Introduction. Ethnic Russians who settled within the exclusion zone of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) since the late nineteenth century would retain their traditional lifestyles, vivid material and spiritual culture, and Christian faith ― only to create a unique community based on cultural and ethnic identity. Goals. The article shall introduce into scientific circulation the memoirs of Svetlana Yurievna Muravskaya about the life of her ancestors in China. Results. S. Muravskaya’s memoirs are a valuable source for understanding the peculiarities of the life and everyday practices of Russian migrants in Harbin. Having moved to China due to an internal family conflict, the Romanchenko-Railyan joined the group of Soviet immigrants in China. Professionally, most family members were in various ways connected with the railway (builders, cashiers, workers), and would also become engaged in trade, entrepreneurship, fishing, handicrafts, gardening, and animal husbandry. The preservation of their native language and traditional lifestyle, participation in the cultural life of the migrant community, and education within the framework of cultural and religious traditions contributed to the preservation of national and cultural identity, helped them avoid assimilation among the indigenous population, and would pave a return way toward the historical homeland.

Ilocanos continue to venture outside of their ili (town) to seek opportunities for the lung-aw (welfare) for their family and kin. Their individual and collective rikna (feeling), padas (tendency), and nakem (will) resulting from their overseas travel and adventure cannot be denied. Statistical data alone cannot fully express their rikna, padas, and nakem. The purpose of this qualitative research, therefore, is to explain the broad and deep experiences of Ilocano migrants by analyzing the lyrics of songs that have the concept of pakikidayo (migration) in Ilocano society. Unlike other forms of art, which are exclusive to upper social classes, music reaches a wider audience. To confirm or refute the interpretation of the song lyrics, the researcher employed indigenous research methods, such as pannakisarsarita (interview) with informants who had personal experiences with migration. The study revealed that the analyzed lyrics of the songs of migration reflect the lived experiences, emotions, and the will of Ilocanos who venture overseas. It was also found from the song lyrics analyzed that Hawaii is the kadagaan (suitable land) of the Ilocanos. Upon their homecoming, the economic differences between their kailyan (countrymen) and OFWs in Asian countries are evident. In the desire to overcome poverty, they must endure (agibtur), especially in the face of iliw (longing) for the place and family left behind. The songs also reflect the indispensability of technology, bridging emotions, to keep their sanity. Change continues in a globalized world, but music, an art form, remains an important element and a valuable resource for expressing the realities and complexities in the lives of Ilocano migrants on the move. Keywords: migration, comfort, kadagaan, migrants, poverty, OFW, rikna, padas, nakem

Abstract The subject of temporality has offered migration studies new keys for interpreting the everyday life of migrants, and the constraints they face and their unfolding trajectories. In this optic, rural places are particularly interesting since here migrants are often employed in agriculture, a sector characterised by both temporariness and continuous needs for a workforce. In south-eastern Sicily, part of the coastal area is devoted to greenhouse-based agriculture to such an extent that it is known as the transformed agricultural strip . The area is also characterised by large and stratified migrant labour. Many dynamics of exploitation force migrants into short and precarious temporalities, but greenhouses also allow for the de-seasonalisation of agricultural production which results in long-term stays. The paper analyses the temporalities of Tunisian migrants in the strip , exploring the intertwining of precariousness and permanence in their lives. In particular, the paper delves into the impact of local temporal regimes on migrants’ daily time and their ‘migratory careers’, also enlightening on how transnational bonds intersect with migrants’ temporalities and trajectories. The paper draws on 22 biographical interviews with Tunisian migrants (who arrived in Italy in the 1980s and 1990s), complemented by interviews with migrants’ descendants, local key informants, and ethnographic notes. The paper describes how uncertain temporalities influence the Tunisian long-term presence in the strip and what factors and strategies allow migrants to take root in this context, upholding the usefulness of studying rural contexts to understand migratory temporalities and migration as a whole.

ABSTRACT This paper examines two relatively novel concepts in migration – Boccagni’s ‘homing’ and Yuval-Davis, Wemyss and Cassidy’s ‘everyday bordering’ – highlighting their relevance amid rising anti-immigration policies and global mobility. It critiques their conceptual ambiguities and overlapping theoretical ground, arguing for their joint application within a broader framework of the migrant struggle for ontological security. This integrated approach enables a more holistic analysis of the social and political disruptions shaping migrant lives. By bridging micro- and macro-level perspectives, the paper advocates for theoretical synthesis that transcends disciplinary divides, offering a migrant-centred lens for understanding the complexities of twenty-first-century global migration.

Older Sub-Saharan African (SSA) migrants often face cumulative stressors that heighten vulnerability with age. Frailty acts as a chronic stressor that reduces quality of life, partly through its association with depression, while social networks may reduce the effect of depression on quality of life. We analysed cross-sectional data from 205 SSA migrants aged 50 years and above in Australia. We tested a moderated mediation model, guided by the Stress Process and Social Buffering frameworks, using structural equation modelling with 5,000 bootstrap resamples. Frailty was positively associated with depression (β = 0.72, p < 0.001), and depression was negatively associated with quality of life (β = –0.54, p < 0.001). Depression mediated the frailty–quality of life relationship (β = –0.38, p < 0.001), while social networks also moderated the depression–quality of life path (β = 0.13, p = 0.004). These findings highlight the psychological and social pathways linking frailty and well-being in later life. Interventions that address both physical and mental health while fostering strong social networks could enhance resilience and improve quality of life among older SSA migrants in Australia.

ABSTRACT The loss of home is one of the most distressing circumstances in the lives of migrants and refugees. Migration implies the abandonment of a home and the challenge of creating a new livable space and, in the process, one is bound to feel both unhoused and unhomed. Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do bears witness to Vietnamese American women’s experiences of dislocation. Her narrative poignantly underlines the critical role of women in adapting to inhospitable spaces and in transmitting memories. My proposal intends to reflect upon the possibilities that result from integrating human geography and migration studies, and materiality and housing research in the field of transnational literary studies. I will explore how the characters in Bui’s Vietnamese diasporic narrative deal with the unhousing and dislocations experienced during their journey and delve into the role that material spaces and objects play in the negotiation (or non-negotiation) of ethnic and cultural boundaries and in the process of their adaptation (or non-adaptation) to their new social and ideological environment.

Cloud computing has become the backbone of digital ecosystems, but growing workloads intensify challenges in resource optimization, virtual machine (VM) migration, and security assurance. Existing studies often address these issues in isolation, limiting their practical applicability. This paper presents a unified framework that integrates three complementary components: (i) an Improved Modified Particle Swarm Optimization (IMPSO) algorithm with adaptive inertia scheduling and dynamic mutation control, which outperforms IPSO in convergence speed and load distribution accuracy; (ii) a machine learning–assisted hybrid live VM migration method with dirty-page clustering and workload prediction to minimize downtime; and (iii) a blockchain-enabled secure migration layer to ensure tamper-proof and auditable state transfer. The revised version of this study includes statistical validation (confidence intervals, t-tests) and attack simulation experiments (e.g., man-in-the-middle and replay attacks) to ensure methodological rigor and realistic security assessment. Experimental results on a real XenServer testbed show that the proposed system improves response time by ~30%, reduces migration downtime by ~60%, and ensures 100% migration integrity with ?15% security overhead. Overall, this work represents among the first unified frameworks that jointly optimize resource allocation, downtime reduction, and blockchain-based security in a practically validated, end-to-end cloud migration environment.

This study examines the barriers to communication and social adaptation, especially in the work environment that requires the use of respectful language (keigo), experienced by Indonesian migrants in Japan. These barriers greatly affect the quality of life of migrants in Japan, which needs attention from the Indonesian government, along with the increasing demand for productive age workers from Indonesia due to the demographic impact of the Japanese population. Exiting conditions show that Indonesian migrants are not only required to have technical skills, but must be able to implement keigo in the work environment. The purpose of this study is to analyses the perspectives of Indonesian migrants on keigo and the challenges they face in communication and social adaptation of Indonesian migrants' lives in Japan. In this study, qualitative methods are used to explore the experiences, perceptions, and challenges faced by Indonesian migrants in communicating and adapting to the work environment. This qualitative approach will reveal the phenomena of language, social, culture, and behaviours of migrants deeply and holistically. This phenomenological research design will focus on the subjective experiences of Indonesian migrants in using keigo and how migrants interpret the challenges and can adapt. Indonesian migrants often struggle with understanding and correctly using keigo due to its complexity and the cultural nuances involved. The ability to use keigo effectively is closely tied to social adaptation for Indonesian migrants in Japan. This study will recommend that institutions sending workers to Japan conduct simulated keigo training to create a professional workforce.

Simple SummaryBrown croaker (Miichthys miiuy) is an important fishery species in the East China Sea, yet little is known about its natal origin and migration pathways. In this study, we analyzed chemical signatures in otoliths to determine natal origins and habitat use throughout the life cycle. We identified four distinct life history strategies, indicating that some individuals remain in coastal waters while others migrate among estuarine, coastal, and offshore environments. These findings reveal that M. miiuy exhibits high ecological flexibility and strong habitat connectivity. Such information is essential for protecting critical spawning and nursery areas and for developing more effective seasonal management strategies to support sustainable fisheries.Brown croaker (Miichthys miiuy) is an economically, ecologically, and culturally important species in the East China Sea (ECS); however, populations of M. miiuy have declined in recent years due to climate change and high fishing intensity. Our limited understanding of wild M. miiuy’s migratory life history hampers effective population conservation. To meet this need, and to elucidate the migratory life history of wild M. miiuy, we quantified the elemental composition of otolith samples using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). This approach, combined with analysis of otolith microstructure, was used to evaluate the feasibility of using the Mg:Ca of otoliths chemical clock for M. miiuy. Using cluster analysis alongside bivariate time series analysis, we identified natal sources and reconstructed migratory histories. The results showed that consistent, periodic fluctuation of Mg:Ca ratios in otolith profiles can be used as a chemical index to indicate the age and life history stage of M. miiuy. Natal sources of M. miiuy originated from three distinct water environments: estuary (14.2%), coastal mixed waters (57.3%), and coastal reef waters (28.5%). A diverse migratory life history of M. miiuy was observed based on Sr:Ba thresholds, and ultimately, we identified four migratory life histories of the species, including an estuary–coastal migratory type, a coastal resident type, a coastal–offshore migratory type and an estuary–coastal–offshore migratory type. This study provides a scientific basis for the protection of key habitats and seasonal management of M. miiuy in the ECS.

Abstract Eldorado, the legendary ‘golden land’ in the middle of the South American rainforest, has fuelled the fantasies of the European population since the discovery of the New World. It developed into a geographical myth in the chronicles of the early conquerors. As a place of longing, Eldorado has ever since served not only economic dreams of a land of inexhaustible material wealth, but also social ideals of happy coexistence. In terms of spatial theory, this utopian non-place is characterised by a chronotopic specificity, whose fictional potential has been taken up by many artistic works since 2000. Using three exemplary novels and films, different postcolonial approaches will be discussed that present contrasting Spanish and Latin American perspectives on Eldorado. By reflecting on the respective choice of genre, it is also shown to what extent the initially fixed spatiotemporal localisation of Eldorado in the tropical geography and the early modern age of discovery, still evident in the historical film, undergoes an increasing decontextualization: while the utopia in the present-day adventure novel remains anchored in the jungles of South America, in the current French migration novel it becomes an indefinite dream destination within Europe and a hopeful metaphor for a better life of African migrants.

ABSTRACT Research on highly skilled migration has challenged methodological individualism by emphasising the need to centre familial relationships in the understanding of migration. However, the resulting focus on the micro‐scale of the family unit negates an understanding of broader political‐economic discourses shaping everyday migrant lives. This paper demonstrates why research on highly skilled family migration needs to be placed in conversation with neoliberalism. Using a case study of Australian and British highly skilled migrant families moving through Singapore, the paper makes two contributions to research on migration. First, the paper develops the scope beyond that of the micro or macro‐scale into the missing meso‐scale analysis of highly skilled family migration. Second, the paper advances migration infrastructures as a conceptual approach to understand the meso‐level, contesting the previous methodological individualism by extending analyses of infrastructures to the family. Using examples of infrastructures of visas and international schools, the paper demonstrates that meso‐level infrastructures broker temporariness, transience and time insecurity as a condition of neoliberalism within the lives and mobilities of highly skilled family migrants.

BackgroundFamily migration is a trend of domestic population migration in China. However, few studies have investigated the impact of family migration on the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of migrants.ObjectiveTo understand the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of migrants during urban development in China, and to analyze its influencing factors from the perspective of integrating family migration patterns with individual health behaviors.MethodWilcoxon rank sum test and Kruskal-Wallis H test were used to analyze the differences in health-related quality of life among the migrants. Multiple linear regression method was used to analyze the relationship between family migration, health behavior and quality of life.ResultsA total of 935 valid questionnaires were collected. The utility index of the migrants was 1.00 (0.80,1.00), and the EQ-VAS score was 83 (73,90). The results of univariate analysis showed that migrants living with spouse and children, near migration, high self-rated family economic status, adherence to reasonable diet, moderate exercise and adequate sleep had higher health-related quality of life (P < 0.05). Multivariate analysis showed that family and migration factors such as nuclear family migration degree, migration distance, and self-rated family economic status (P < 0.05), personal health and health behavior factors such as dietary habits, weekly exercise time, sleep time, and the number of chronic diseases (P < 0.05) were associated with the health-related quality of life of migrants. Migrants had more difficulties in “pain/discomfort” and “anxiety/depression”, accounting for 25.2% and 31.3%, respectively.ConclusionFamily-related factors such as nuclear family members not migrating together, long distance migration, poor family economic status, and personal factors such as not adhering to health behaviors and the coexistence of multiple chronic diseases could weaken the health-related quality of life of migrants. Pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression were the main health problems affecting migrants. For this reason, attention should be paid to migrants such as those living alone or with low incomes. In addition, improving the health literacy and health behavior of migrants by promoting healthy lifestyle, carrying out mental health activities, and strengthening health management services can help promote the social integration of migrants and promote the development of cities.

Migration narratives reflect a complex interplay of hope, loss, displacement, cultural adaptation, and identity negotiation. This paper examines how migrants articulate their lived experiences across time and space, drawing from diverse sources such as children’s literature, personal testimonies, historical records, media representations, and artistic expressions. Using theoretical frameworks rooted in constructionism and narrative sociology, the analysis unpacks how stories of migration are shaped, challenged, and reimagined within varying cultural, political, and historical contexts. Special attention is given to Asian-Australian picture books, Macedonian-Bulgarian migrant histories, and the representation of refugees in media and art. These narratives serve as tools of resistance and resilience, providing migrants with agency and the means to critique dominant discourses. Migration is not only about geographical movement but also a reorientation of identity, culture, and memory, manifesting both personal aspirations and collective transformation. The study ultimately highlights the power of storytelling in reshaping public understanding and policy responses to migration, arguing for more inclusive and empathetic portrayals of migrant lives. Keywords: Migration narratives, Cultural memory, Resilience, Displacement, Multiculturalism, Postcolonial identity, Refugee representation, Narrative theory.

The article discusses various aspects of virtual machine migration. The process of moving them between different hosts, data storages, or even between cloud environments. It can be performed in two modes: cold migration, when the virtual machine is previously turned off, and live (dynamic) migration, which occurs without stopping its operation. Thanks to live migration, it is possible to transfer active virtual machines, for example, between servers within a cluster, without interrupting the provision of services. To organize such a process, special administration tools are used, in particular Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager from Microsoft Learn.

Five years after the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic public health emergency, and amid a growing body of specialized scholarship arising from this exceptional historical moment, this Special Issue underscores the analytical and political urgency of revisiting the early years of 2020–2021 from the situated perspectives of migration and borders across Latin America and the Caribbean. This period offers crucial insights into the ongoing transformations of mobility and control across the Americas. The “emergency” conditions of the pandemic enabled a redoubling of border enforcement and anti-immigrant/anti-refugee policies, intensifying pre-existing re-bordering dynamics at national and transnational levels—particularly through the expanded reach of U.S. border externalization. Simultaneously, these conditions gave rise to intensified spatial struggles: from border crossings to mutual aid networks and autonomous organizing aimed at sustaining migrant lives increasingly exposed to abandonment and premature death. By foregrounding ethnographic accounts of these seemingly localized experiences, this Special Issue reveals how early pandemic dynamics shaped—and continue to shape—new hemispheric geographies of re-bordering, exclusion, and resistance. Revisiting these cases offers valuable insight into enduring forms of social struggle in defense of life and labor, where the autonomy and subjectivity of migratory projects emerge as central to contesting the expansion of our authoritarian present.

ABSTRACT The legal status transition from foreigner to citizen is typically viewed as part of the integration process, and therefore associated with permanent settlement. While naturalisation may signal the intention to stay for some immigrants, this perspective neglects that citizenship is not only a token of membership but may also impact mobility rights. To address the mobility perspective on naturalisation, this article analyzes whether and for whom naturalisation is the catalyst for outmigration, using register data from Statistics Netherlands between 2006 and 2019. We argue, theoretically, that naturalisation may increase mobility rights for three specific groups, namely non-EU migrants, those who renounce their original citizenship, and involuntary migrants. We apply an identification strategy that captures selection into naturalisation, and focus on long-term effects. We find empirical support for the hypothesis regarding non-EU and involuntary migration, but not for migrants who cannot retain their original citizenship upon naturalisation. The effect sizes, however, are small, especially compared to the overarching and consistent finding that naturalisation increases the likelihood to stay. Overall, our findings provide no support for the notion that citizenship is generally used as a mobility instrument.

In the context of growing inequality between countries, regions, large agglomerations and small towns, the problem of nutrition and health of migrants is of particular importance. The relevance of the problem under study is due to the fact that modern migration is an important social process that affects the demographic distribution, social and economic development of countries and regions hosting migrants. In the article, based on a comparative analysis, guaranteed provision of necessary food products has been established, and the availability of products should be not only physical, but also economic, that is, migrants should have an independent financial opportunity to purchase them in sufficient quantity and proper quality, and not only to maintain vital functions, but also to maintain a habitual diet and lifestyle. which they had earlier in their country of origin (taking into account the preferences of a particular food, the peculiarities of national cuisine, traditions and food culture). The authors of the article have developed a conceptual model reflecting the relationship between factors affecting the diet and nutritional status of migrants after resettlement, and have proposed effective measures aimed at retaining migrants in less developed countries (regions) that can contribute to economic development and improve the quality of life of migrants. The practical significance of the study of the current state of nutrition of migrants lies in its ability to provide practical recommendations for government agencies of the Russian Federation in the field of forming an effective migration policy in the context of food security and developing effective strategies for retaining migrants.

KVM is the dominant VM hypervisor on Linux, and relies on QEMU to realize the backends of the virtio family of devices such as virtio-blk. However, KVM/QEMU-based paravirtualization prolongs the guest I/O path with multiple context switches. As fast NVMe storage devices have been widely used, the software overhead becomes non-negligible. To shorten the I/O path, virtio-blk’s variations, vhost-kernel-blk and vhost-user-blk, respectively perform all guest I/O processing in kernel and user spaces. Unfortunately, they essentially forsake the collaboration between KVM and QEMU, sacrifice important QEMU features including live migration, snapshots, and flexible image format support. This paper presents EXO, an extension of virtio-blk for efficient KVM/QEMU-based storage paravirtualization. The insight is that no matter how complex the QEMU backend’s processing is, to handle a guest I/O request, the host storage stack only needs to know the request’s guest-to-host address mapping. Therefore, we preserve the original slow I/O path of virtio-blk as a fallback, and leverage eBPF to introduce an in-kernel fast path that directly queries the address mapping without switching to the user-space backend processing. Extensive evaluation shows that EXO achieves similar or even higher performance compared to the variations (vhost-kernel-blk/vhost-user-blk) of virtio-blk, while preserving virtio-blk’s flexibility, safety, and compatibility.

ABSTRACT This paper unpacks the conceptual and practical issues of translating migrants’ life narratives, focusing on the challenge of untranslatability. Considering the translation of migrants’ life writing as both social documentation and historical knowledge production, the paper argues there is a need for a translation approach that combines ethnography, philosophy and cultural semantics. Adopting an empirically established linguistic framework rooted in universal concepts, it illustrates how the philosophical idea ‘thick translation’, expounded by Kwame Anthony Appiah, can be fruitfully applied to migrant life writing, presenting annotated translations of selected terms that appear in life stories published in the Australian Chinese-language newspaper Chinese Post (東方郵報) in its 1994 series titled ‘Australia, where is our place?’ (澳洲，我们的位置在哪里？). Ultimately, the paper demonstrates how ‘thick translation’, supported by a culture-sensitive metalanguage, can help promote understanding of unique perspectives across linguistic and cultural boundaries.

The aim of this paper is to expound and critically analyse the proposed reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) in December 2023. Drawing on insights from migration science and political philosophy, it argues that political agreement on the controversial reform can best be understood through a Foucauldian lens, conceptualising the European border regime as a biopolitical space in which migrant lives are contested. Against the background of the ever-expanding criminalisation and securitisation of migration, analyses of disciplinary and biopower offer unique insights into modern-day European asylum and border politics. The article criticises the bifurcation of European rights discourses in light of this trend, and calls for differentiated engagement with developments in European asylum politics.