Transnational Migration Research Articles

Dialectics of Transnational Mobility, Class, and Cultural-Intermediary among Indonesian Student-Migrant Workers in South Korea

Cosmopolitanism among migrant workers may present as the result of interpretations between transnational mobility, class, and cultural intermediary. Applying the ethnographic method this research was carried out during 2018-2019, which took Indonesian student-migrant workers aged 20-35 years in South Korea as informants. Travel and immigration, and higher education experiences have left Indonesian migrant workers at work in any places both in and out of campus areas. These practices show that the broader social, cultural, and individual agendas are one way of recognizing a new cosmopolitanism. There are two factors influence the cosmopolitanism process of Indonesian migrant workers; first, the transnational migration process. Second, the process of cultural intermediation in universities. This study reveals significant differences in how Indonesian migrant workers respond to the possibilities and opportunities of transnational mobility, from developing the cultural acceptance skills needed in their life trajectories for building network relationships with other transnational actors. Higher education for migrant workers has introduced another form of work, namely cultural intermediation, which can be seen as a cosmopolitan process.

Stateless Transnational Migrant Children in South Africa: Implications and Opportunities for Social Work Intervention

Migrant children who are vulnerable to statelessness are a growing at-risk population worldwide, and in South Africa. Migrant children often travel unaccompanied or become separated from their families during the journey, thus increasing their vulnerability. These children are often denied their rights in countries of transit and resettlement and might even be detained due to lack of documentation. They are subject to high levels of violence and status-exclusion within the migratory process. This paper considers statelessness in migrant children in South Africa, and undertakes a review of the literature to understand this phenomenon. The results show that a considerable number of migrant children in South Africa are at risk of statelessness. While all children may have roots that can be traced, situations and technicalities arise within the migration and registration framework that result either in children becoming stateless or at risk of becoming such. These children’s childhoods fall through the gaps as they lack a sense of belonging. They also have limited rights and none of the protection that goes with being recognized as nationals. Social workers are able to play a significant role in assessing and determining if migrant children are either stateless or at risk of becoming stateless and offer appropriate intervention to help them realize their rights, potential and contributions.

The Changing Material Conditions of Cameroonian Migrants in South Africa: What does this say about an “Afrophobic” post-apartheid State?

Violent attacks on African migrants have produced a richer body of knowledge on African transnational migration, xenophobia/Afrophobia, and their intersections with questions of citizenship and autochthony, especially in a country that historically has always been a home for African migrants. Constellations of narratives now vilify South Africa as a demonic state whose hatred of Africans and fixation on exorcising them have short-circuited the process of nation-building. The vilification of South Africa also tells us that many researchers, scholars, and even migrants are unaware of the ways that the country has transformed the lives of its increasing African migrant population. This article reflects on the changing material conditions of Cameroonians in South Africa to understand why this “Afrophobic†state is still a key migration destination for Cameroonians. Drawing on personal exilic experiences, observations, and relevant literature, we argue that despite the victimization of Africans, including Cameroonians, this constitutional democracy has opened up political, economic and sociocultural opportunities for many Cameroonians residing permanently in the country. In forging this argument, the article interrogates the political landscape in Cameroon and examines key economic and sociocultural moments/activities in South Africa as well as accomplishments in this migrant community, to elicit how access to different opportunities in South Africa has significantly transformed the lives of Cameroonians.

Migration Infrastructure and Brokerage in Victorian Female Emigration Societies

Abstract In the nineteenth century, female mobility was eased by a variety of intermediary structures, which interacted to direct the migration of British women to the Empire. Among these migration infrastructures were female emigration societies such as the Female Middle Class Emigration Society (1861–1886). This organisation was the first to assist gentlewomen in emigrating. It adopted a holistic approach to British female emigration by promoting women’s departure, selecting candidates, arranging their protection on the voyage, as well as their reception in the colonies. Grounded in a multifactorial perspective, this article offers an insight into how female migration brokerage came into being in the Victorian context. It intersects migration with gender and labour perspectives in a trans-sectorial approach of the history of female migration infrastructures in the British Empire, and reveals the diversity of transnational migration intermediaries interacting at meso level between female emigrants, non-state actors, and state institutions.

Kindergartens in Northern Norway as semiotic landscapes

Abstract Educational institutions have a responsibility to ensure that all children receive care and equal possibilities for development, independent of their linguistic and cultural background. However, there is little knowledge about how kindergartens ensure a welcoming and inspiring place for both transnational migrants, Indigenous children, and children from the majority population. Through a semiotic landscape analysis from two kindergartens in Northern Norway, this article contributes to this knowledge gap. Our starting point is that educational spaces are social, cultural, and political places. Applying a Bakhtinian perspective on semiotic landscapes as dialogues, the analysis focuses on two discourses. The first concerns diversity as an individual or shared value, and the second concerns balancing the ordinary and the exotic. We find that diversity related to transnational migration seems to be more integrated into the semiotic landscape, while the minoritised Indigenous Sámi people is stereotypically represented in kindergartens.

The promised land of Fadak: locating religious nationalism in shiite politics

ABSTRACT Yāsir al-Ḥabīb is a Britain-based cleric of Kuwaiti origin who aims to establish a religious state in the Persian Gulf region. This article assesses his project as a particular form of Shiite politics, in light of Peter van der Veer’s transnational theory of religious nationalism. It first examines religious conceptions of land in Twelver Shiism to situate Fadak, an oasis on the Arabian Peninsula. Fadak has been “promised land,“ pledged by the Prophet Muḥammad to his daughter Fāṭima. Ḥabīb reverts back to this sectarian trope in his legitimization of a Shiite state but reframes it in the language of religious nationalism. Three nodes in van der Veer’s rendering of religious nationalism guide the analysis: the modern union of the nation’s territorial embodiment with sacred geography, transnational migration enabling larger national identifications, and its “indigenous” crafting. They are traced in Ḥabīb’s British operations, which mobilize local “citizenship” in unbounded sectarian confrontation for the religious “nation,” while cohering paradoxically in the “freedom” discourse of his Shīrāzī Shiism. The epilogue finds heuristic value in Fadakism’s comparison with Zionism, centered on the question of assimilation – in the shape more of outward pressure in the second and elective affinity in the first.

Subversive Knowledge in Times of Global Political Crisis: A Manifesto for Ethnography in the Study of International Relations

Abstract This paper explores the promises and pitfalls of using ethnographic methods to analyze global politics in turbulent times. Ethnography has not gone unnoticed by international relations (IR) scholars, but the method remains at the fringes of the discipline. While acknowledging more recent feminist and practice theorist contributions to ethnographic research in IR, this paper brings together contemporary research across diverse issue areas, ranging from humanitarian intervention to transnational migration, to ask about ethnography's larger contribution to understanding global politics: What kinds of knowledge does ethnography produce about IR? In what ways might ethnography, informed by local perspectives, challenge top-down approaches to the study of IR? We identify three primary justifications for ethnographic methods based on different, though overlapping, forms of knowledge that they can uncover: tacit knowledge, marginalized knowledge, and subversive knowledge. We acknowledge issues that complicate access, and we warn that ethnographers are far from immune to the imperialist arrogance of mainstream methodologies. Ultimately, we call for reflexive scholarship to navigate the international politics of a “post-truth” and post-Covid world.

From Thailand to Hong Kong: reinventing womanhood in the journeys of migrant women

ABSTRACT Gender affects how people are socialized, how they see and treat themselves and how they interact with other people. Drawing on ethnographic research in Hong Kong, this paper seeks to contribute to the scholarship on gender and migration. By using the identity negotiation framework, it examines how assumptions about gender roles and expectations learned by Thai migrant women in Thailand are called into question upon arrival in Hong Kong, and how, during their journey of transnational migration, these Thai migrant women reinvent their womanhood in the labour market and family life in Hong Kong. This study reveals interesting contradictions between, on the one hand, the seemingly homogeneous stereotype of traditional Thai womanhood and, on the other hand, the fluidity and intersectionality of actual Thai womanhood practices in real-life migration contexts. By emphasizing the engendering journey of Thai women in the labour market and family life in Hong Kong, this paper highlights the intersectionality of ethnicity, class and gender in the social construction of womanhood in the context of transnational migration.

\u201cThey have no taste in Morocco.\u201d Home furnishing, belonging, and notions of religious (im)perfection among white Dutch and Flemish converts in Morocco

This article focuses on furnishing practices in the domestic space of the homes of white Flemish and Dutch Muslim female converts to Islam who made hijra (Islamic migration) to Morocco. Fed up with European Islamophobia and longing for a place that supports and strengthens their faith, they decided to emigrate to a Muslim country. However, remarkably, once settled in Morocco, many experience discontent with regard to a perceived “lack of true Islam” in the country. To gain insight into the positions and experiences of these women, I look at how they create a sense of belonging through furnishing practices in the domestic space of their new homes. I am interested in how various senses of belonging are expressed and come together in relation to their construction of religious belonging and place, and are renegotiated through domestic decoration practices. Building on literature on home, transnational migration, conversion, and material religion, I demonstrate that mechanisms of distinction and notions of religious (im)perfection intersect in the organization of the domestic space. Based on ethnographic accounts, I argue that my interlocutors bring a “culturalized” West-European Islam to Morocco, with tastes and sensibilities that jostle uneasily against local Moroccan religious practices but also allows them to repair some of the privileges they lost upon their conversion in their homeland. Lastly, this article shows that it is through the engagement with mundane material forms, but also with absence and empty spaces, that Islam becomes present in their domestic spaces, enhancing the cultivation of their ethical selves.

Stimulating Flexible Citizenship

This paper explores the relationship between migration and integration policies in the Netherlands, diaspora policies in India, and the transnational practices of Indian highly skilled migrants to the Netherlands. We employ anthropological transnational migration theories (e.g., Ong 1999; Levitt and Jaworsky 2007) to frame the dynamic interaction between a sending and a receiving country on the lives of migrants. This paper makes a unique contribution to migration literature by exploring the policies of both sending and receiving country in relation to ethnographic data on migrants. The international battle for brains has motivated states like the Netherlands and India to design flexible migration and citizenship policies for socially and economically desirable migrants. Flexible citizenship policies in the Netherlands are primarily concerned with individual and corporate rights and privileges, whereas Indian diaspora policies have been established around the premise of national identity.

Twenty-First Century “New” Greek Transnational Migration to Canada

This article derives from a qualitative study of the “new” migration from Greece to Canada, resulting from a severe socioeconomic crisis in Greece. Starting from the migration narratives of 20 “new” Greek migrants in Halifax and Toronto, this research focuses on how the “new” migrants make and carry out the decision to leave and immigrate to Canada. A heuristic use and reconceptualized understanding of the classic “push-pull” model, in conjunction with a transnational migration perspective, allows mapping out, through rich qualitative data, the structure—agency articulation in the “out-of-Greece-and-into-Canada” mobility of 21st century “new” Greek migrants.

Social Networks: The Survival Strategy Of Indonesian Migrant Workers In Hong Kong

Transnational migration performed by Indonesian women today is a social transformation in labor participation. This phenomenon is also encountered in the lives of women who decide to become Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong. This research aims to analyze and identify the self-actualized survival ability of Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong. In addition, this research also investigates the social capital practiced by Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong. The descriptive qualitative method was employed as the research method by using an interpretive approach. Data collection in this research utilized purposive sampling on nine Indonesian women migrant workers which was conducted in May 2019 and located in Tsim Tsa Shui, Kowloon district, Hong Kong. By applying the concept of social capital from Fukuyama, research results discovered that the existence of migrant workers network is established in the circle of relatives and families, which becomes the formation basis of social capital. Social capital possessed by Indonesian migrant workers is admitted to be composed of three main elements, firstly, trust in the form of social security to support the continuity of existence of women as migrant workers in Hong Kong, specifically when facing problems. The second element is reciprocal, which is based on the economic shortages experienced and the common feeling and experience of being a migrant worker in Hong Kong. The last element is social interaction, which prioritizes practical and economic interactions by choosing the closest district to where they live and using social media to communicate with each other.

Maria Daskalaki reviews Transnational Migration and the New Subjects of Work: Transmigrants, Hybrids and Cosmopolitans by Banu Özkazanç-Pan

Maria Daskalaki reviews <i>Transnational Migration and the New Subjects of Work: Transmigrants, Hybrids and Cosmopolitans</i> by Banu Özkazanç-Pan

Транснационализм в режиме онлайн: миграционные исследования в условиях искусственной социальности

Миграция в Россию из стран СНГ — явление, которое ставит перед социальными учеными многочисленные исследовательские проблемы. Разнообразие миграционных потоков и трудности в доступе к «полю» приводят к тому, что различные фрагменты общей картины лишь в той или иной степени согласуются друг с другом. Статья посвящена осмыслению и сравнению нескольких таких фрагментов, полученных в ходе изучения «следов» активности транснациональных мигрантов в интернете. Авторы стремятся ответить на два вопроса: какие стороны миграционных процессов проявляются в собранных данных, а какие — ускользают от исследователей; как полученные результаты и их ограничения соотносятся со свойствами онлайн-среды, организованной деятельностью поисковых, классифицирующих и сортирующих алгоритмов? Эмпирический материал представлен двумя типами онлайн-данных, характеризующих миграцию в Россию из пяти стран (Азербайджана, Казахстана, Кыргызстана, Таджикистана и Узбекистана). Это группы "ВКонтакте" и сайты, найденные с помощью поисковика Google. Данные были собраны на шести языках: русском и стран исхода. В качестве методов выступают сетевой анализ, контент-анализ, а также онлайн-наблюдение. Охарактеризованы процессы сбора и анализа данных и основные результаты исследования для каждого из методов. Результаты соотнесены друг с другом, сделаны выводы о содержательных характеристиках миграционных процессов и о возможностях и ограничениях исследования миграции в онлайн-среде. Авторы описывают «разделение труда» между людьми и алгоритмами на каждом из этапов исследования, выделяют три типа алгоритмов согласно их роли в исследовательском процессе, а также размышляют над тем, как принятые методологические решения повлияли на полученные результаты. Благодарность. Исследование выполнено при поддержке Российского научного фонда, грант № 18-78-10049.

Migration: Diversifying transnational flows under neoliberal transformation

Transnational migration to Japan has been developing since the 1980s, despite the fact that the Japanese government has officially denied accepting ‘immigrants’ and maintained a rigid immigration control policy over the years. This contradiction produced multiple gates of entry for migrants and led to the fragmentation of transnational networks of human movement. The neoliberal transformation of Japanese labor markets began in the mid-1990s, and migrant labor played a pivotal role in its restructuring. Sociologists have been dedicated to the analysis of the unique structures of the transnational supply chains and the surrounding constellations of interests in each labor market. Researchers have also identified the emergence of diverse ethnic entrepreneurs beyond their ethnic enclaves and across national borders, while other researchers have examined the structural constraints facing highly skilled workers in Japan. Recently, this transnational structure has been extended to include reproductive spheres of labor allowing the incorporation of nurses, care workers, and domestic workers as migrant workers. Beneath the diversity of types of transnational networks, Japanese sociologists have documented the increasing influence of the migration industry in the commercialization of transnational mobilities.

Transnationalism, Adoption and Cultural Difference: Anne Tyler’s Digging to America

Anne Tyler’s Digging to America published in 2006 presents portrayals of the changing landscape of American families within the framework of transnationalism. Her novel brings into focus the timely issue of international adoption by introducing two families who are adopting children from Korea and China. The two families are the Donaldsons, a white, upwardly mobile middle class family, and the Yazdans, a first generation of Iranian Americans. Adoptive parents tend to turn a blind eye towards the division of labor regarding adoption and reproduction between the First world and the less developed countries which makes transnational migration of Asian children possible. In addition, cultural differences between ethnic minorities are exoticized and consumed by dominant whites who lack an understanding of the history of migration and its accompanying sense of loss and suffering. While Tyler offers a critical insight into such issues as American multiculturalism, adoption and immigration, she ultimately represents dominant whites as wholehearted American citizens with good intentions toward people of different ethnic backgrounds. By delineating the process of integration which adopted children as well as the immigrants must inevitably go through, Tyler investigates the meaning of kinship and American citizenship, and the formation of ethnic identity in the transnational context.

PROBLEMATIZING HOME, BELONGING AND IDENTITY IN BINA SHARIF’S MY ANCESTOR’S HOUSE: A TRANSNATIONAL APPROACH

Since the 1990s, transnationalism, a as recent field of enquiry, has emerged as another theoretical lens through which we can look into the changing, evolving meanings of home, homeland, and belonging for international migrants. Studies of transnational migrants have focused upon varying aspects of the migrants’ lives: their ties with their kin; laws of naturalization in the host country, involvement in political organizations, the place of cultural iconography such as food, music, tradition in their daily lives. Because these transmigrants neither cut the ties to their countries of origin nor fully assimilate into the new culture of the host country, these immigrants fall under the rubric of transnationals However, transnational studies focusing upon the cross-border lives and activities of transnational subjects ignore the cross-cutting variables of gender, class, age, religion, ideology, period of immigration, citizenship status, different local sending contexts, which play a mediatory role in shaping notions of home, identity, community within even a single transnational community. In order words, it is not possible to talk about the transnationalism of a certain migrant group but of the heterogeneous make-up of transnationalisms, which differ even among the members of a transnational community at any given point in time. To understand the relationship between transnational migrants, and their conceptions of home and belonging, it is of vital importance to explore the specific circumstances of migration and how they influence conceptions of home. Secondly, the celebratory overtones of the transnational conditions of international migrants overlook the negative consequences of transnational lives such as the feelings of loss and dislocation inherent in cross border movements of transmigrants. Reading Pakistani-American Bina Sharif’s play My Ancestor’s House through a transnational lens, I would argue, brings a new insight into the literature on transnationalism by way of highlighting the non-homogenous, non-celebratory, and historically specific aspects of transnationalism in a global age.

The transnational life course: an integrated and unified theoretical concept for migration research

ABSTRACT Migration research developed significantly in the past decades. However, with the life course approach and the concept of transnational migration, there are still two different, as yet largely unconnected conceptual perspectives on migration. Both approaches have their merits but also their shortcomings. This paper tries to overcome these shortcomings by combining the advantages of both perspectives to suggest a unified theoretical concept of transnational life courses (TNLC). TNLC builds on the multidimensional understanding of transnational migration research that (potential) migrants live in multiple social and cultural spaces leading to parallel assimilation and dissimilation processes. This perspective is merged with the life course approach with its chronologically ordered understanding of causality relying on preceding determinants and subsequent outcomes in form of events and periods. Based on data provided by the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS) some simple empirical analyses were conducted to illustrate the potential of the TNLC approach.

Personal network analysis from an intersectional perspective: How to overcome ethnicity bias in migration research

AbstractThrough qualitative personal network analysis from an intersectional perspective, this article contributes to the debate on the salience of ethnicity as a defining, yet essentialized, category in transnational migration research. The article includes a theoretical and methodological discussion of qualitative personal network analysis as a means to alleviate the risks of overemphasizing ethnicity over other categories, which provides the background to the empirical analysis. Drawing on 20 personal networks and qualitative interviews with Chinese international students who were studying in the United States, the findings of this study indicate that ethnicity, as a precursor to culture, along with gender and class, is important in friendship formations but not necessarily for job‐relevant issues. Moreover, through an intersectional personal network analysis, transnational family ties were problematized based not on their ethnicity but on gendered expectations and social norms.

State of normality: Transnational migrants’ shifting views of state institutions and their obligations

The power of nationalism is evident in how people perceive the world around them as ‘normal’. A national normality is constituted through education and media but also in everyday encounters with the state or state-regulated institutions in the fields of education, welfare provisions, medical care, finance and others. When people migrate between countries, their sense of ‘normality’ can become disturbed. Migration might impact how people think of their relationship to the state and its institutions. This article is based on analysis of 120 interviews with Polish migrants in the UK and Germany. It asks if migration creates a ‘post-national situation’ in which national categories are questioned and negotiated anew. The contexts of Poland, which is undergoing a return to conservative national identity, the UK and its struggle over Brexit, and Germany in its claim to European leadership, provide an instructive case for the discussion of intersections between nationalism and post-nationalism.