June 2016 on Polish migrants settling practices.     

Struggle as opportunity: making sense of U.S. migration experiences through Buddhist practice

Recent scholarship demonstrates how immigrants rely on religion for resources and psychological and social support at various stages of migration. Many studies of religion focus on the institutional role of faith-based organisations, with little regard for the social importance of religious experiences in daily life. Using interviews with U.S. immigrants who identify as Buddhists, I examine how migrants use Buddhist philosophies as a lens for finding meaning in the struggles associated with migration, including language acquisition, employment, and legal status. Through their practice, migrants gain a sense of agency amid vulnerable circumstances. I also explore the potentially negative consequences of the practice’s individual focus, including the propensity to mask structural causes of inequality and impede possibilities for collective action.     

Implementing a diversity policy through public incentives: Diversity Plans in companies of the Brussels-Capital Region

ABSTRACT

The development of diversity policies in the private sector is mostly a result of a voluntary engagement of companies. When interested, they decide about the ways and goals of such policies, implications for human resource management and the inclusion of staff with a migration background. This article explores a specific situation in which public authorities offered support and resources to companies in order to develop diversity policies. I present a first analysis of the implementation dynamics of the Brussels Diversity Plan, a policy instrument launched in 2007 by the Government of the city-region of Brussels. Building on the theoretical tools of the political sociology of public policies, I use qualitative material (interviews and administrative documents) to explore implementation processes in three private companies. I show that public authorities can play a decisive role in developing diversity policies in the private sector through incentives rather than constraint. Yet, the room for manoeuver offered to companies leads to important variations regarding how processes unfold and the results achieved.     

Gendering international student migration: an Indian case-study

ABSTRACT

Despite the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into migration research, very few attempts have been made to gender international student migration. This paper poses three questions about Indian students who study abroad. Are there gender differences in their motivations? How do they negotiate their gendered everyday lives when abroad? Is the return to India shaped by gender relations? An online survey of Indian study-abroad students (n?=?157), and in-depth interviews with Indian students in Toronto (n?=?22), returned students in New Delhi (n?=?21), and with parents of students abroad (n?=?22) help to provide answers. Conceptually, the paper draws on a ‘gendered geographies of power’ framework and on student migration as an embodied process subject to ‘matrices of (un)intelligibility’. We find minimal gender-related differences in motivations to study abroad, except that male students are drawn from a wider social background. However, whilst abroad, both male and female Indian students face challenges in performing their gendered identities. The Indian patrifocal family puts greater pressure on males to return; females face greater challenges upon return.     

青岛市人口迁移特征及其对经济增长的影响

改革开放以来青岛市一直保持着人口净迁入的态势,人口净迁移率不但很高,而且一直在快速递增.同时,通过实证分析可知,青岛市的人均产出与人口净迁移之间存在很高的正相关性,净迁移人口对经济增长具有显著的影响.据此可以判定:随着青岛市经济的高速持续增长,同时随着户籍制度改革的不断深化,可以预计在今后较长的一个时期内,青岛还会继续保持较高的人口净迁入,并由此对经济发展产生积极的促进作用.