Migrant Journeys Research Articles

Ecuadorians in Madrid: Migrants' Place in Urban History by Araceli Masterson-Algar

Reviewed by: Ecuadorians in Madrid: Migrants' Place in Urban History by Araceli Masterson-Algar Juan Suárez Ontaneda Ecuadorians in Madrid: Migrants' Place in Urban History Palgrave, 2016 by Araceli Masterson-Algar Through a dialogue between migration studies, space theory, postcolonial theory, and cultural studies, Araceli MastersonAlgar analyzes how Ecuadorians in Madrid have become agents in the spatial construction of the city, a spatiality that is understood as both symbolic and material. Masterson-Algar's study takes a critical departure from recent bibliography and places Ecuadorian migrants beyond consumers of space, highlighting their power as urban change-agents who reconstruct and reimagine the city: "This shifts attention from migrants' processes of 'adjustment' and/or 'integration' in Madrid, to how Ecuadorian residents make the city" (4). For the author, "making the city" is best understood not through the Habermasian dichotomy between the private and public sphere, but rather through feminist scholarship, where the focus shifts to social relations ranging from intimate to global (13). Moreover, Masterson-Algar relies on the interdisciplinary work of geographers like Armando Silva (2007), for whom "the imaginary urbanizes" to assess how [End Page 326] Ecuadorians make the city through material and symbolic spatial interventions (ibid). Masterson-Algar uses the city's Metro as a central metaphor to help explain Ecuadorians' spatial interventions, both above-ground and beneath-surface. As such, each chapter can be approached as a station along a migrant's journey of spatial construction in the city. The first station is transatlantic: it begins in Quito, establishing the historical context of Ecuadorian migration to Spain as a result of the 1998 financial crisis that destabilized the country's socioeconomic fabric. In this first chapter, Masterson-Algar provides three important frameworks for the reader. First, she describes why Madrid was an attractive destination for Ecuadorian migrants: abundance of service and domestic jobs, diverse amenities that make it a palatable city for both younger and older generations, and the dynamism inherent to a large and modern city. Second, the author presents both the quantitative and qualitative methodologies used in the book's ethnography (36-40). Finally, she provides a historical context of Madrid's main automotive artery: The Paseo de la Castellana. While Madrid's Metro is a useful metaphor to understand how Ecuadorians navigate the city, La Castellana is the above-ground structure that connects parks, dance clubs, and residential areas. Forced to travel the underground Metro to gain access to the city center from the urban periphery, one of Masterson-Algar's interviewees shared, "Here, I live the life of Bugs Bunny. I enter through one hole and exit through another" (60). This testimony perfectly illustrates what the second chapter sets out to contribute: Ecuadorians have come to understand and relate to the city through not only the design of the Metro, but also through the disconnect between design and consumption of space. A specific example can be found in the BiblioMetros, a public library system designed by Metro administration. Most of the author's interviewees were not aware of this system, but they undoubtedly used the stations and the Metro as a "social space" (58). Ecuadorians in Madrid have developed an affinity for the city's Metro, which has been capitalized on by Madrid's Metro authorities. Masterson-Algar concludes this chapter by analyzing how Madrid's Metro company won the bid to build Quito's 2019 subway project, and argues that the described affinity played an important role in the negotiations. Chapter three concludes with another parallel between urban imagination and transnational desire drawing on the design of Quito's Parque Bicentenario, and its similarities with Madrid's Casa de Campo. The latter became a place of recreation for Ecuadorians after they were prohibited from the use of another, more centrally located park—El Retiro. Masterson-Algar provides a strong analysis of how Ecuadorians used El Retiro up until 2003, when several local government initiatives mobilized to "recuperate" the park from alleged incivility caused by Ecuadorians. The end of Ecuadorian public use came in the form of literal epitaph when a memorial monument read: El Bosque del Recuerdo, in commemoration of the victims of terrorism during the 11-M (2003) attacks. In...

The ambiguous architecture of precarity: temporary protection, everyday living and migrant journeys of Syrian refugees

The ambiguous architecture of precarity: temporary protection, everyday living and migrant journeys of Syrian refugees

The biopolitical warfare on migrants: EU Naval Force and NATO operations of migration government in the Mediterranean

ABSTRACTThis paper deals with the recent transformations of the military-humanitarian technology for managing migration in the Mediterranean Sea, focusing on two naval operations, i.e. the European Union Operation Sophia deployed in the central Mediterranean and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) operation in the Aegean Sea, both deployed between 2015 and 2016 and still underway. Building on archival research on both missions and interviews with officials of Operation Sophia, we propose the notion of ‘biopolitical warfare’ to discuss these military-humanitarian interventions in the field of migration. These operations, we argue, stage a move to the offensive in the military-humanitarian government of migration by enlisting warfare against the logistics of migrant journeys. We then situate this argument within both the activist and the International Relations (IR) discourses on migration in the Mediterranean context: we differentiate the framework of ‘warfare’ from the ‘war on migrants’ argument deployed since the 1990s as part of activist discourse; we discuss the migration and warfare nexus in relation to the deployment of ‘migrants as a human bomb’ which has characterized the international relations discourse in Mediterranean countries since the early 2000s, including the recent Turkish–Greek context that led to the NATO intervention. Subsequently, the paper focuses on the targets and operations of the EU and NATO interventions and mobilizes the concept of ‘hybrid war’ to discuss how military and humanitarian techniques and rationales work when deployed as instruments of migration containment.

Unwanted sea migrants across the EU border: The Canary Islands

In the early 2000s, the Canary Islands emerged as the main gateway for unwanted sea migrants from Senegal into Spain. In this paper, I draw from a year of multi-sited ethnographic work to discuss the relationship between state actions to secure the border against these migrants, on the one hand; and smugglers and migrants' efforts to subvert those actions, on the other. My argument is that the relationship between the two is mutually constitutive: anti-immigration policy is a reaction to the actions of unwanted migrants, and unwanted migrants adapt to state efforts to seal the border against unwanted migration by finding and exploiting spaces of opportunity in the border. In the context of sea migration from Senegal to the Canary Islands, 2005 marks a major shift in this relationship. That year the European Union adopted a new framework for migration control (the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility), Frontex became operational, and Spain and Senegal deepened their cooperation to stop unwanted Europe-bound sea migration. This forced unwanted migrants to find creative ways to enter EU territory. I argue that combining the institutional and migrant perspectives allows us to explore the decentering of the state in the contemporary anti-immigration border regime, the emerging spatialities of the contemporary border, and understand the migrant's journey. This perspective also illuminates the messiness, violence, and multiplicity of interests involved in the bordering of Europe.

Risk and security on the Mexico-to-US migrant journey: women’s testimonios of violence

In this article, I argue that immigrants’ meanings, perceptions, and feelings of risk and (in)security are relational, multi-scalar, and contextual to lived experiences before, during, and after the migration journey. Paying attention to and analyzing Mexican women’s testimonios of intimate experiences uncovers why they migrate, how migration is experienced, and how migrant women frame their lives in the US. In this article, I compare how national and transnational policies of the War on Drugs in Mexico, which increased militarization of the US-Mexico border and created tougher immigration policies in the US (all in the name of US national security), form and transform intimate experiences of risk and (in)security across the migration journey for the same population. This comparative approach challenges and expands US-Mexico literature that does not read across experiences in the three sites of the migration journey.

Transnational migrant home visits as identity practice: The case of African migrants in South Africa

Focussing on the temporary journeys of transnational migrants in South Africa to their home countries on the continent, this paper explores the motivations, subjective experiences and perceived significance of these home visits for the migrants’ sense of identity and belonging. Based on a qualitative interpretive research approach, the study finds that memories and comparisons invariably underpin the experience of the home country, the encounter with the home and engagement with social relations. This induces new insights and sometimes ‘small epiphanies’ (Pearce, 2012), which can lead to self-reflection, self-transformative experiences and shifts in consciousness, affecting the migrant’s sense of belonging.

‘I will not leave, my freedom is more precious than my blood’. From affect to precarity: crowd-sourced citizen archives as memories of the Syrian war

Based on the authors’ mapping of citizen-generated footage from Daraa, the city where the Syria uprising started in March 2011, this article looks at the relation between crowd-sourced archives and processes of history making in times of war. It describes the ‘migrant journey’ of the Daraa archive, from its origins as an eyewitness documentation of the early days of the uprising, to its current status as a digital archive of the Syrian war. It also assesses the effects of digital technologies for rethinking the ways in which our societies bear witness and remember. By so doing, this article attempts to address the pitfalls attending the representation and narrativisation of an ongoing conflict, especially in the light of rising concerns on the precariousness and disappearance of the digital archives. Finally, by engaging with scholarship from archival studies, this article attempts to address the intellectual rift between humanities and archival studies scholars, and is conceived as a call for more collaboration between the two disciplines for a more constructive research on archival representations of conflict.

Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders. Migrants, Trans-national Encounters and Identity in Spain by Raquel Vega-Durán

Reviewed by: Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders. Migrants, Trans-national Encounters and Identity in Spain by Raquel Vega-Durán Cristián H. Ricci Vega-Durán, Raquel. Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders. Migrants, Trans-national Encounters and Identity in Spain. Maryland: Bucknell, 2016. 260 pp. Raquel Vega-Durán's book is erudite, well-researched, intelligent, and persuasive. Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders comes to complement Susan Martin-Márquez's Disorientations (2008), Daniel Flesler's The Return of the Moor (2011), Adolfo Campoy-Cubillo's Memories of the Maghreb (2012), and my own ¡Hay moros en la costa! (2014). Emigrant Dreams' strength is the study of migrations to Spain as portrayed in literature, art and film, comprehending writers, film-makers, and artists from Spain, Equatorial Guinea, and Latin America. On the other side, one can argue that Vega-Durán's book lacks the point of view of Moroccan cultural production in Castilian and Catalan. For example, Vega-Durán vaguely mentions the works of Najat El Hachmi (Moroccan/Riffian-Catalan writer who won the Ramon Llull Prize in 2008 with L'últim patriarca). At any rate, Vega-Durán's choice to analyze books, film, and art from Spain is understandable insofar as Martin-Márquez, Flesler, Campoy Cubillo, and I have already explored the cultural relationship between Spain and the former colonies in Africa from a comparative point of view. As the author expresses in the Introduction, her research is motivated by the amnesia of the Spanish society about its own migratory history: "One force working against this amnesia is Spanish fiction, film, and art, which have increasingly found inspiration in the encounters between Spaniards and migrants" (vii). [End Page 737] A unique feature of Emigrant Dreams is how the author digs in the history of Spain from medieval times, the presence of Arabic and Jewish cultures in the Peninsula, and the claims for unity during the reign of the Catholic Kings, Franco's regime, and la transición. Moreover, the book moves effortlessly from canonical to non-canonical texts. Vega-Durán's book explores how present-day migrations are making Spain's own conceptions readjust and develop. Aiming at analyzing how Spanish identities are constructed through edgy encounters with the Other, each chapter of the book analyzes the stages of migrants' journeys: outside Spain, at the border, and upon arrival. The first chapter of the book explores the articulation of the departures of the migrants, offering a historical background for the principal Spanish emigration waves. Vega Durán's work pays special attention to how the Peninsular field of cultural production informs the representation of past and present Spanish history. In this chapter, the author analyzes numerous letter exchanges between Spanish emigrants in the Americas and their homeland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The study of this historical journey through correspondence serves to reveal the process of amnesia ("pact of forgetting," [xxvii]) about Spain's past as an emigrant country. Later, in the same chapter, Vega-Durán interprets common experiences of displacement that takes the Other as a vehicle of self-understanding. The latter is accomplished by analyzing modern/contemporary texts of fiction, and history, as well as photography and film The second and third chapters deal with the second stage of the migrant's journey, the crossing. Both chapters are devoted to the treatment of border and border crossing in Spanish fiction, film, and art. In the second chapter, the author focuses on the two Spanish enclaves in Africa: Ceuta and Melilla. Vega-Durán traces the history of the fences built around the two cities, the reclaiming of several unoccupied islands by Morocco, and Spain's militaristic reaction. By recounting the novel-testimony of Senegalese Mahmound Traoré and Bruno Le Dantec, "Dem ak xabaar." Partir et raconteur: Récit d'un clandestine en route vers l' Europe (2012), Vega-Durán gives voice to the testimonies of Sub-Saharan migrants, acknowledging that the border between Morocco and Spain is not the only obstacle migrants encounter. In this chapter, the author could have mentioned the works of Laila Lalami, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits; Pasqual Moreno Torregrosa and Mohamed El Gheryb, Dormir al raso...

Crossing the Gulf: Love and Family in Migrant Lives by Pardis Mahdavi

Reviewed by: Crossing the Gulf: Love and Family in Migrant Lives by Pardis Mahdavi Rehenuma Asmi Pardis Mahdavi, Crossing the Gulf: Love and Family in Migrant Lives. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016. 208 pp. While conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Qatar, I engaged in many conversations with migrants working in service sectors of the country. One exchange stands out in my memory. While attending a majlis gathering of women in an upper-class Qatari family, I walked into the courtyard to get some fresh air with my one and a half year old daughter. I wandered over to a swing set with her and encountered one of the house maids on a break from cooking and cleaning. We quickly exchanged our national origins in Arabic (she was Sudanese, I was Bengali-American) and she informed me that one of her relatives had immigrated to the US and was now running a successful car rental company in New Jersey. She told me about the struggles she faced as a domestic servant in a Qatari household: the long hours, the lack of respect, the low pay, and the limited social and physical mobility in Qatar. Then, like many migrants I met, she asked me whether I could help her migrate to the US. I informed her, that sadly, I didn't have that type of power. I was perplexed by similar conversations with migrants working in retail, construction, and cleaning regarding the distinctive pathways that bring people to the Gulf countries as migrant workers. And I was curious about how Gulf States define the boundaries of migrant labor, citizenship status, and migrant rights. Pardis Mahdavi's Crossing the Gulf: Love and Family in Migrant Lives is a compelling ethnographic exploration of these very questions, with a specific focus on the intimate subjectivities she argues are at the core of migrant journeys to the Gulf. To make the argument for privileging the intimate lives of migrants, Mahdavi challenges the human trafficking framework that categorizes migrants primarily by the labor they [End Page 1305] perform. Instead, Mahdavi wants "to look beyond the question of intimate labor and rather to emphasize the intimate lives of laborers" (32). Mahdavi begins to make this case in the prologue, where she describes connecting with Noor, a middle-class Iranian migrant who moved to Dubai because of marriage and stayed because of her son, who has an Emirati father that won't come forward to claim paternity and give custody to Noor. Noor's migration is troubling and inspiring for Mahdavi because of her own struggles gaining custody of her daughter, which she describes in the prologue as important in organizing her thoughts on migration: I was frustrated by my own immobility, but I increasingly thought about how people are bound by love for their children, parents, or families. I came to see how people may choose mobility for the same reasons they choose immobility. (5) Mahdavi describes this as a theory of im/mobility that illustrates "the mutually transformative effects of migration on the state, as well as on migrant subjectivities" (15). To demonstrate the concept of im/mobility, Mahdavi uses interviews with a diverse array of migrants who make choices to migrate or stay in the Gulf because of family ties. The book shares stories of migrant mothers and their newborn children awaiting trial and possible separation (Chapter 2), children of migrants seeking reunification with their parents (Chapter 3), migrant workers who are able to explore their sexuality in the Gulf (Chapter 4), children of migrants who grow up in orphanages in the Gulf with no clue as to their parentage (Chapter 5), and migrant workers and Gulf citizens who have become activists as a result of their personal encounters (Chapter 6). The book's strength lies in each chapter's compelling vignettes about migrants whose love lives and family obligations brought them to the Gulf States, but whose fortunes are complicated by messy encounters with new families, other migrants, and legal rules they often do not understand. But the book's central strength is also the source of its major weakness. In collapsing different types of migrant labor to focus on "intimate lives," Mahdavi loses the clarity...

‘The Long March through Leipzig’: Train Terminal Chaos and the Transmigrant Registration Station, 1904–1914

Responding to a cholera scare in the 1890s, German steamship companies, backed by the state, set up transmigrant control stations along eastern Prussian borders. Millions of Eastern European emigrants passed through these medical and financial checkpoints as they made their way by rail to northern European harbour cities, where steamships carried them across the Atlantic. In 1904, officials opened a registration station in the Saxon city of Leipzig. A major European railway hub, Leipzig seemed an ideal location. However, the city layout soon proved problematic. Leipzig had no fewer than six separate train stations, one an hour’s walk from the registration station. Saxon police and shipping officials needed to direct transmigrants arriving in Leipzig to the registration station, despite logistical problems and sometimes uncooperative migrants. Building upon a growing scholarship on the continental journey of transoceanic migrants, this article demonstrates how a single city could affect an intricate transatlantic network.

Matryoshka Journeys: Im/mobility During Migration

ABSTRACTActs of mobility require corresponding acts of immobility (or suspended mobility). Migrant journeys are not only about movement. Indeed, in the present policy context, this is ever more true. Whether a migrant is contained within a hidden compartment, detained by migration authorities, waiting for remittances to continue, or marooned within a drifting boat at sea, these moments of immobility have become an inherent part of migrant journeys especially as states have increased controls at and beyond their borders. Migrants themselves view this fragmentation – the stopping, waiting and containment – as part of the journey to be endured. Drawing on the authors’ fieldwork in Central America and Southern Europe, this paper destabilises the boundary between transit and settlement, speaking to a larger policy discourse that justifies detentions and deportations from the United States and countries on the periphery of Europe. We argue that migrants’ nested experiences of these ‘matryoshka journeys’ reveal how increased migration controls encourage them not only to take greater risks during the journey, but also to forfeit their agency at opportune moments. In turn, states exploit images of such im/mobility during the journey in order to emphasise the irrational risks migrants take in order to traverse seas and deserts and to cloak their own border policies in a humanitarian discourse of rescue.

In Search of Security: Migrant Agency, Narrative, and Performativity

ABSTRACTThis article explores a performative conceptualisation of security, foregrounding the experiences of an asylum seeker from Ghana in Greece, named Sonny. This article follows Sonny’s search for security, analysing both his journey to Greece and to refugee status (something that he was still waiting for) and the narrative through which he told his story to me. I argue that Sonny’s search for security illustrates how security might be produced by security-seeking actions performed by an agent other than the state. It accesses security on an ontological level that is performative in that security is constituted through actions, and is known through attending to experience. This security allows for incorporation of intersectional identities, subaltern identities and diverse experiences. The argument is situated in the context of migration and the migrant journey as offering unique scope for analysis in international relations that is capable of moving beyond the state. It briefly surveys the human security and feminist security literatures to elaborate on the value of conceptualising security as a practice and as an experience of everyday life, rather than an object to be obtained. To offer purchase on the performative conceptualization of security narrative analysis foregrounds Sonny’s agency to seek security, juxtaposing his feeling of security and process of security with the material security that was provided to him as an asylum seeker in Greece.

The Representation of the Illegal Migrant in Contemporary Cinema: Border Scenarios and Effects*

This paper analyzes a corpus of films that represent various journeys of illegal migrants. It focuses specifically on the role of the illegal migrant on the border, understood as both a place and a metaphor. After critically examining the notion of border, it explores the recurring characters in this particular kind of film: the illegal migrant who experiences the border, the Western man-in-crisis who is regenerated through contact with the Other, the immigration officer whose own stance toward the suffering of illegal migrants is questioned.

The Never-Ending Journey? Exclusive Jurisdictions and Migrant Mobility in Europe

Migrant journeys are often conceived as linear movement from a sending country to a receiving country. However, a recent work suggests that the notion of linear migrant journeys is a misrepresentation. I argue that European regulations that standardise immigration policy around a common goal of ‘burden-sharing’ such as the Dublin II Regulation interact with the journeys of migrants to create paths that are not linear, circular or guided solely by intent. Rather migrant journeys can be conceived as a series of negotiations with state policies that shape experiences, choices and destinations through constructions of illegality. Mobility becomes an on-going condition rather than a temporary one. Borders then are reproduced as phenomenological rather than physical. I illustrate my argument through an ethnographic case study of a Sudanese man seeking to join his wife and child who had filed an asylum application in France. He interacts with the borders of Europe throughout his journey; however, as he becomes known as an undocumented migrant he moves further from the possibility of entering Europe with immigration status despite being within the territorial boundaries. Conversely, as his physical proximity to Europe increases and is established, his legal proximity decreases.

Ngezinyawo—Migrant Journeys, Wits Art Museum (WAM), Johannesburg April 10–July 20, 2014

<b>Ngezinyawo—Migrant Journeys</b>, Wits Art Museum (WAM), Johannesburg April 10–July 20, 2014

Tony Kushner. The Battle of Britishness: Migrant Journeys, 1685 to the Present.

Tony Kushner. The Battle of Britishness: Migrant Journeys, 1685 to the Present.

“The guys told us crying that they saw how they were killing her and they could not do anything”: Psychosocial explorations of migrant journeys to the U.S.

In this article I examine undocumented migrant experiences on their journeys to the U.S. Tens of thousands of Honduran migrants leave their homes in hopes to provide better for their families from afar. In in-depth interviews, 21 migrants from Honduras share the events they endure as they cross Guatemala, Mexico and the borders that divide them. I conducted narrative analyses and specifically used the analytical tools of high points and poises to locate the most salient experiences the migrants narrated as well as identifying particular selves the migrants were presenting. The high points centered around the crossings of the Mexico-U.S. border, encounters with gangs and the police in Mexico, and travels on top of freight trains. Most of these events were highly charged with potential short and long-term effects on the migrants’ health. In trying to make sense of their experiences, migrants presented themselves as heroes helping others, victims of the migration systems, good parents, or unaffected bystanders. This research provides insight into the rarely explored psychosocial aspects of undocumented migration, illuminates how Honduran migrants who attempt this journey make sense of their experiences, and proposes interventions to mitigate the potentially tragic consequences of this migration.

Stratification of Undocumented Migrant Journeys: Honduran Case

AbstractThis article examines stratification of journeys of undocumented Honduran migrants to the United States. The unequal distribution of wealth across the world forces many people to migrate to wealthier countries. Despite the narrative of free movement of goods and finances, migrants run into the ever strengthening security systems of nation states. Migrants' access to mobility (finances and networks) influences how migrants interact with these systems, which impacts their experiences on their journeys. I conducted in‐depth interviews with 21 Honduran migrants and subjected these to narrative analysis. I was able to identify several strata of journeys as well as the processes and specific actors that shape them. The degree to which migrants are subject to abuse, robbery, rape, and death on their journeys, and often their success in reaching their destinations, depend on their access to mobility.

Tunisian Migrant Journeys: Human Rights Concerns for Tunisians Arriving by Sea

In part due to its location on the North African coast, in conjunction with its history of being a former French protectorate, Tunisia has become an important country of emigration to the European Union. In particular, maritime arrivals have become a concern for European states, for both humanitarian and security reasons. The experiences of Tunisian irregular migrants arriving to the EU by sea, who are then detained and returned, highlights the multitude of human rights issues that arise across their journey as they interact with the various stakeholders involved—Tunisian and Libyan smugglers, EU and Tunisian authorities and NGOs, amongst others. The situation for these migrants at sea and during rescue and interception operations can most directly involve such issues as the right to life, access to food and water, access to emergency healthcare and access to information. The next stages of detention and return (either immediately or when later identified on EU territory) can most directly involve human rights issues related to the identification and referral mechanisms for groups at risk, access to information and legal remedy, the right of “non-refoulement” and prohibition of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment. By examining Tunisian migrant experiences along the entirety of their trajectory, one can see the specific human rights issues that arise at each stage for maritime arrivals—from departure to return. The article will examine these human rights concerns in the context of the Tunisian migrant journey, focusing on the four identified stages of the situation at sea, rescue or interception, detention and return. The article will present results from qualitative in-depth interviews conducted for the EU Fundamental Rights Agency in 2011 with 15 Tunisian migrants who had arrived by sea to Italy between 2005 and 2011 and were returned to Tunisia between 2008 and 2011, complemented by interviews with two Tunisian fishermen and an anonymous Tunisian non-governmental stakeholder.

The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-war Immigrationby David Goodhartand The Battle of Britishness: Migrant Journeys, 1685 to the Presentby Tony Kushner

The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-war Immigration by David Goodhart ATLANTIC • 2013 The Battle of Britishness: Migrant Journeys, 1685 to the Present by Tony Kushner MANCHESTER UNIVE...