Lived Experiences Of Migrants Research Articles

The Global Challenge of Mass Migration and Asylum: Comparative Analysis of Street-Level Organizations at the Front Lines

As millions of individuals flee conflict, persecution, and hardship in search of safety and better lives, destination states in Europe and North American have struggled to respond. Street-level theory provides an analytic lens for investigating these struggles and how they evolve on the ground through the informal practices of street-level organizations (SLOs), where the law and individuals meet. This introduction presents an overview of our special issue and its comparative, street-level approach to investigating how SLOs matter to policy, politics, and, ultimately, the lived experience of migrants and refugees.

Bearing witness to structural violence against migrants and envisioning transnational solidarity.

Guided by a critical and transnational framework, this qualitative study centers on the perspectives and analyses of activists and organizers working with migrants to the United States who face devastating conditions due to historical and ongoing exploitation of geopolitical powers and structures of violence. Through thematic and reconstructive analyses, we focus on how 18 participants navigate the intersections of legal, political, economic, and cultural implications, as well as complex ethical and moral dilemmas, tensions, and contradictions that emerged in their work. Grounded in their eyewitness narratives, we attempt to learn about the lived experiences of migrants and engage in critical analysis of structural violence (i.e., violence embedded in the social structures and institutions) and oppressive conditions. We examine the notion of "solidarity" and what it means to engage in anti-oppressive transnational solidarity with differentials in positionalities and against the backdrop of professional and institutional reproduction of colonial, imperial, racist, and neoliberal forms of structural violence, including within the academy itself. Juxtaposing empirical and structural analyses, we hope to further contribute to a more nuanced understanding of intersectional social struggles and the potential for organizing towards liberatory solidarity.

Composite counterstorytelling as a technique for challenging ambivalence about race and racism in the labour market in Ireland

In this study, the statement ‘race is no longer an issue’ is used to examine how 32 migrants of Spanish, Polish and Nigerian descent understand the significance of race in labour market mobility in Ireland. Their responses showed that Black and White workers talk about race differently. It also revealed an ambivalence about race among the White workers. This article employs counterstorytelling technique to analyse and present these differences through stories which humanise the lived experiences of migrants navigating the Irish labour market. The article commences with a discussion of how whiteness provides unacknowledged privilege. This is followed by a discussion of critical race theory’s counterstorytelling as an analytical tool for examining social relations. The participants’ narratives and current realities are then synthesised and woven into dialogues to construct composite portraits that invite readers into the world of migrant workers. The two stories constructed in this article portray how stories can open conversation about race and racism. Story A contains stereotypes that are used to explain the lack of racial diversity in the workplace, while story B challenges the complacency about how race and racism impact on the disparity in outcome among different groups. Finally, the article highlights the importance of counterstories in labour market research.

Promising precarity: the lives of Dublin’s international students

ABSTRACT There has been a considerable growth in the number of international students in Dublin, Ireland. In this paper, we first explore the broader context for this growth, showing the ways in which international student migration to Dublin has been facilitated, and the consequences in terms of the creation of different categories of international student migrants. We then discuss the experiences of international student migrants in Dublin by focusing on precarity and promise. We use Lorey’s tripartite understanding of precarity (2015. States of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious. London: Verso) to show how international student migrants in Dublin experience legal precarisation, economic precarity and personal precariousness. This is, we argue, mitigated by promise (Ahmed 2010. The Promise of Happiness. Durham: Duke University Press), as international student migrants seek to navigate their way through precarity in place. The paper offers important insights into the complexity of international student migration, based on the lived experiences of migrants themselves.

One world is not enough: the structured phenomenology of lifestyle migrants in East Asia.

The paper is based on original empirical research into the lifestyle migration of European migrants, primarily British, to Thailand and Malaysia, and of Hong Kong Chinese migrants to Mainland China. We combine strong structuration theory (SST) with Heideggerian phenomenology to develop a distinctive approach to the interplay between social structures and the lived experience of migrants. The approach enables a rich engagement with the subjectivities of migrants, an engagement that is powerfully enhanced by close attention to how these inner lives are deeply interwoven with relevant structural contexts. The approach is presented as one that could be fruitfully adopted to explore parallel issues within all types of migration. As is intrinsic to lifestyle migration, commitment to a better quality of life is central to the East Asian migrants, but they seek an uncomplicated, physically enhanced texture of life, framed more by a phenomenology of prosaic well-being than of self-realization or transcendence. In spite of possessing economic and status privileges due to their relatively elite position within global structures the reality for a good number of the lifestyle migrants falls short of their prior expectations. They are subject to particular kinds of socio-structural marginaliszation as a consequence of the character of their migration, and they find themselves relatively isolated and facing a distinct range of challenges. A comparison with research into various groups of migrants to the USA brings into relief the specificities of the socio-structural positioning of the lifestyle migrants of the study. Those East Asian migrants who express the greatest sense of ease and contentment seem to be those who have responded creatively to the specific challenges of their socio-structural situation. Often, this appears to have been achieved through understated but active involvements with their new settings and through sustaining focused transnational connections and relationships.

International students and social exclusion in the age of social media

Abstract This article considers the changing nature of international students’ lived experiences of disadvantage in Australia in the context of their daily practices of social media. Specifically, it first engages with the extant empirical research on social media practices in the migration context which points to the contingent impacts of digital technologies on migrants’ everyday lives. This body of literature suggests the possibility to probe into the lived experiences of migrants and their everyday strategies through a close examination of their activities around social media. Further, this article attends to studies in the Australian international student literature which highlights the interplays of digital technologies and international student agency. An analysis of the studies suggests how the students’ struggles with social exclusion are entangled with their everyday social media practices in a variety of ways. At the same time, the complex roles of social media problematize how we understand international students’ experiences in the host nation and how we could re-conceptualize ‘social exclusion’ and ‘social inclusion’. For that reason, this article calls for more nuanced approaches towards understanding international students’ lived experiences through the multiple ways international students integrate digital media technologies like social media into their everyday lives. Methodologically, digital ethnographic methods are discussed to facilitate such approaches in innovatively revealing the subtlety of international student mobilities and lived experiences in host societies.

Editorial: Diaspora Beyond Nationalism

This is the editorial for the special issue ‘Diaspora beyond Nationalism’. It makes a case for the research focus of the issue, explaining that it grew out of a conference of the same title, held in September 2015. Debates about migrants in many Western countries have increasingly taken a contentious tone, and have propelled nationalist and far-right parties, putting pressure on governments to resist further arrivals as well as becoming more demanding of migrants and diaspora communities that already live in those countries. The West has a long history of migrant settlement and when this is coupled with global notions of human rights and the responsibility to protect, managing migration becomes increasingly complex. Academic engagement can unpack and contribute to the understanding of some of this complexity. This JOMEC Journal special issue seeks to make a timely intervention on the lived experiences of migrants and diaspora communities, the multifaceted roles they play, the identities they occupy, the cultural transformations they carve out and undergo, and the centrality of media representation and communications technology usage, to provide meaningful insight into these processes.

Motivational and Adaptation Experiences of Returnees and Migrants to Cyprus: A Grounded Theory Study with Counselling Psychology Application and Practice Implications in Europe

This grounded theory study explored the existential lived experience of migrants and second-generation Greek-Cypriot returnees to Cyprus and implications for counselling psychology. It looked at their motivation to return/migrate, their encounter with the new world and desires to belong. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with four migrants and four returnees, recruited within the Cyprus Euroguidance employment service in three cities, Nicosia, Limassol and Larnaca in Cyprus, E.U. All participants were in the process of seeking employment. Migrants and returnees faced intense dilemmas following relocation. Returnees’ motivations to return were influenced by childhood memories of visiting the country, desires for an improved economic and familial lifestyle, and the need to find a true sense of belonging. Migrants’ motivations included being married to a Cypriot, hoping for better economic prospects and living in a sunny environment. People experienced a cultural transition after choosing to put their ethnic identity in a different ethnic environment to the one where it was formed and in their attempts to find work, develop friendships, be accepted and find a home they experienced an unsettling reality. In Counselling psychology terms, the findings support other literature (Ward, Bochner, & Furnham, 2001) highlighting that migrants go through phases of adjustment, with cultural contact and acceptance by the host society, as well as financial independence being key factors. They described their experience as an outsider in a system dominated by nepotism and in a society new to them, that appeared to be suspicious of them. This transition lived by them was psychologically de-stabilising, characterised by stress, frustration, depression and isolation. Their commitment to find a way to belong was shown through their resilience. These findings are discussed with the application and practice of Counselling Psychology in mind.

Chronicles of Death Out of Place: Management of Migrant Death in Johannesburg

It is unsurprising that a range of organisations have been created both by and for migrants, as unique needs have arisen alongside the growing flow of migration from the African sub-continent to South Africa in the post-apartheid era. This article investigates in particular the Johannesburg-based organisations that serve the needs of cross-border migrants and their families when death occurs, facilitating the chance for a funeral and burial in the home country by navigating the social, governmental, economic and spiritual channels necessary for determining the course of a deceased migrant body. This article is concerned with the motivations, roles and actions of a selected set of these organisations as they assist and prepare a migrant body for its posthumous journey (including the factors that mediate against a ‘successful’ return of the body home). We ask how these actors interact during this journey and what these connections and processes might suggest to us about living and dying in Johannesburg as a foreign migrant. Rather than examining funerals and burials themselves, we go on an extended journey from the deathbed back to the living migrant community, exploring the way in which death is managed in Johannesburg in the interim period between death and burial. Such an exploration, we believe, will provide a view of the lived experience of migrants that has been given neither sufficient attention in the literature on death in Africa nor in the literature on migration.

'Coventry Irish': Community, Class, Culture and Narrative in the Formation of a Migrant Identity, 1940–1970

Successful migration requires adaptation to the cognitive disjunction between 'there and here' and 'then and now'. One possible response is the emergence of a hybrid identity expressed in phrases used by diaspora members such as 'I'm Coventry Irish.' This article explores the role of community, class, culture and narrative in the formation of a 'Coventry Irish' identity in migrants to Coventry from Ireland across the mid twentieth century. It draws on archival sources to investigate the interplay between Irish migrants and the host community. The lived experience of migrants is explored through oral history interviews and archival recordings. It provides evidence of the processes through which migrants integrated within a working-class city whilst maintaining a distinct ethnic identity and how this identity is evolving over subsequent generations.