Cross-border Mobility Research Articles

The effect of COVID-19 on cross-border mobilities of people and functional border regions: the Nordic case study from Twitter data

ABSTRACT Mobility is a global megatrend in our contemporary world as people are constantly crossing nation-state borders for migration, tourism, work and due to mobile transnational lives. Cross-border practices contribute to (re)produce functional border regions between different countries. The current amount of information on the geographies of cross-border mobilities of people, the creation of functional cross-border regions and how these regions change over time is inadequate. As transnational phenomena are fragile to global disruptions and prone to ‘rebordering’ in times of emergency, we lack knowledge of how the COVID-19 crisis affected border practices and functioning regions. We consider mobility to be a tool for understanding society and used big data to examine cross-border mobilities between the five Nordic countries: when and where borders were crossed, how mobilities captured functional border regions, and evaluated the influence of COVID-19 on mobilities and functional border regions from a spatio-temporal perspective. The feasibility of the proposed methodology for monitoring cross-border mobilities and border regions to improve planning and development of border regions and decision-making in future crises is discussed. We studied a 4-year Twitter dataset, including the first year of the pandemic until February 2021. We found that overall cross-border mobility decreased by 68% due to the pandemic, yet with geographical and temporal variations. We showed how the influence of the pandemic on the spatial extent of functional border regions varies for a range of reasons for cross-border mobility. We discuss the feasibility of the proposed approach for monitoring cross-border interactions as the proof-of-concept for capturing functional border regions to improve planning and development of border regions and decision-making in future crises. Finally, we highlight future avenues in enhancing our proposed methodology to improve information on cross-border mobilities derived from social media data such as Twitter.

Developmental ecosystems of study abroad in a turbulent time: an Australian-Chinese’s experience in multilingual Hong Kong

ABSTRACT The experiences of participants in disrupted study abroad (SA) programs have been largely overlooked in the literature, especially when it comes to experiences outside the norm. To fill this gap, this research explores the experience of an Australian university student taking part in an exchange program in Hong Kong (HK) during a turbulent period when HK was under sociopolitical tension, which was followed by the COVID-19 pandemic. We tracked the student’s experiences over six months through five monthly reflective journals and a postprogram interview. The qualitative data were analysed using a narrative approach, and Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (EST) framework was adopted to interpret the results. The student’s narrative demonstrated a progressive story structure: although it was a special historical time when mobility to HK was undesirable, the participant counterintuitively perceived HK as an ideal location for his future career because of his SA experience. Framed by EST, the study discusses the individual’s development in relation to a multilevel SA ecology (micro-, meso-, exo-, macro- and chronosystems) and the student’s agentic responses at the individual level. The study offers policy and practical implications for multicultural education, particularly in the post-COVID era, when cross-border mobility has been facing unprecedented challenges.

Modeling malaria transmission in Nepal: impact of imported cases through cross-border mobility

ABSTRACT The cross-border mobility of malaria cases poses an obstacle to malaria elimination programmes in many countries, including Nepal. Here, we develop a novel mathematical model to study how the imported malaria cases through the Nepal-India open-border affect the Nepal government's goal of eliminating malaria by 2026. Mathematical analyses and numerical simulations of our model, validated by malaria case data from Nepal, indicate that eliminating malaria from Nepal is possible if strategies promoting the absence of cross-border mobility, complete protection of transmission abroad, or strict border screening and isolation are implemented. For each strategy, we establish the conditions for the elimination of malaria. We further use our model to identify the control strategies that can help maintain a low endemic level. Our results show that the ideal control strategies should be designed according to the average mosquito biting rates that may depend on the location and season.

“Bodies on the Move”: Examining the Quest for Migration in the Postcolonial Africa Novel

The scholarship of cosmopolitanism and migrations, in many forms, narrative, artistic, and cultural continues to influence and inform our experiences as global citizens navigating an increasingly complicated global environment. This paper aims to re(map) these notions, which calls for reconsideration, re-evaluation, and emphasizing the importance of cosmopolitanism as reflected in literature. There has been an exponential increase in studies on cosmopolitanism in literature during the last two decades. This tendency is directly tied with transnational interconnection and experiences with a difference in a way that has never been seen before as a result of cross-border commerce, migration, mobility, media, and consumption. This paper interrogates Open City by Teju Cole; We Need New Names by No Violet Bulawayo, Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasie and Beyond Babylon by Igiaba Scego to underscore how they use cosmopolitanism as the main idea.

Labour migration, precarious work and liminality

Liminality, as originally conceived by anthropologists, is a temporary ‘in-between’ state that acts as a bridge, connecting old roles to new roles, and resulting in a desired new state. The article applies this concept to precarious migrant work. We argue, specifically, that migrants in low-wage and insecure work occupy four main liminal realms following their cross-border mobility: the temporal, the financial, the social and the legal. We explore these four realms using qualitative interview evidence (36 interviews) from comparative research with migrant workers, migrant employers and community stakeholders in Norway and the UK. The article then reflects on the balance between liminality (as a positive, temporary and in-between state) and limbo (as a negative, long-term state). We argue that migrants doing precarious work avoid limbo, but at the same time do not experience liminality as originally conceived. Instead, they experience what we term ‘ambiguous liminality’: where precarious work is encountered as liminal, but where the exact mechanisms and pathways leading to a desired new state are multiple, uncertain and incremental. Liminality, however ambiguous, is a vital expression of migrant agency; but it also serves the interests of capital too: masking the negatives associated with precarious work and helping to underpin precarious migrants’ work ethic.

Perspectives of public health professionals on border control practices for COVID-19 management in Europe

ObjectivesDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, internal European borders were temporarily re-established to mitigate the outbreak. Much research on pandemic border control measures has focused on quantifying their effectiveness for infectious disease control as well as on their social consequences for cross-border life in the European Union. However, little attention has been paid to the impacts for the practice and organisation of cross-border public health. To address this gap, the present study analysed the experiences and perspectives of public health professionals working in European border regions regarding border control measures in the pandemic. Study designQualitative interview-based study. MethodsIn total, 27 semistructured interviews with public health professionals were conducted in the border regions between Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. Participants were asked about their perspectives on border control and the spread of COVID-19 in the region. Interviews were performed between December 2020 and April 2021 and carried out in German, English, Dutch and French. ResultsBefore the COVID-19 pandemic, borders had become largely invisible with extensive cross-border social life and mobility. Participants were sceptical about the role of cross-border mobility as a pandemic driver and consequently the effectiveness of enforcing border control for reducing the spread of COVID-19 in their border regions. At the same time, participants raised concerns about the negative consequences for the social fabric and provision of cross-border public health. ConclusionsPublic health professionals highlighted the uncertain role of border control measures for regional infectious disease control in border regions. Rather than border control, sustainable cross-border communication and collaboration is crucial to ensure effective pandemic management in border regions.

Negotiating unequal mobility opportunities: Young academics’ mobility in the EU and their partner-related living arrangements

This article explores academic mobility in the European Union (EU) and partner-related living arrangements in early career stages. The data are drawn from interviews carried out with couples as part of a qualitative study focusing on university graduates who lived in Germany before pursuing their careers in other member states, namely France and the Netherlands. The analysis suggests a framework for empirical research that combines studying the interactions within couples along with factors resulting from the political governance of cross-border mobility in the EU. This article looks empirically at four types of intra-EU mobile careers with distinct partner-related living arrangements and considers how gender intersects with the conditional and exclusive entitlement to free movement within the EU. As the findings demonstrate, the living arrangements of young academics and their partners are not only a consequence of mobile careers, but such arrangements can in turn affect mobility decisions. Furthermore, the EU’s free movement policies can present obstacles in the early stages of a career, during which academics and their partners are likely to experience periods of interrupted economic activity. Moreover, couples in which the partner is a third-country national face severe restrictions. The free movement rights of the academics and their partners, as well as their conditions for exercising these rights, proved to have a strong impact on the couples’ unequal mobility opportunities.

“Soft Power” of Academic Mobility as a Component of the Chinese Foresight Project of “The Great Unity” Society

The article considers the phenomenon of cross-border academic mobility in the context of Chinese predictive practice. By applying historical-philosophical, comparative and hermeneutic methods, the authors analyze three problem areas: the social ideal, forecasting the future, and national education in China – and make the following conclusions. The “prior knowledge” that came from the culture of Imperial China can be used as an element of modern prognostics, and the traditional project of the “Great Unity” society (the “Datong” society in the Confucian concept of the social ideal) is transformed into a national foresight project. At the same time, the idea of unified humankind is not exclusively Chinese but has deep historical roots and universal nature. Being cautious about the supranational extrapolation of this idea, modern China, nevertheless, is expanding international cooperation and strengthening international contacts, using cross-border academic mobility as one of the tools of “soft power”.

Ce que la crise sanitaire révèle du rapport à l’espace : le cas de la fermeture de la frontière franco-allemande en Alsace

IntroductionThe COVID-19 crisis of 2020 has led authorities to re-establish measures at the French-German border. The media refer to a “closure” of the border. This constitutes a rapid and brutal event in terms of the cross-border practices and mobility of local inhabitants. ObjectiveBy considering the closure period as a socio-spatial crisis, we question, first, the thematic structure of media discourse during the period of border closure, and second, the psychological continuity of the crisis discourse, by comparing it with pre-crisis interviews. MethodA thematic analysis of the discourse is done on a corpus of 407 local press articles, and on 12 semi-structured interviews with young, local inhabitants. ResultsThe analysis identified five themes which support the discursive media structure, and which organize and enable the debate. The international comparison and the use of historical and memorial content in the discourse enable actors to take a position on the border closure. The analysis of the links with the interviews shows that the relationship to the border during the crisis is structured on representational dimensions already present in the pre-crisis discourse of the inhabitants. ConclusionResults show a psychological continuity in pre- and post-crisis discourse: the media discourse reveals preexisting representations of the border, which act as generators of opinions on its closure. Additionally, we discuss the results by focusing on the place of identity-based feelings in the representational relationship to the border: this phenomenon is analysed here on a group and positional level.

Guest workers and development–security conflict: Managing labour migration at the Sino-Vietnamese border

This article investigates the increasing development–security conflict in China’s immigration management through the case of a policy trial regularizing Vietnamese labour migration in two Guangxi border cities. China’s border regions host low-income immigrant labourers from neighbouring nations. In the 2010s, China launched a series of policy initiatives to regulate temporary and irregular migrant flows. Based on fieldwork and policy research, this study analyses the development and early implementation of this trial, with a focus on state perspectives. It shows how state actors mobilize migrant temporariness and other policy tools within a negotiation process that aims to resolve tensions between developmental policy aims for transnational economic integration and a drive towards securitizing cross-border mobility. I conclude that state actors fail to reach a balance between the conflicting development and security concerns. I also argue that China’s current risk-averse policy environment makes the development–security policy conflict in its immigration management more difficult to resolve. My findings contribute to our understanding of contemporary Chinese policymaking, including immigration policymaking, as well as to the literature on the development–security nexus in temporary labour management schemes.

Spatial Mobility Capital: A Valuable Resource for the Social Mobility of Border-Crossing Migrant Entrepreneurs?

Spatial mobility is considered a valuable resource for social mobility. Yet, we still have an insufficient understanding of the extent to which and under what conditions geographical movement across national borders represents an asset for social advancement. Addressing this research gap, we offer a theoretical contribution to the fields of transnationalism, migration/mobility, and social geography. We focus on 86 cross-border migrant entrepreneurs who live in Barcelona (Spain), Cúcuta (Colombia), and Zurich (Switzerland), and combine geographical and mental maps, biographical interviews, ethnographic observations, and participatory Minga workshops. Our results show significant inequality in opportunity among the studied entrepreneurs and reveal different geographies of risk and uncertainty for their cross-border mobilities. We theoretically propose that the ability to use spatial mobility as a resource for social mobility depends largely on three intersecting factors: the entrepreneur’s social position, his or her location in geographical space, and his or her strategies. Moreover, we have formulated the concept of spatial mobility capital to define the necessary conditions for spatial mobility to become a valuable resource for social advancement: individuals must be in control of their spatial mobilities, such mobilities need to match their socio-economic needs and personal aspirations, and they must be able to move safely.

‘We are people of the Islands’: translocal belonging among the ethnic Chinese of the Riau Islands

ABSTRACT The Riau Islands Chinese are an anomaly in the study of Chinese Indonesians. For one, while many of their ethnic Chinese counterparts in other parts of Indonesia can no longer speak Chinese due to the New Order regime’s assimilation policy, Chinese languages are alive and well in the Riau Islands. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2017–2018, this paper seeks to understand the Riau Islands Chinese’s cultural resilience and sense of belonging as a borderland ethnic minority. I argue that long-standing inter-Island and cross-border mobilities and cultural flows with Singapore have been central to the maintenance of Riau Islands Chinese identity. Utilising translocality as a theoretical framework to understand the processes of identity formation and place-making that transcend national borders, I contend that the case study of the Riau Islands Chinese challenges the conventional state-centric modes of analyses prevalent in the study of ethnic Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.

Children's Bodies Are Not Capital: Arduous Cross-Border Mobilities between Shenzhen and Hong Kong

AbstractThis article foregrounds and unpacks the significance of education in the migration of children in contemporary Asia, drawing principally on research undertaken in Hong Kong and across the border with Mainland China (Shenzhen). Using the example of cross-boundary schooling, the authors explore the role played by children in emergent transnational topologies and reflects on the significance of this for understandings of “migration.” The authors argue that while children are harbingers of future migration and their mobilities appear, on the surface, to function seamlessly, in reality their experiences of mobility are very immediate and embodied: corporeal, emotional, and invariably arduous. The arduousness and corporality of everyday mobilities for education are rarely explored in the extant literature, and this article therefore attempts to highlight these important aspects of children's experiences.

Applying social media for studying challenges of COVID-19 for students

This conference paper contributes to understanding opportunities to use social media for identifying the priorities and challenges of students from different countries in online and face-to-face learning and networking activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in more intensive online learning and hybrid learning applications in higher education. When there is a shift from a teacher-controlled class environment to a more learner-controlled social media, the role of the educator becomes more of a facilitator. The main research question in this paper is: How social media activities facilitated by instructors can support international learner-driven online networking and knowledge sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic? Our action research aim was to reveal learning preferences and networking challenges that students do not usually share in a class environment. Despite critics of Facebook and the increasing popularity of alternative social media among young people, Facebook groups offer tools for discourse between different age cohorts and conduct polls to assess alternative educational tools and COVID-19 administrative restrictions that influence student mobility and socialisation. To study the challenges of COVID-19 for students in online learning and in physical interaction, we applied netnography methods in combination with interventions by educators to study students’ preferences in the Facebook group Challenges in online learning – COVID-19. Among the most popular Facebook polls for students were questions about group work and exam arrangements during the pandemic and work from anywhere practice implications, cross-border mobility regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic and reasons why some students do not participate in web conferences using their computer cameras. Students shared the view that flexible online work from anywhere solutions will be for many organisations among trends that will remain after the COVID-19 crisis is over. Some students, both from Europe and developing countries, believed that this trend would improve job opportunities for the workforce living in low-cost countries. Facebook group enabled international knowledge sharing, where both students and educators could share their views on many issues that influence the rapidly changing online learning and networking environment.

Cross-border mobility responses to COVID-19 in Europe: new evidence from facebook data

BackgroundAssessing the impact of government responses to Covid-19 is crucial to contain the pandemic and improve preparedness for future crises. We investigate here the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and infection threats on the daily evolution of cross-border movements of people during the Covid-19 pandemic. We use a unique database on Facebook users’ mobility, and rely on regression and machine learning models to identify the role of infection threats and containment policies. Permutation techniques allow us to compare the impact and predictive power of these two categories of variables.ResultsIn contrast with studies on within-border mobility, our models point to a stronger importance of containment policies in explaining changes in cross-border traffic as compared with international travel bans and fears of being infected. The latter are proxied by the numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths at destination. Although the ranking among coercive policies varies across modelling techniques, containment measures in the destination country (such as cancelling of events, restrictions on internal movements and public gatherings), and school closures in the origin country (influencing parental leaves) have the strongest impacts on cross-border movements.ConclusionWhile descriptive in nature, our findings have policy-relevant implications. Cross-border movements of people predominantly consist of labor commuting flows and business travels. These economic and essential flows are marginally influenced by the fear of infection and international travel bans. They are mostly governed by the stringency of internal containment policies and the ability to travel.

Viral Borders: Migration, Deceleration, and the Re-Bordering of Mobility during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract States’ efforts to govern the COVID-19 public health emergency have been entangled with the ongoing work of producing and enforcing borders. Thus, on a global scale, the public health crisis has been converted into various spectacles of ostensible border “crisis.” Rather than seeing borders as purely a matter of control, however, it is instructive to situate the tactics of border enforcement in relation to the primacy, autonomy, and subjectivity of human mobility. If we start from the human freedom of movement and recognize border enforcement as a reaction formation, various tactics of border policing can be seen to introduce interruptions that temporarily decelerate cross-border mobilities. Compelled to revert to a kind of “standby” mode, migrants are temporarily immobilized and must find ways to convert their waiting from “dead time” into more or less productive time. Waiting to be re-activated, their mobilities remain an intractable and always potentially disruptive constitutive power.

Emphasis on Occupancy Rates in Carbon Emission Comparison for Maritime and Road Passenger Transportation Modes

Carbon emissions generated by the transportation sector represent a large part of total greenhouse gas emissions and are thus subject to various policies and initiatives for emission reduction and the development of sustainable transportation networks. Furthermore, passenger transportation generates a significant amount of emissions within this sector, especially in those countries with large and developed tourist sectors. Examples of such countries are Italy and Croatia, located in the Adriatic region, with a large portion of passengers between them being transported utilizing mainly maritime and/or road transportation modes. A proper analysis of the impact of these transportation mode choices on carbon emissions is essential to enable the selection of the optimal transportation mode for the particular transportation route with respect to the generated emissions. Therefore, this study determines the carbon emissions of the maritime and/or road transportation modes on the existing cross-border passenger transportation routes between Italy and Croatia. For the analysis, the Adriatic region was divided into three sections—the Northern, Middle, and Southern regions—each characterized by specific transportation routes defined by geographical features and distances. The results obtained from this research are presented as total carbon emissions for each transportation mode separately, based on each of three chosen routes in different regions. In addition, a carbon emission comparison between each transportation mode in regard to occupancy rate is performed and presented separately for each chosen route based on its specific distances, transportation means, and features. Finally, by providing an analysis of the existing state, this study can serve as a basis for Italy–Croatia cross-border passenger mobility network modernization and the introduction of new, sustainable, and multimodal transportation routes.

COVID-19, Migrants, Refugees, Mobile Workers: Global Assessment and Action Agenda

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected millions of migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, and stateless persons as well as IDPs worldwide. At the same time, the dependence of economies and societies on migrant and refugee labour to perform essential work in such sectors as healthcare, transportation, services, agriculture, food production and distribution, construction, industry, commerce, and others became even more obvious. However, many policies and actions addressing COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic were established with little or no consideration for migrants and refugees, resulting in excessive COVID cases, high mortality rates, unemployment, and loss of livelihood across migrant and refugee populations. The paper argues that a comprehensive and rights-based package of measures is needed for effective response to the pandemic, relevant and proportionate to prevent the spread of coronavirus and allowing for people and economies to sustain socio-economic development on local, national, and regional levels. Based on in-depth review and critical analysis of literature as well as synthesis of approaches and recommendations contained in guidance documents from international organisations, the paper provides policy lines and actions/action steps on COVID-19 and migrants and refugees. It covers the interrelated issues of health and healthcare including vaccination; non-discrimination and inclusion; social protection; employment; community support and protection; gender; refugee specific measures; cross-border mobility; data, narrative, and communications; and recovery. Only a comprehensive package of measures that includes migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons and IDPs in national and local COVID-19 responses can possibly solve challenges posed by the pandemic in our global, mobile, interconnected and interdependent world.

Impact of COVID-19 on trade in services

During past shocks (e.g., the 2008–2009 global financial crisis), the services trade was found to be more resilient than the goods trade; however, the ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has restricted cross-border mobility, which is disastrous to the services trade because it often requires physical proximity between suppliers and consumers. We empirically examined the impact of COVID-19 on the services trade using quarterly data from 146 countries in 2019 and 2020. Its severity is measured according to the number of cases, the number of deaths, and an index measuring the severity of lockdown orders. We found that the pandemic had a more significantly negative impact on the services trade than the goods trade, particularly on the import side. Moreover, the extent of the impact varied among disaggregated services sectors, reflecting the nature of services. Travel services were the most severely affected, followed by transport and construction services, which are largely related to the international movement of people and goods. On the other hand, other services typically provided as cross-border supply, including computer services, experienced almost no significant effect.

Greek trans women selling sex, spaces and mobilities, 1960s–80s

ABSTRACT This article shows how sex work, gender identity and spatial mobilities were entangled for Greek trans women selling sex. Selling sex, particularly as trans women, exposed them to severe threats due to restrictive legislation and bias against them. Nevertheless, sex work could also be an empowering experience, facilitating their gender transitioning and helping them develop professional self-esteem. Greek trans women selling sex experienced such barriers and empowerment between the 1960s and early 1980s. Thus, contrary to the powerful argument in the history of sexuality, the late 1970s witnessed no ‘turn inwards’ for them. Selling sex as a pathway to gender transitioning was a process situated in specific spaces and facilitated by mobilities. Gender transitioning through sex work transpired in niches that trans women selling sex carved out in Athens and Salonica from the 1960s on. Simultaneously, movement across space had a complex and, sometimes, cumulative effect on sex work as a road to gender transitioning. Individuals engaging in the latter process relocated within the urban centres or from villages and provincial towns to the large cities of Greece, populating the abovementioned niches. In these niches, they exchanged information on locations outside of Greece. Subsequently, some trans women travelled to Casablanca to undergo gender-affirming surgery and/or migrated to West Berlin to sell sex. Such cross-border mobility had an ambiguous impact on the link between sex work and gender transitioning for Greek trans women, sometimes consolidating it and sometimes helping weaken it. In exploring the experience of Greek trans women in West Berlin, the article also contributes to the conjoined study of sex work, on the one hand, and migration from Greece to West Germany, on the other, which historians have hitherto primarily analysed separately from one another.