Back to Brit: retired British migrants returning from Spain

Since the seminal research of O'Reilly, Karen [2000. The British on the Costa del Sol. London: Routledge] and King, Russell, Anthony Warnes, Allan Williams [2000. Sunset Lives: British Retirement Migration to the Mediterranean. New York: Berg Publishers] about British citizens on the Costa del Sol there has been a surge in the publication of lifestyle migration papers, books and research. Nonetheless, there is a part of the lifestyle migration process that has been rarely explored: a return move to the country of origin following retirement migration. Research has indicated a broad increase in the number of older British returnees, yet there has been no substantive research on the topic. This paper therefore attempts to fill this gap by using Spanish registry data to examine the number of British retirees since 2009 who have returned to the UK. In addition, the results of an electronic survey to older British people in Spain are presented which suggest that considerable numbers of British citizens aged over 55 living in the Northern Costa Blanca are likely to return in the next few years. These data therefore indicate the relevance of return migration from Spain to the UK as a significant issue to the academic community as well as to British and Spanish policy-makers.     

Europe's failed ‘fight’ against irregular migration: ethnographic notes on a counterproductive industry

Despite Europe's mass investments in advanced border controls, people keep arriving along the continent's shores under desperate circumstances. European attempts to ‘secure’ or ‘protect’ the borders have quite clearly failed, as politicians themselves increasingly recognise – yet more of the same response is again rolled out in response to the escalating ‘refugee crisis’. Amid the deadlock, this article argues that we need to grasp the mechanics and logics of the European ‘border security model’ in order to open up for a change of course. Through ethnographic examples from the Spanish-African borders, the article shows how the striving for border security under a prevailing emergency frame has generated absurd incentives, negative path dependencies and devastating consequences. At Europe's frontiers, an industry of border controls has emerged, involving European defence contractors, member state security forces and their African counterparts, as well as a range of non-security actors. Whenever another ‘border crisis’ occurs, this industry grows again, feeding on its own apparent ‘failures’. This vicious cycle may be broken, the article concludes, once policy-makers start curtailing the economies of border security underpinning it – yet the challenges are formidable as the industry retrenches along with the political response to the drama it has itself produced.     

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.     

The renationalisation of migration policies in times of crisis: the case of Norway*

Securing collective action in the field of asylum regulation is high on the European political agenda. In this article, we look at one country's partial pullback from the regional cooperation during the high influx of asylum seekers in 2015. We use Norway as a case to analyse the challenges to common European asylum regulations and the drivers of a region-wide tendency of what we call renationalisation. Against this background, we seek to contribute to the discussion on the dynamics of Europeanisation and the future of the Common European Asylum System. While the Europeanisation of migration policies has been well covered in the literature, tendencies of renationalisation have been less so. To contribute to the knowledge base, we create a typology of the drivers of renationalisation. These drivers include necessary political and institutional preconditions, resource limitations, triggers, expectations and aspects of time.     

Migrant women’s economic success in Russia: objective reality and subjective assessment

This study contributes to the growing body of literature on the outcomes of labour migration by focusing on the effects of migrant legal status on the economic and perceptual measures of migration success. To study the effects of legal status, we use a sample of Central Asian migrant women who work in Russia and of their native counterparts who occupy the same positions on the labour market. Similar to the studies in the developed settings, we find that a temporary legal status is associated with an earnings penalty and that permanent legal status corrects this earning disparity. We also find that both temporary and permanent migrant status is positively associated with perceptions of pay inequality but that, irrespective of these perceptions, both types of migrants are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs than natives. We interpret these findings within the legal and social context of migrant economic incorporation in Russia and relate them to the findings from other migrant-receiving settings.     

Negotiated identities: Male migration and left-behind wives in India

This paper examines the impact of husbands’ migration on the lives of women left behind. Using data from the India Human Development Survey 2005, we focus on two dimensions of women’s lives: women’s autonomy and control over their lives; and women’s labour force participation. Results suggest that household structure forms the key mediating factor through which husbands’ absence affects women. Women not residing in extended families are faced with both higher levels of responsibilities and greater autonomy, while women who live in extended households do not experience these demands or benefits.     

How useful are the demographic surveys in explaining the determinants of early marriage of girls in the Terai of Nepal?

In recent decades significant changes in Nepalese society have greatly contributed to the increase in age at marriage of girls in Nepal. Factors responsible for these changes include educational development, urbanization and development of mass communications. However, many parents still marry their daughters at very young ages and this practice is particularly prevalent in the Terai region. This paper examines several demographic data sets with a view to assessing their utility for understanding the determinants of early age of marriage of girls in the Terai. The Nepal Family Health Survey (1996), Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys (2001, 2006), the Nepal Adolescents and Young Adults Survey (1999) and the 2001 Population Census of Nepal describe changes in at marriage over time. Factors such as sex, religion, education, geographic region, place of residence (rural/urban), economic status of the household and of women, and occupation are included in these data sets. However, other factors such as age at menarche, dowry and cost of marriage and cross-border marriage migration, which have been found to affect the prevalence of the lower age at marriage of girls in the Terai region, have not been included in the existing demographic surveys. Findings from the current study suggest that these variables should be included in future demographic surveys.     

Is demography destiny? The role of structural and demographic factors in Australis past and future labour supply

Following the release of the Intergenerational Report, the Australian Treasury identified the levers to address the economic effects of demographic ageing as ‘the three Ps’: population, participation and productivity. To date, the first ‘P’, population, has been treated as an exogenous factor, with the common view being that there is very little that the government can do to supplant demographic ageing. Focusing upon labour supply, this paper shows how variation in Australia’s underlying demography can significantly alter Australia’s future labour supply. Although governments cannot redirect the cohort flow component of population ageing, much can be achieved in promoting growth of the labour supply by maintaining or increasing fertility (in the longer term), or increasing targeted migration (in the short to medium term). This paper also decomposes the relative role of cohort flow, changing demography and changing labour force participation on the growth of the labour supply over the past 20 years. Over this period, the entry of the baby boom generation (cohort flow) and increased labour force participation of women accounted for almost all of the growth in the labour force. Changing demography had very little effect. However, Australias future labour supply will not include a large increase in cohort flow (as caused by the baby boomers) or a very large increase in female labour force participation. Regardless of the assumptions used, labour supply growth will be considerably lower in the next and subsequent 20 years, when compared to the previous 20.     

Immigration: Not a Solution to Problems of Population Decline and Aging

Population and Environment - This article is a synopsis of a UN study, with emphasis on Italy and the United States. In March, 2000, the United Nations Population Division published a 143-page...     

Uprooted belonging: the formation of a ‘Jumma Diaspora’ in New York City

A growing number of so-called indigenous ‘Jumma’ people from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh are migrating to New York City (NYC) in search of a ‘better life’, an attempt to escape from a situation defined largely by deprivation and exclusion. This paper asks how these migrants navigate the new terrain, which often does not comply with their expectations but instead fuels a deep sense of disappointment. It will be shown that their transnational practices and belonging are not only extensions of the global ‘Jumma’ network, but also that the formation of a diaspora community and the maintenance of cultural boundaries simultaneously create attachment to NYC. Making NYC a home is shaped by their dreams and aspirations, and by the ambiguous ways in which they relate to both the CHT and NYC, places where they find themselves torn between feelings of longing and detachment.