Social Mobility via academic mobility: reconfigurations in class and gender identities among Asian scholars in the global north

ABSTRACT

Geographic mobility is increasingly perceived worldwide as a key to academic excellence, career advancement and upward social mobility. Drawing on long-term qualitative fieldwork data, this paper interrogates the impact of academic mobility in reconfiguring class and gender identities among students, early professionals and their families from Hong Kong and Indonesia who have studied or received further training in Germany, the Netherlands and the USA. This analysis problematises the crude ‘academic mobility?→?upward social mobility’ formula and considers international academic mobility as a contextual, dynamic and multi-directional process. Through this process social positions and identities of the moving individuals and families are negotiated in an on-going manner as migrants insert into, depart from and re-insert into the various social milieus where their mobility trajectories touch ground. Narratives of interviewees illustrate the complexity and contradictions in class and gender configurations as students move across borders. They show how these individuals are inserted in contrasting social positionings, and experience how a particular social class or gender position carries different connotations. The paper concludes with a few conceptual and methodological reflections.     

Interpreting conflict and integration through the reciprocity lens: mobility and settlement in a historical perspective on the Sierra Leonean coast

ABSTRACT

In recent years, Sierra Leone has witnessed intense population movements. During the civil war (1991–2002), many populations fled the fighting zones of the interior to take refuge on the coast. Since the conflict ended, new populations have reached the coastal area with the hope of accessing economic opportunities in the fishing business. Mobility, along with changing sociopolitical and economic conditions, has generated conflict between immigrants and Sherbro populations, who consider themselves autochthonous and deny migrants the freedom to access political and land rights. The paper argues that present dynamics of conflicts are rooted in long-term patterns of settlement and relationships of reciprocity between groups. Relations between migrants and local populations are grounded in a sociocultural idiom that implies the institutionalization of practices of reciprocity between local inhabitants (hosts) and later settlers (strangers). The host/stranger reciprocity system is an emic model of cultural action embedded in historical and power relations between groups. It implies the progressive integration of strangers into the host society. This paper highlights how, in a situation of conflict, long-established social relationships between groups are reevaluated with reference to norms of integration and reciprocity. The paper draws on Sherbro oral traditions to show how social memories about interethnic relations are reframed with reference to values and expectations of reciprocity, in order to explain the recent conflict that opposes Sherbros to immigrants. Sherbros use oral traditions to interpret these tensions in a long-term perspective, thereby expressing their own view on settlement, conflict and integration.     

Strangers within? Russian-speakers’ migration from Latvia to London: a study in power geometry and intersectionality

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to contribute to debates on ethnic identification and migration through a focus on a specific group – Russian-speakers from the Baltic state of Latvia who have migrated to the UK. Twenty-six interviews with members of this group were gathered in London and the wider metropolitan area during 2012 and 2014. Russian-speakers represent uniquely combined configurations of ‘the other within’: in most cases, they are EU citizens with full rights; yet, some still hold non-citizens’ passports of Latvia. While in Latvian politics Russian-speakers are framed as ‘others’ whose identities are shaped by the influence of Russia, interview findings confirm that they do not display belonging to contemporary Russia. However, London is the ‘third space’ – a multicultural European metropolis – which provides new opportunities for negotiating ethnic identification. Against the background of triple ‘alienation’ (from Latvia, from Russia and from the UK), we analyse how ethnicity is narrated intersectionally with other categories such as age and class. The findings show that Russian-speaking migrants from Latvia mobilise their Europeanness and Russianness beyond alienating notions of (ethno)national identity. The paper also demonstrates that being open to ethnicity as a category of practice helps us towards a progressive conceptualisation of often overlooked dimensions of integration of intra-EU linguistic ‘others’.     

Introduction: international academic mobility and inequalities

ABSTRACT

Higher education is one of the social fields where inequalities are produced and reproduced. Nevertheless, we still know very little about the ways in which heterogeneities and inequalities have been experienced and interpreted by those involved in international academic mobility. In this introductory editorial, we consider some of the crucial conceptual issues involved in the study of the nexus between inequalities and international academic mobility. First, we argue that it is important to take manifold inequalities into account when examining this nexus. After all, inequalities can be detected at different levels, and the mobility process is structured around multiple heterogeneities rather than by a single one. Second, we discuss how international academic mobility and inequalities attached to it go beyond nation-state borders. Third, we argue it is beneficial to extend the scope of to the mobility process as a whole, as inequalities in opportunities and outcomes are intrinsically connected.     

Migration,gender and low-paid work: on migrant men’s entry dynamics into the feminised social care work in the UK

The literature on workers in gender atypical occupations has been dominated by a focus on women doing men’s work. Much less attention has been paid to men in women’s work, and even less to the impact of migration. Based on 28 in-depth interviews with migrant men having experiences of working in hands-on social care in England, this article is a contribution to the understanding of migrant men’s entry dynamics into a female-dominated occupation. Focusing on migrant life experiences, it discusses how they actively engage in three entry dynamics: (1) facing barriers and negotiating them, (2) ‘stumbling upon’ women’s work, then developing compensating strategies and (3) migratory/temporary settling into the sector. The article suggests a theory about lifelong ‘travelling’ when entering women’s work: a continuing process of negotiating work options within a specific historical sector context, the intersection of gender and migration being part of this.     

Diasporic youth identities of uncertainty and hope: second-generation Albanian experiences of transnational mobility in an era of economic crisis in Greece

This paper explores various dimensions of ‘gender’ and ‘mobility’ among immigrant youth from a transnational perspective in an era of economic crisis. The extent and parameters of continuity, contestation and change in migrant youth identities are analysed and we suggest that neither gender nor identity are stable categories but are embedded in sociocultural particularities both in the country of residence (Greece) but also in the country of origin (Albania). Through in-depth interviews with 52 participants, all second-generation Albanian immigrants in Greece born to two Albanian parents, the paper addresses youth identification in relation to gendered representations of belonging. The narrative accounts that we have selected and analysed reflect the emotional challenges, constraints and creativity of Albanian youth.     

Residential mobility and the spatial dispersion of personal networks: Effects on social support

Using a representative national sample of personal networks, this article explores how the spatial dispersion of networks, residential mobility and social support are linked. Three issues will be addressed here. Firstly, how is the spatial dispersion of personal networks related to individuals’ social characteristics, network composition and residential mobility? Secondly, how do the spatial dispersion of networks, residential mobility and their combined effect influence the number and (thirdly) the structure of emotional support ties? Results showed that the extent of the support was affected neither by the geographical distribution of the networks nor by residential mobility. Living far from one's birthplace, however, exerted two distinct, and opposite effects on the support network structure. On the one hand, mobility led to high spatial dispersion of personal contacts, which in turn favored a sparsely knit network centered around the mobile individual. On the other hand, by controlling for the effect of distance between the contacts, we found that individuals that cited long-distance ties tended to be part of more transitive support networks than those that cited local ties. We interpreted the latter effect as evidence that transitive ties may survive greater spatial distances than intransitive ones. These findings are discussed in view of spatial mobility and social network research.     

Mobility of students and attractiveness of universities. The case of Sapienza University of Rome

Human mobility is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. While labour migration has been widely and deeply investigated – through theoretical and empirical analysis – other forms of mobility have received much less attention. Students' mobility is a peculiar form of temporary movement that can be considered as neither migration nor tourism. It is rapidly growing: in the period 1975–2005 the number of tertiary education students abroad increased fourfold, from 0.61 million to 2.73 million, following the trend of the internationalization of economy and globalization of culture. In 2009 almost 3.7 million tertiary students were enrolled outside their country of origin, an increase of more than 6% from the previous year.

In this paper we analyse the international mobility of university students, using a unique data set built through surveys conducted at the Sapienza University of Rome. The data collected cover a rich array of information on students' characteristics and backgrounds, provenance places, family conditions, individual aspirations, and job preferences. The empirical analysis of those data offers an opportunity for understanding a relevant part of mobility decisions of (prospective) highly qualified workers. The Sapienza University, moreover, is at present the largest university in Europe for number of students and a pole of attraction for both European and non-European students. This allows us to enlarge our analysis at a global level.     

Towards the elsewhere: discourses on migration and mobility practices between Morocco and Italy

The objective of this article is to analyse the preparation process of young Moroccan migrants intended to migrate to Italy. My focus is on the personal and collective formulation of their desire to leave and on concomitant action taken to bring about these aspirations; highlighting the complexity of the imagination, which migration – and expected return – entails. A second point of interest is the agency exerted by such youth, as they prepare for departure; even when they have not yet physically left the country. In addition, my observation is focussed on networks emerging as a result of having to deal with state-imposed, migration restrictions, as well as with the politics of humanitarian agencies and NGOs. I argue that these aspiring migrants project themselves into the future and act in accordance with what they long to become. They shape themselves as mobile subjects through a process of self-making to overcome the above-mentioned constraints.     

Locus of Control and low-wage mobility

We investigate whether non-cognitive skills – in particular Locus of Control – are important determinants of mobility processes for male workers at the low-wage margin. Our results reveal a significant amount of state dependence in low pay even after controlling for non-cognitive skills. Furthermore, compared to individuals with an external Locus of Control, individuals with a more internal Locus of Control have a significantly higher probability of being higher-paid instead of low-paid. Conditional on being low-paid, individuals with an internal Locus of Control have a significantly higher probability of moving to higher-paid employment in the following year than individuals with an external Locus of Control. Our results suggest that having an internal Locus of Control is an important non-cognitive skill in the context of low wages. It may help individuals to avoid low-wage jobs and to move from low-paid jobs to higher-paid jobs.