Current Migrations Research Articles

‘Tangled times’: Central American refugee perspectives on the long Cold War*

ABSTRACT Between the 1970s and 1990s, state-led violence drove one-quarter of El Salvador’s population—most of them peasants—into exile. Studies of this phenomenon often adopt a bureaucratic, top-down approach, treating it as an anomaly, a problem to be solved by international leaders. Adopting a transnational social historical approach allows us to see this Cold War-era ‘refugee crisis’ as the peasants saw it—as part of much longer historical patterns of dispossession and resistance. This article traces their displacement narratives over thirty years. Drawing from two decades of work with displaced Salvadorans, public and private archives, and oral histories, it first brings to light how Salvadorans threaded together Spanish colonialists, Salvadoran oligarchs, US imperialists, and international humanitarian organizations into a noose of destructive outside interests. It then explores how, rather than submit to conventional portrayals of refugees as pawns or passive victims, Salvadorans identified as citizen-activists who harnessed displacement as an opportunity to continue progressing toward long-standing goals of building a more just and equitable world. Finally, the article moves to the present, as former refugees purposefully excavate the 1980s crisis to expose the roots of current mass migrations. The street gang wars that trigger today’s flights are nothing new, peasants argue; they are a living legacy of the Cold War. By emphasizing the past/present and local/global nexuses, these narratives recast the Cold War in terms of actors, causes, consequences, and chronology, while also demonstrating the value of looking beyond violence to consider the dreams of—and movements toward—a better tomorrow.

Representing the contemporary Mediterranean in La vie devant soi and La vita davanti a sé

This article focuses on the representation of the contemporary Mediterranean space in the films La vie devant soi (Madame Rosa) (1977), directed by Moshé Mizrahi and La vita davanti a sé (The Life Ahead) (2020), directed by Edoardo Ponti. Although the two films are adapted from the same novel, La vie devant soi (The Life Before US) (1977) by Romain Gary, they present different interpretations of the two main characters, Madame Rosa and Momo. This article argues how processes of (forced) movement of people – such as Holocaust deportation, postcolonial movements, and the current migrations between Africa and Europe – have demonstrated a contemporary ‘Mediterranean space’ that goes beyond its geographical borders, but rather is strictly linked to the people of the Mediterranean who made these movements. By analysing the cinematic Mediterranean space created in and in between these two films, it concludes that movement-induced traumas are intrinsic to the pragmatic existence of this geo-cultural space in contemporary times.

Pomiędzy słowem a obrazem. O wizualizacji w nauczaniu/uczeniu się języka polskiego jako drugiego

Visualization in teaching, as a method of universal communication and a simple message understood by all people, in the conditions of crises in the modern world, and especially in the era of current migrations, is indispensable also in Polish schools. The study outlines the most critical problems faced by teachers teaching Polish as a second language and then presents various options and advantages of incorporating image/imagery into the education of children with a migration experience, incl. picture dictionaries, drawing techniques, mnemonics (link method, chain method, mental map) and a sketch note. Regardless of the universality of visual thinking, the study proves that these techniques, strategies, and methods have a resounding justification for teaching Polish as the second language.

Bodies on the Border: Rematerializing and Decolonizing Ecologies of Mobility in the Mexico-US Borderlands

Current human migrations and nonhuman extinctions on massive scales compel us to more carefully apply interspecies concepts of mobility to understanding the roles played by geopolitical borders, as well as the various, ongoing forms of colonialism that have produced and continue to perpetuate these borders. This essay applies bioregional, material, decolonial, and borderlands ecocriticism to historicize prevention through deterrence enforcement measures in the Mexico-US border region, and discusses several significant entanglements of interspecies actors in migratory contexts, exploring a range of ways that nonhuman nature has been and continues to be deployed materially against migrants. In historicizing US enforcement tactics, the essay tracks the distribution of human agency from settler colonial, ethnonationalist, and neoliberal US policy makers, to armed paramilitary human bodies, then into structures of the built environment, and, finally, to the ways that agency is further diffused across complex webs of multiple kinds of human and nonhuman actors—plants, animals, landforms, watercourses, climate and weather conditions, and so on. While in some instances, nonhuman animals are deployed against migrant and other indigenous and mestizo people, in other multispecies entanglements, animals participate in the revelation and denunciation of state sponsored violence, leading to larger questions of the status of other nonhuman animals in the borderlands. The essay’s primary focus is on illustrating the practical untenability of, and the severe harm done in, continuing to regard the borderlands from settler colonialist or human exceptionalist positionalities.

Remembering Italian America: Memory, Migration, Identity

Remembering Italian America: Memory, Migration, Identity

Impacts of Second Home and Visiting Friends and Relatives Tourism on Migration: A Conceptual Framework

What is the thread that unites tourism and migration? A review of existing literature suggests two forms of tourism linked to migration: visiting friends and relatives and second home tourism. Tourism related to visiting friends and relatives can be stimulated by migratory movements, and, in turn, gives rise to new migrations. Second home ownership, however, serves as the main connection between tourism and migration, promoting tourism that generates from or relates to current and past migrations. This exploratory study is based on a qualitative systematic literature review and focuses on the characteristics of second home and visiting friends and relatives-related tourism, and migration, in order to clarify little studied linkages among them that can affect tourism-related development. The study shows that many of the migration-led tourism segments reflect factors that may promote sustainable development.

The expediency of literature: French humanitarian narratives between politics and the market

In recent years, French authors have called for the mobilization of literature in favor of migrants’ rights and recognition. Writers, publishers, and booksellers have donated all revenue to humanitarian agencies such as La Cimade, Amnesty International, and UNHCR. At the same time, humanitarian NGOs have mobilized literary works to rally audiences around migrant issues. This essay examines how contemporary French literature and humanitarian organizations work in tandem to respond to the international migrant “crisis.” Drawing on George Yúdice's notion of “culture as resource,” I analyze two literary works—Matéi Visniec's play Migraaaants and Émilie de Turckheim's autofictional text Le Prince à la petite tasse—to argue that literary works’ ability to raise awareness about current migrations is enhanced when they sit alongside the actions of humanitarian NGOs.

Environmental DNA reveals the temporal and spatial extent of spawning migrations of European shad in a highly fragmented river basin

Abstract Artificial barriers on lowland rivers impede the spawning migrations of anadromous fishes, preventing access to historical spawning areas. In the cryptic European shads Alosa alosa and Alosa fallax (‘shad’ hereafter), this has resulted in population declines across their range. Conservation programmes aim to facilitate the passage of migrators over these barriers and so require baseline information on the spatial and temporal extent of current migrations. Here, a shad‐specific environmental DNA (eDNA) assay was used to quantify the spatial extent of shad spawning migrations in the River Severn basin, western England. This basin is characterized by the presence of multiple barriers in the lower catchment. In 2017, the eDNA assay was piloted in the River Teme, an important shad spawning tributary, and then applied in 2018 and 2019 across the lower Severn basin. In all years, shad DNA was detected between mid‐May and mid‐June, with the maximum spatial extent of shad distribution being in early June when shad eDNA was detected upstream of weirs that were generally considered as impassable. In 2018, this included the detection of shad above the most upstream weir on the main River Severn that required individual fish to have passed six weirs. Although barriers inhibit the spawning migrations of shad, this eDNA assay showed that some highly vagile individuals might be able to ascend these barriers and migrate considerable distances upstream. This suggests that efforts to increase the permeability of these barriers could result in relatively high numbers of migrating shad reaching upstream spawning areas. These results demonstrate that this eDNA assay could also be used across their range, to further quantify the spatial extent of their spawning, including in highly fragmented rivers and those where shad are believed to spawn only occasionally and are rarely observed.

Covid Conversations 1: Peter Sellars

In this profoundly dialogical exchange, Peter Sellars, theatre director, researcher, and teacher, and Maria Shevtsova open out a whole array of questions on the integral relation between politics and the theatre in its multiple manifestations. These questions not only concern the damages inflicted by the present Covid-19 pandemic but also those developed by the neoliberal economics and politics of the past forty years and more. In Sellars’s view, neoliberalism has been the hotbed of social injustices, inequities, market and other forms of current enslavement, migrations, refugee and related precarities, and the havoc of the world climate in which the plight of humanity and that of the planet are indelibly interconnected. His and Shevtsova’s discussion links such vital concerns with his theatre practice, which ranges from his engagement with local communities and indigenous peoples – he details some of his work with the collective, community organization of two Los Angeles Festivals of the early 1990s – to the various forms of his music theatre in which he collaborates, in institutional structures, with highly proficient musicians, singers and dancers. The focus chosen here from his music theatre is The Indian Queen (2013), which Sellars dramaturgically invents using pieces by Henry Purcell combined with prose fragments by Nicaraguan novelist Rosario Aguilar. Peter Sellars is an internationally renowned theatre director among whose more recent productions is Mozart’s Idomeneo, premiered at the Salzburg Festival in 2019. Maria Shevtsova, Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, is editor of New Theatre Quarterly. This conversation took place on 16 August 2020, was transcribed from the recording by Kunsang Kelden, and was edited by Maria Shevtsova.

INVISIBILIZADOS NA ILHA DO DESTERRO: OS NOVOS FLUXOS DE IMIGRANTES E REFUGIADOS EM FLORIANÓPOLIS

O objetivo deste artigo é identificar as peculiaridades dos recentes fluxos migratórios internacionais na Grande Florianópolis, cujas multiplicidades têm acarretado uma reconfiguração no perfil demográfico da capital catarinense. A pesquisa, realizada no período de 2015 a 2017, utilizou-se de métodos e técnicas de pesquisa qualitativa (análise documental) e quantitativa (cadastro institucional fechado). A investigação centrou-se no levantamento de informações e análise do perfil de uma amostra de 1783 imigrantes e refugiados atendidos pelo Projeto de Extensão “Cátedra Sérgio Vieira de Mello - Núcleo de Apoio a Imigrantes e Refugiados” da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, em parceria com a Pastoral do Migrante. Este estudo pioneiro no âmbito das atuais migrações na região mostrou, em última instância, que os imigrantes e refugiados não-brancos dos eixo sul-sul são invisibilizados e, devido à ausência de políticas públicas estaduais e municipais de integração e acolhimento, são submetidos a processos preocupantes de hiper-vulnerabilização.

Cause and effect relation between the current migrations and terrorism in Western Europe

The key subject analyzed within this article - the existence, and character, of the cause and effect connection in regard to the current migrant crisis and the rise of terrorist activity in Western Europe - required first a look back at the terms terrorism and migration, their respective characterisitics, as well as the geopolitical factors affecting them; secondly, it required an analysis of their mutual interaction; and finally, a comparison of the points of view taken by all the parties involved when approaching this problem, as well as determining certain potential solutions to the myriad of problems caused by the migrant crisis. This subject, we feel, is relevant due to the important role terrorism has in causing the migration of Muslim population from Africa and the Middle East toward the European Union, as well as the potential effect of the said migration on the spreading of terrorism within Europe itself. Whilst researching the literature needed to write this article, the authors used the method of content analysis. Existence of the direct link between terrorism - as one of the causes of migrations, and migrations - as a condition helping the expansion of terrorism into Europe, presents itself as a result of the conducted research.

Book Review: America’s Changing Neighborhoods: An Exploration of Diversity through Places

Reference sources across the humanities have a bad habit of presenting monolithic entries on ethnic, racial, and cultural groups. While often acknowledging the omissions and sweeping generalizations made in topical articles framed around the experiences of “Asian Americans” or “Latinos,” often authors fail to capture the varied and intersectional experiences of lives lived not in identity groups, but cities and towns with unique social, geographic, and political landscapes. America’s Changing Neighborhoods presents an important departure, providing useful information about the histories of geographically based communities formed and shaped by current and past migrations.

Editorial introduction: New European youth mobilities

AbstractThis paper introduces and sets the context for a special issue on “New European Youth Mobilities: Motivations, Experiences and Future Prospects,” which derives from the European Union‐funded H2020 “YMOBILITY” project on current youth migrations and transitions across the European Union. It first introduces the YMOBILITY programme and its multimethod, comparative research effort. This is followed by a brief review of secondary data on the changing profile of youth migration and mobility in Europe. Then, we explore definitions of key terms central to the project, such as “youth,” “youth transition,” “mobility,” “skill,” and the notion of the “learning migrant”. The final part of the paper introduces the 6 articles that make up the special issue, highlighting their most significant findings and outlining their value as an integrated set that offers new insights into the role of mobile young people as students and workers within European societies.

Observational evidence for atmospheric modulation of the Loop Current migrations

Recent modeling studies on the shedding of Loop Current rings suggest that the intensification of the dominant zonal wind field delays the detachment of rings and affects the Loop Current migrations. The atmospheric modulation of the Loop Current migrations is analyzed here using reanalysis winds and altimetry-derived observations. A newly developed methodology is applied to locate the Loop Current front, and a wavelet-based semblance analysis is used to explore correlations with atmospheric forcing. The results show that weakening (intensification) of the zonal wind stress in the eastern Gulf of Mexico is related with the Loop Current excursions to the north (south). Semblance analyses confirm negative correlations between the zonal wind stress and the Loop Current migrations during the past 20 years. The intrusions of the Loop Current might involve an increase of the Yucatan Transport, which would balance the westward Rossby wave speed of a growing loop and delay the ring shedding. The results of this study have consequences for the interpretation of the chaotic processes of ring detachment and Loop Current intrusions, which might be modulated by wind stress.

COMMENT TO THE ARTICLE PREVENTION OF Β THALASSEMIA IN NORTHERN ISRAEL - A COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS. BY KOREN ET AL.

COMMENT TO THE ARTICLE PREVENTION OF Β THALASSEMIA IN NORTHERN ISRAEL - A COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS. BY KOREN ET AL.

Filipinos in Nueva España: Filipino-Mexican Relations, Mestizaje, and Identity in Colonial and Contemporary Mexico

This essay examines how the Manila-Acapulco galleon era (1565-1815) under Spanish colonialism forged the early mestizaje between Filipino Indio men and Mexican Indian and mixed race women, which produced children who became the first multiethnic Mexican-Filipinos in Nueva España (Mexico). This story is juxtaposed with current migrations of Filipinos to Mexico via the vacation cruise liners, which share a story of contemporary mixing between Filipinos and Mexicans. By acknowledging both their identities and looking to the past, these modern day multiethnic Mexipinos and Filipinos connect to a long historical web of interconnectedness which underpins the mestizaje that began in the sixteenth century.

True-amplitude prestack depth migration

Most current true-amplitude migrations correct only for geometric spreading. We present a new prestack depth-migration method that uses the framework of reverse-time migration to compensate for geometric spreading, intrinsic [Formula: see text] losses, and transmission losses. Geometric spreading is implicitly compensated by full two-way wave propagation. Intrinsic [Formula: see text] losses are handled by including a [Formula: see text]-dependent term in the wave equation. Transmission losses are compensated based on an estimation of angle-dependent reflectivity using a two-pass recursive reverse-time prestack migration. The image condition used is the ratio of receiver/source wavefield amplitudes. Two-dimensional tests using synthetic data for a dipping-layer model and a salt model show that loss-compensating prestack depth migration can produce reliable angle-dependent reflection coefficients at the target. The reflection coefficient curves are fitted to give least-squares estimates of the velocity ratio at the target. The main new result is a procedure for transmission compensation when extrapolating the receiver wavefield. There are still a number of limitations (e.g., we use only scalar extrapolation for illustration), but these limitations are now better defined.

Mitochondrial DNA variation in spiny lobster Palinurus delagoae suggests genetically structured populations in the southwestern Indian Ocean

The spiny lobster Palinurus delagoae inhabits the deep shelf waters and oceanic ridges of the southwestern Indian Ocean, where it supports commercial fisheries. To investigate population structure and the physical processes that may have influenced female gene flow in this species, a por- tion of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region (547 base pairs) was sequenced for 285 lob- sters from the southeastern coast of Africa (6 sites) and 49 lobsters from Walters Shoals, a submerged seamount on the Madagascar Ridge. Lobsters from these 2 areas shared no haplotypes and differed by at least 27 mutational steps. An analysis of molecular variance showed significant genetic parti- tioning, and pairwise comparisons suggested that lobsters from Walters Shoals are distinct from those of other sampling areas. There was shallow genetic partitioning between 4 southern sites (South Africa) and 2 northern sites (Mozambique), suggesting 2 Management Units along the African coast. A mismatch distribution and Fu's F-test indicated fairly recent demographic changes within popula- tions, consistent with that found in the sister species P. gilchristi. Female gene flow along the African coast may be propagated by larval dispersal in the Mozambique and Agulhas Currents and counter- current migrations by benthic juveniles along the shelf, but the mtDNA data strongly suggest that lar- vae at Walters Shoals have been, or are currently still retained by other oceanographic processes. The magnitude of mtDNA divergence among lobsters from the southeastern coast of Africa and those at Walters Shoals, together with the absence of any shared haplotypes between these regions strongly suggest that these 2 taxa might in fact represent distinct species.

Remessas de recursos dos imigrantes

AS REMESSAS contribuem para o desenvolvimento local e para redução da pobreza? Essa é a pergunta-chave que os estudos recentes sobre migrações internacionais têm levantado. O que se está procurando compreender é de que modo as remessas poderiam afetar positiva ou negativamente a economia dos países de origem dos imigrantes. Discutir o papel e o significado das remessas implica, assim, uma discussão em torno da existência (ou não) de um "campo de positividades" do fenômeno migratório internacional. O principal objetivo deste artigo é contribuir para essa discussão por meio de um estudo empírico do caso brasileiro que adota as remessas como foco. Para tanto, é identificado o perfil das remessas e dos remetentes, assim como os objetivos e os beneficiários do dinheiro enviado. A pesquisa usa uma abordagem baseada em entrevistas em profundidade e survey não-representativo (Boston e Governador Valadares).

Una aproximación cualitativa a las remesas de los inmigrantes peruanos y ecuatorianos en España y a su impacto en los hogares transnacionales. (A Qualitative Approach to the Money Sent Home by Peruvian and Ecuadorian Immigrants Living in Spain and Its Impact on Transnational Households)

In this analysis we make an approach to the impact a d importance of a transnational perspective when studying current international migrations. More specifically, the objective of this paper is to reflect on the impact of the monetary and «social» remittances of Peruvian and Ecuadorian immigrants living in Spain, considering their households as transnational. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.57 on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 04:18:00 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms UNA APROXIMACION CUALITATIVA A LAS REMESAS DE LOS INMIGRANTES