Reception Of Migrants Research Articles

Tuberculosis screening in migrant reception centers: Results of a 2009 Italian survey

Tuberculosis (TB) is a social disease that is common in immigrants who are forced to live in difficult circumstances. In Italy, the guidelines for preventing TB include X-ray screening and application of the Mantoux test for migrants from high-TB-endemiccountries as soon as possible after admission to Italy. This article describes a field survey conducted in the reception center for asylum seekers in Bari Palese in southern Italy following the death of a center resident from pulmonary TB. A Mantoux screening test, followed by chest X-ray, was carried out in March 2009 on 982 immigrants, representing 97.5% of the residents of the center. A positive Mantoux test result was seen in 60.7% of the residents screened. The chest X-rays were performed on 92.9% of cuti-positive patients and on cuti-negative patients who were recent contacts of the deceased TB case and/or with symptoms suspicious for TB. Eight residents were diagnosed with active TB (0.8% of residents), and 117 residents (11.9%) had TB sequelae. In our survey, the Mantoux test demonstrated 88% sensitivity, 17% specificity, and a positive predictive value of 1% for active TB. The survey results suggest that residents in asylum centers are a special type of immigrant. Specific risk factors, such as overcrowding, may expose these residents to a greater risk for infectious diseases.

Moveable identities: Migration, subjectivity and cinema in contemporary Italy

Images and stories of migration within contemporary culture in Italy are shaped by several interconnections between the past (memories of Italian emigration, Italian poverty and rural society) and the present (Italy's postindustrial and multicultural realities). Analysing different texts, this article explores how the construction of the ‘official memory’ of the Italian emigration is used both to recall an anti-racist and sympathetic reception of today migrants and to conceal the specificity of today's mobility. In this context, the temporal categories of Eurocentric modernity are functional to the maintenance of hierarchical differences between ‘self’ (Italian and European) and different ‘others’ (the migrants). Although the system of representations is articulated around traditional dichotomies between North and South, East and West, and self and other, the article shows the crucial role of ‘migrancy’ cinema. It offers new trajectories, alliances and exchanges, which are significantly represented through the multiple crossings that challenge the walls of Fortress Europe in the Mediterranean.

The Migration Industry and Civil Society: Polish Immigrants in the United Kingdom Before and After EU Enlargement

Focusing on Polish migrants in the UK, this article seeks to emphasise the role of market forces in immigrants’ pathways to inclusion in the social and economic system of the host society. The traditional agents of civil society—voluntary organisations, state policies, the Polish Church or advocacy networks—have, before and after EU enlargement, been less prominent in responding to the immediate needs of recent migrants for information, networks and access to host-society institutions, than the migration industry as such—here understood as a particular sector of the service economy that stimulates mobility and eases adaptation. These profit-driven institutions are also in a position of power over information that is being distributed to migrants, although their sheer outreach has a positive impact on processes of integration overall. The argument in this article seeks to inform debates in political theory that see political and market forces as locked in contradiction over the reception of migrants. In fact, the lesson learned from the story of recent Polish migrants in the UK is that free access to the labour market is the crucial step towards overcoming the so-called ‘liberal paradox’ of migration politics, and to the successful integration of migrants into their host society.

Putting Transnationalism in Context: comparing Hong Kong Chinese-Australians in Sydney and Brisbane

The nature and extent of transnational links, identities and citizenship are embedded within the places where migrants reside. A comparison between Chinese-Australians with Hong Kong heritage in Sydney and in Brisbane demonstrates the effects of place. A data set of 182 respondents was extracted from the 2005–06 telephone survey of the Australian Transnational Project. The data provide an insight into variations and similarities in return visits, family visits to Australia, remittances, international communication, dual citizenship, cultural retention, belonging in Australia, and senses of identity. Members of the Brisbane community are more recently established, more highly qualified, and this is reflected in their higher rates of communication with, and remittances to, family in Hong Kong, and reliance on Web-based Chinese media. There may be a heightened sense of anxiety about cultural loss and generally more involvement in Chinese community cultural activities and events. Members of the Sydney community are longer established and have a more diverse socio-economic profile. A greater proportion of the Sydney respondents never communicated with family in Hong Kong. More had only Australian citizenship and self-identified as only Australian. The important effects of place on transnationalism include: size and function of the city; nature of the housing market; migrant reception infrastructure; migrant groups’ cultural infrastructure; the extent of diversity; and the nature of community relations. The differing longevity of presence of a group in a city is reflected in their embeddedness and in subtle variations in their transnationalism.

Codesarrollo: la opción institucional para el vínculo migración y desarrollo

This paper is an attempt to present the experience of co-development in Europe and particularly in Spain. It is focus on the governmental initiatives since the end of the 1990’s decade, as a consequence of a massive reception of migrants. Co-development is the policy in which this paper is focused, from its former periods in France to the moment in which it has been considered in Spain. In order to show this evolution and its effectiveness I use the Mexican case, because it demonstrates that there is a feasible link between migration and development. However, this it is only possible if the initiatives are coming from the migrants and their communities.

Globetrotters and Local Heroes? Labor Migration, Basketball, and Local Identities

This article addresses the global migration of sports labor. The contested presence of North American players in English basketball, first documented by Maguire (1988), is considered in the context of questions regarding the reception of migrants in local cultures. A 2-year ethnographic project incorporating participant observations, interviews, and focus groups investigated fans’ consumption of local basketball. Complex and nuanced interpretations of migrant players were evident. These were informed by local identities and civic pride, cultural stereotypes, and local experiences of spectating. Thus, the presence of migrant athletes is viewed specifically through the local lens—responses were shaped by the varying roles and interpretations of consuming basketball in the lives of local residents. Such observations reinforce the need for empirically grounded case studies to explore local consumption in light of the wider political–economic patterning of global sport.

Migrant Membership as an Instituted Process: Transnationalization, the State and the Extra-Territorial Conduct of Mexican Politics

How should we conceptualize membership, citizenship and political community in a world where migrants and their home states increasingly maintain and cultivate their formal and informal ties? This study analyzes the extra-territorial conduct of Mexican politics and the emergence of new migrant membership practices and relations between migrants and home states. Standard globalist, transnationalist or citizenship theories cannot properly contextualize and analyze such practices. I propose that we rethink the concept of membership in a political community not only as a Marshallian status granted by states, but also as an instituted process embedded within four other institutions and processes: home state domestic politics; the home state's relationship to the world system; a semi-autonomous transnational civil society created in part by migration; and the context of reception of migrants in the United States. A main conclusion is that the state itself plays a key role in creating transnational political action by migrants and new migrant membership practices. The article draws on printed sources and interviews and ethnography done since 1990.

Migrants on the margin? Mobility, integration and occupations in the West Riding, 1650–1820

The idea that families and individuals in England between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries were highly mobile has now been explored in some detail. It is clear that most people could expect to move at least once during their lifetime, that much of this movement was short distance and that the risks of migration were much heavier at certain points of the life cycle than others. The consequences of such mobility for studies which focus on individual spatial communities as a vehicle for studying social structure, institutions or demography are potentially very severe. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the fact that most English family reconstitutions can detect baptism dates for less than 40 per cent of all people marrying in a place. Against this backdrop, the idea that studying a «local country» defined by walking distance, the physical extent of occupational or religious networks or the width of the labour market, has particular attractions. This article argues that in practice we do not know enough in the English context about the character of migration, the motivations for migration or the reception of migrants, to be able to test the usefulness of theoretical notions of «local country». Using a case study of a large West Yorkshire parish between the mid-seventeenth and the early nineteenth centuries, this article shows that motivations for migration were often very complex and that migrants who came into townships in the parish, even where they came from other townships in the parish itself, did not integrate easily and without stress into the networks which shaped the character of everyday life for those longer resident. Indeed, the excellent sources for the parish would seem to show that migrants were marginalized economically and spatially, such that eventual acceptance was accorded to the children of migrants, not migrants themselves. Even if migrants theoretically shared the same local country, and even if they had previous connections with the township or individual families within it, there were no guarantees of easy integration. In this part of West Yorkshire then, the idea of a «local country» as a framework for studying demography or social structure has only limited validity.

Program Proposed for the Third Working Group on the Transportation, Reception, Placement, Adaptation, Settlement and Integration of Migrants

Program Proposed for the Third Working Group on the Transportation, Reception, Placement, Adaptation, Settlement and Integration of Migrants