Low-skilled Labor Migration Research Articles

A Problem-Based Approach in Social Justice Education: A Focus-Group Study From Singapore

The author of this article examines data collected from focus-group discussions about the impact of a social justice education module on human trafficking and low-skilled labor migration in South and Southeast Asia. Employing cognitive developmental theory as an analytical framework, this article shows how the structural complexity of the issue caused cognitive dissonance and motivated further inquiry among students. Furthermore, the presence of diverse scholarly accounts enabled students to form their own judgment about how to respond. While students differed on what solution they judged most appropriate, most students thought that workers deserved fairer treatment. Some students even put their beliefs into action.

Low-Skilled Migrant Labor Schemes in Japan’s Agriculture: Voices From the Field

Abstract Despite rapid demographic decline, until recently, low-skilled migrant workers have been welcomed only through ‘side-doors’ such as technical interns (TITP). Yet pressure for change comes from two sides: the moral critique of the ‘side-door’ scheme, and the growing economic pressures of a dwindling labor force. In 2018 Japan put in place a short-term bona-fide labor scheme (Specified Skilled Worker; hereafter, SSW) in fields previously largely inaccessible to foreign labor. In combination with the TITP schemes, these workers are allowed to stay longer. But what do these changes mean, how do the farmer-employers see them, and will the SSW lead to a sustainable farm labor supply going forward? We explore stakeholders’ views of the current schemes and their opinions on how low-skilled labor migration should proceed in agriculture. Businesses are desperate for labor, but not at any cost. Under SSW, employers are being asked to change the ways they envision and treat migrant labor. The tensions between their expectations and the realities on the ground reflect the contradictions that Japan’s migration policies inherit, based in the bureaucratic fiction that only ‘skilled’ labor is necessary. Data for this paper come from qualitative interviews conducted from 2018 to 2022 in Kyoto, Aichi, and Tokyo.

Impact of labor migration on human capital and GRP of Russian regions

The article presents an analysis of the impact of external labor migration on human capital and GRP that indirectly reflects the labor demand in Russian regions. The results of the study showed the contradictions that have developed in the Russian regions: demand for skilled labor and shortage of labor resources, which is covered by low-skilled labor migration. As a result, a negative trend is developing — segmentation of labor markets in regions where two parallel demands for skilled and low-skilled labor are formed. The study recorded a positive relationship between the number of migrant workers and GRP, which indicates a steady demand for foreign labor force (FLF). Along with this, the impact of migrant workers on human capital in the Russian regions has undergone significant changes, and not all regions have received and receive a positive contribution from foreign labor force. Also, the results of the study confirmed not only the important role of labor migration for human capital, but also confirmed the hypothesis that labor migration has a positive impact on human capital by enhancing its qualitative characteristics in difficult or critical moments of the development of Russian regions, and therefore the demand for labor migration will continue in the medium term. In essence, labor migration, human capital and GRP are communicating vessels. The conclusion is made about underestimation of the program of voluntary compatriots' resettlement, which had a positive effect on the development of regional economies in 2014. In view of this, the author believes that the program needs a serious revision in order to attract skilled labor migration and increase the human potential of the country.

Beyond Nations and Nationalities: Discussing the Variety of Migrants’ Identifications in Russian Social Media

This article examines how transnational labor migrants to Russia from the five former Soviet Union countries – Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – identify themselves in social media. The authors combine Rogers Brubaker's theory of identifications with Randall Collins' interaction ritual theory to study migrants' online interactions in the largest Russian social media (VK.com). They observed online interactions in 23 groups. The article illuminates how normative and policy contexts affect the Russian Federation's migration processes through a detailed discussion of migrants' everyday online interactions. Results reveal common and country-specific identifications of migrants in their online interactions. Migrants from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan employ identifications connected to diasporic connections. Migrants from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in their identifications refer to low-skilled labor migration to Russia as a fact, a subject for assessment, and as a unifying category. For these countries, the present and the future of the nation is discussed in the framework of evaluation of mass immigration to Russia.

Crossed mobilities: the “recent wave” of Spanish migration to France after the economic crisis

ABSTRACT This article analyses the Spanish migration to France that emerged following the 2008 crisis from the perspective of crossed mobilities [Oso, L., A. Sáiz López, and A. Cortés. 2017. ““Movilidades Cruzadas” en un Contexto de Crisis: Una Propuesta Teórica Para el Estudio de la Movilidad Geográfica y Social, con un Enfoque de Género, Transnacional e Intergeneracional.” Revista Española de Sociología 26 (3): 293–306. doi:10.22325/fes/res.2017.24], focusing on the cross between social class, gender and generation. It considers the connection between this recent “migration wave” and Spanish low-skilled labour migration in the 1960s and 1970s (domestic service, caretaking, cleaning, the building sector). It also analyses high-skilled migration, which stands apart from traditional emigration, revealing the key role social origins play in labour market insertion. Finally, the article considers the crossed mobility between exiled Republicans and the Marea Granate or “Maroon Wave”, who refer to themselves as “economic exiles”. The analysis is based on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Paris with migrants that arrived in the wake of the 2008 crisis and virtual ethnography (Spanish emigration’s principal websites and Facebook portals).

Low-Skilled Labor Migration in Tajikistan: Determinants and Effects on Expenditure Patterns

It is often assumed that international labor migration from Tajikistan, while having no noticeable effects on investment (usually defined as medium and long-term consumption, such as education, or investment into housing or business), on average leads to an increase in short-term consumption, mostly food. In this paper, a simple household-level model determining the migration decision is developed and tested empirically. In a second step, the effect of low-skilled labor migration on household expenditure shares is analyzed using 2SLS. While only weak effects of migration measured by a simple dummy are visible, repeating the analysis using the length of the migration spell instead, as well as its squared term, reveals that labor migration apparently takes a while to "kick in" and become profitable to those remaining at home. The observed long-term effects on household consumption patterns, albeit being rather small, actually speak in favour of investment of remittances, with the respective shares increasing over time, while the budget share spent on food slowly decreases.

Migration Infrastructure

Based on the authors’ long-term field research on low-skilled labor migration from China and Indonesia, this article establishes that more than ever labor migration is intensively mediated. Migration infrastructure – the systematically interlinked technologies, institutions, and actors that facilitate and condition mobility – serves as a concept to unpack the process of mediation. Migration can be more clearly conceptualized through a focus on infrastructure rather than on state policies, the labor market, or migrant social networks alone. The article also points to a trend of “infrastructural involution,” in which the interplay between different dimensions of migration infrastructure make it self-perpetuating and self-serving, and impedes rather than enhances people's migratory capability. This explains why labor migration has become both more accessible and more cumbersome in many parts of Asia since the late 1990s. The notion of migration infrastructure calls for research that is less fixated on migration as behavior or migrants as the primary subject, and more concerned with broader societal transformations.

Foreign Language Proficiency of Intra-European Migrants: A Multilevel Analysis

Previous studies on the determinants of migrants' foreign language proficiency converge in attributing importance to the same set of variables. These variables can be integrated in a rational choice framework, and it is likely that processes are at work which apply to different contexts. This study aims to make three contributions to the existing literature. First, it provides a further test of the generality of findings using survey data on intra-European adult migrants as a specific context. Intra-European migrants differ in many respects from hitherto analysed migrant groups. High-skilled labour, study, and 'quality-of-life' migration are well represented alongside low-skilled labour migration. Second, several variables are added which are not available in the official data on which analyses are usually based. These include retrospective information on migrants' previous sojourns abroad, migration motives, language proficiency at the time of migration, and the number of friends from their own and other ethnicities. Third, the study analyses the differential impact of initial language proficiency as well as structural and social integration for groups that differ with regard to a group-specific likelihood of familiarity with the foreign language.

Controle migratório europeu em território africano: a omissão do caráter extraterritorial das obrigações de direitos humanos

Os instrumentos normativos adotados pela União Européia (UE) para garantir a livre circulação entre os territórios de seus Estados-membros estão estreitamente ligados ao controle de suas fronteiras nacionais. Nos últimos dez anos foram criados diversos mecanismos para prevenir, controlar e punir a imigração irregular para a comunidade européia, cujo modelo migratório caracteriza-se por sua visão instrumental que burla os direitos fundamentais e reduz a imigração à mão-de-obra que seu mercado de trabalho necessita. A partir disso, derivam-se normas que reconhecem direitos conforme a nacionalidade e a condição migratória da pessoa. Nesse contexto, o artigo analisará, com um enfoque de direitos humanos, o que se supõe ser um "avanço" radical do processo de exteriorização, do ponto de vista físico, simbólico, político e também jurídico: as operações criadas para impedir a migração de pessoas em "cayucos" ou "pateras" para a Europa a partir das costas de países como Marrocos, Argélia, Senegal e Mauritânia.

Interethnic partnerships of Western Europeans: between preferences and opportunities

Previous studies on determinants of social integration of migrants in the destination countries, and of interethnic partnerships in particular, converge in attributing importance to the same set of variables. This study aims at providing a further test of the generality of findings across different contexts using survey data of intra-European adult migrants, a group which differs in many respects from the hitherto mainly analyzed migrant groups. High-skilled labor, study, retirement, and “quality of life” migration are well represented, while low-skilled labor migration which dominates traditional research in the field is of minor importance, yet still present.