Migration Scholars Research Articles

Italian Diasporic Studies: The Then and Now

Italian Diasporic Studies: The Then and Now

‘A life path different from one of labour in the Gulf’: Ongoing mobility among Nepali labour migrants in Qatar and their families

AbstractLabour migration is commonly attached to the idea of a ‘better’ future for the migrants and their families, but there is less emphasis on how this does not materialize for many labour migrants. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Nepalis working in Qatar and select families in Nepal, this article focuses on the intergenerational migration cycle or migration as open‐ended and ongoing across generations. While the Gulf migration scholarship has mostly concentrated on low‐skilled workers, I draw on the cases of migrants across different skill/income levels to show how the migrants’ and/or families’ desires for ‘ongoing mobility’ to the Gulf or the West panned out differently. I argue that despite wanting a different and better life path for the future generation, one unlike theirs of labour in the Gulf, many Gulf migrants are unable to meet these familial expectations; rather, migration histories repeat in a continual quest to overcome economic constraints.

Airpower and Migration Control

ABSTRACT Migration scholarship has thus far largely neglected the role of aircraft in both (irregular) migration and state policies aimed at controlling migration. Drawing inspiration from the field of strategic studies, where ‘airpower’ has been a key theoretical concept, this article explores the role of aerial assets in states’ migration control efforts. The article discusses three main dimensions of the use of airpower in controlling migration: the increasing resort to aircraft for border enforcement purposes – or what can be referred to as ‘vertical border policing’ –, states’ tight monitoring of the aerial migration infrastructure, and the use of aircraft in migrant return operations. As a core element of state power, it is airpower’s key features of reach, speed and height which have made it a particularly useful migration control instrument.

The EU Urban Partnership on Inclusion: Institutionalizing Local–Supranational Integration Governance

In times when immigrant integration is considered both a highly salient political topic and a practical challenge by local, national, and European decision-makers, an analysis of the governance approach developed by the European Union (EU) Urban Partnership on Inclusion of Migrants and Refugees opens up new opportunities to advance research on migration studies’ “local turn.” In this IMR Dispatch from the Field, we argue that exploring the joint local-EU agenda-setting and cooperation in the Urban Partnership on Inclusion can refine understandings of multilevel governance. We argue that what is intriguing about the Urban Partnership on Inclusion for migration scholars is the institutionalization of local–supranational cooperation within an existing intergovernmental EU structure as a way to advance multilevel governance, even when the national level remains passive. Demonstrating the ways in which the Urban Partnership on Inclusion differs from city networks focused on questions of migration and integration, we show that the Urban Partnership on Inclusion offers a common structure to EU institutions and local authorities to coordinate agendas and actions, both from the local level upward and from the EU level downward while aiming to find ways around national passivity. Paying closer attention to such forms of institutionalized local–supranational governance developing within state-led structures, we suggest, can advance migration research and shed light on emerging local–supranational governance arrangements both at the European and the international levels.

Estimating Future Migration Flows Under Social and Environmental Scenarios Taking Into Account Interactions: Insights From a Survey Among Migration Scholars

Scenario planning has been gaining popularity during the last decade as a tool for exploring how international migration flows might be affected by changing future circumstances. Using this technique, scholars have developed narratives that describe how flows might change depending on different developments in two of their most impactful and uncertain drivers. Current applications of scenario planning to migration however suffer from limitations that reduce the insights that can be derived from them. In this article, we first highlight these limitations by reviewing existing applications of scenario planning to migration. Then, we propose a new approach that consists in specifying different pathways of change in a set of six predefined drivers, to then ask migration scholars how each of these pathways might impact both migration flows and the other five drivers. We apply our approach to the case of migration pressure and demand from less developed countries to Europe until the year 2050. Results from our survey underscore the importance of a wide array of drivers for the future of migration that have so far not been considered in previous applications of scenario planning. They further suggest that drivers do not change independently from each other, but that specific changes in some drivers are likely to go hand in hand with changes in other drivers. Lastly, we find that changes in similar drivers could have different effects in sending and receiving countries. We finish by discussing how enhanced, quantified scenarios of migration between less developed countries and Europe can be formulated based on our results.

Editorial Introduction — Migration and (In)Equality in the Global South

This Special Issue draws on the work of migration scholars, artists, and activists from across the Global South collaborating through the South-South Migration for Development and Equality (MIDEQ) Hub to explore the intersections, contestations, and possibilities associated with migration in the Global South.Our aim is to contribute a better understanding of the structural inequalities – poverty, gender inequalities, and racism – that drive migration and limit its potential to contribute to personal, societal, and global development.

Has the decline in the intensity of internal migration been accompanied by changes in reasons for migration?

The last few decades have seen the intensity of internal migration decline in Australia and other advanced economies including the United States. Recent evidence suggests that changes in the composition of the population alone do not account for this persistent downward trend. This has led migration scholars to suspect that more profound behavioural changes driven by social, economic, and technological transformations are at play and that shifts in migration behaviour are likely to be reflected in changes in reasons for migration. We use data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey to shed new light on the factors driving the decline in internal migration in Australia between 2002 and 2018. This is done by examining annual trends in self-reported reasons for intrastate and interstate migration and applying a series of pooled logistic regressions. Results reveal a decline across all reasons for migration, and not only employment-related migration contrary to explanations proposed in the extant literature. The decline in employment-related migration does not appear to be the result of a rise in alternative forms of mobility such as teleworking or substitution with inter-industry or occupation mobility. Furthermore, we also find that the negative effect of duration of residence has increased for family-related migration. Collectively, these findings suggest that behavioural change, particularly increased place attachment, may have contributed to the decline in internal migration.

Exploring Ghanaian male immigrants' transnational dating practices within the integration‐transnationalism matrix

The migration literature focusing on understanding interactions between immigrants' integration and transnationalism is replete with mixed findings. However, contemporary consensus among migration scholars suggests that immigrants' integration and transnational connections can occur simultaneously. Focusing on transnational dating—which is understudied—this exploratory study draws on an online qualitative survey with five Ghanaian male immigrants in southwestern Ontario, Canada, to explore how immigrants' attachment to the host society, homeland, and “elsewhere” shape transnational dating behaviour. Transnational dating is conceptualized in this paper as dating partners that live part or most of their life or time detached from each other, yet hold together and create a sense of shared welfare and harmony, namely “datehood” that surpasses national borders. Using the integration‐transnationalism matrix as the theoretical framework, this paper demonstrates that the roles of integration and transnationalism should not be seen as separate influences on participants' transnational dating behaviour given participants' strong attachment to the host society, sending country, and “elsewhere.” Importantly, our finding indicates that the motivation for transnational dating is related to transnational connections rather than not feeling integrated into Canadian society. Overall, the finding contributes to discourses on dating, transnational dating, transnationalism, and the conceptual framework of the integration‐transnationalism matrix.

Are you in the club? The contested role of the night for Muslim immigrant youth in Aarhus, Denmark

ABSTRACT This article investigates spatial belonging and how qualifiers of the night and darkness inform policies and experiences of migrant living in contemporary Denmark. I focus on ‘youth clubs’ (Ungdomsklubber), a network of state and community sponsored buildings located in periphery neighbourhoods within Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark. My approach to the youth clubs is in terms of nocturnal geographies, as ‘the night’ is not only a temporal category but also a spatial one. Beyond the specificities of this case study, I argue that migration scholars should give critical attention to nocturnality, within a strategic intersectional approach, as a contested ecology that generates differentiated value. As a time–space, the night helps define the legitimacy of occupations, passages, visibilities and other kinds of presence in the city thereby providing insight into migrant experiences and the problematic nature of immigration and ‘integration’ policies.

A New Era in Latin American Migration Scholarship in Australia

A New Era in Latin American Migration Scholarship in Australia

Urban governance of liminal legality comparing the incorporation of migrant children in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem

Increasing numbers of migrant children worldwide grow up with fragmentary and revocable legal statuses that perpetuate their liminal legality as socially present yet legally non-existent. Scholars of migration have mainly explored macro drivers and micro-level effects of liminal legality paying less attention to the role of urban governance and actors in shaping migrant children's pathways of incorporation amidst broader processes of local rescaling. Taking into consideration that neoliberal rescaling is anchored in the uneven institutional landscapes in which it unfolds, this comparative research shows how different trajectories of urban rescaling result in two modes of governance: centralized–segregated in Tel-Aviv, and particularistic–integrative in Jerusalem. Grounded on 101 in-depth interviews with local agents and surveys of municipal policies and NGO reports, we show that in cosmopolitan-oriented yet relatively less ethno-nationally heterogeneous Tel-Aviv, actors maneuver institutional ambivalence by emphasizing liberal status-blind principles in the provision of segregated services. Conversely, in ethno-religious oriented yet ethno-nationally heterogeneous Jerusalem, migrant children are incorporated in integrative frameworks that recognize their particularity. Drawing on an inter-city comparison, we argue that local actors both reflect and mobilize inherited institutional landscapes and legacies of sensemaking of “otherness” as they negotiate similar national restrictive migration policies. Integrating critical scholarship on urban rescaling, attentive to structures of social provision and policy paradigms, and local actors' sensemaking, we foreground the centrality of cities in forging liminal legality as a multidimensional space where policies, institutional contexts, and agency work together in emplacing migrant children, suspended between legal categories, as urban subjects.

Resettlement cities: A mixture model analysis of the dispersion and placement strategy of U.S. refugee policy

Critical migration scholarship examines cities' economic, sociopolitical dimensions that not only shape migration patterns via a demand for migrant labor, but also forge complex social relations between migrants and their new neighbors. Drawing from critical migration theories, this study interrogates the dispersion or placement strategy of U.S. refugee policy, which resettles refugees into cities largely without a systematic, deliberative process. Meanwhile, refugee placement has become politicized. State and city governments are divided on resettling refugees in their jurisdictions. Using mixture model analysis, we examined city-level factors in 3000 U.S. cities where about 73,000 refugees were placed in 2010. Findings show that 90% of refugees were placed in just three types of resettlement cities: one parallels ‘traditional immigration gateways’ and two parallel ‘new immigrant destinations’. We find that what is salient in resettlement cities is not the availability of jobs per se, but that of low-wage jobs specifically, pointing to cities' demand for refugee labor. Findings along sociopolitical dimensions suggest that the typical resettlement city is simultaneously anti-refugee in political party affiliation but have integrative local policies, reflecting tensions between “contact” and “threat” hypotheses in migration literature. This study reveals contradictions inherent to U.S. resettlement policy that heretofore has been undetected.

Emigration State: Race, Citizenship and Settler Imperialism in Modern British History, c. 1850–1972

AbstractWhat role did migration play in the making of modern Britain? We now have a good sense of how ethnicity, class, religion and gender structured immigrants' experience and what impact they had on Britain's culture, society and economy. But as Nancy Green pointed out almost two decades ago, scholars of migration must focus on exit as well as entry. Such a call to study ‘the politics of exit’ is especially apposite in the case of the UK. For in every decade between 1850 and 1980 (with the exception of the 1930s), the UK experienced net emigration year on year. This article analyses this outflow of migrants to reveal a new vision of the UK as an ‘emigration state’. The article employs this concept to make a new argument about the formation of migration policy in the UK and offers a revised account of the geographical boundaries of the modern British state.

From the state of the art to new directions in researching what Brexit means for migration and migrants

Abstract What has Brexit meant for migration and migrants? How has the geopolitical repositioning of the UK in consequence of the UK’s exit from the European Union (EU) impacted on the experiences of long-established migrant communities and newly arrived migrants? In what ways are the impacts of Brexit differentially experienced across migrant communities according to, inter alia, class, gender, age, country of origin, disability, and race? How has migration scholarship addressed Brexit and its impact on migration and migration governance? And what has been the significance of migration research within this project? This critical review of migration studies scholarship literature focussed on Brexit and migration, we draw out the dominant themes and gaps in this emergent field and consider how these reconfigure the ‘spotlights’ and ‘blindspots’ in migration research from methodological nationalism to. In this way, we identify the potential for new lines of enquiry for research on Brexit and migration.

International students on the edge: The precarious impacts of financial stress

International students are an important global cohort of ‘noncitizens’ whose experiences are central concerns for urban sociologists and migration scholars. Drawing on survey fieldwork conducted among international students in the private rental sector in Sydney and Melbourne during 2019, this article provides new knowledge about the hardships experienced by international students who report financial stress. Using a modified scale developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, we highlight the accelerating role of high levels of financial stress in producing disruptive events such as housing evictions and fears of homelessness, as well as reliance on inadequate housing like ‘hot-bedding’. Financial stress is significantly more likely for students from low-GNI (gross national income) countries and higher stress reduces wellbeing. Access to paid employment, however, does not ‘protect’ against higher financial stress. We conclude that higher education policymakers need tools and policies to prevent disruptive life events among international students related to financial stress, particularly those associated with housing.

Practices of ‘Digital Homing’ and Gendered Reproduction among Older Sinhalese and Karen Migrants in Australia

The pathway to aging well is not always clear for older migrants living in a foreign country, who must navigate a range of challenges resulting from differences between the cultural expectations of aging in their country of origin and the realities of aging in their country of residence. Transnational migration scholars indicate that digital media are important resources for maintaining relationships and support networks across ‘here’ and ‘there’. They say relatively little, however, about the experiences of maintaining a sense of home, particularly for older migrants. In this paper, we draw on ethnographic interview data with older migrants from Sri Lanka and Burma (Myanmar), who live in Australia, to examine how their practices of ‘digital homing’ help them to manage the challenges of aging well in a foreign land. Three key findings are proposed. First, older migrants are active and skilled in using digital devices to create spaces of belonging and home. Second, older migrants’ access to and uses of digital media are structured by gendered, ethnic and generational roles, expectations and obligations. Third, the practices of digital homing that enhance migrant experiences of aging well tend to simultaneously reinforce and reproduce gendered inequalities within families and communities. We conclude by arguing that it is the very capacity of digital homing practices to reproduce ethnic and generational selves in host societies that simultaneously contributes to the reproduction of unequal gendered obligations and expectations, including in later life.

Time to Mainstream the Environment into Migration Theory?

As with all social processes, human migration is a dynamic process that requires regular theoretical reflection; this article offers such reflection as related to the role of the natural environment in contemporary migration research and theory. A growing body of evidence suggests that environmental contexts are increasingly shifting social and ecological realities in ways that are consequential to migration theory. We review some of this evidence, providing examples applicable to core migration theories, including neoclassical economic and migration systems perspectives, the "push-pull" framework, and the new economics of labor migration. We suggest that neglecting consideration of the natural environment may yield misspecified migration models that attribute migration too heavily to social and economic factors particularly in the context of contemporary climate change,. On the other hand, failure to consider migration theory in climate scenarios may lead to simplistic projections and understandings, as in the case of "climate refugees". We conclude that migration researchers have an obligation to accurately reflect the complexity of migration's drivers, including the environment, within migration scholarship especially in the context of global climate change.

Immigrant Organizations

We call for incorporating organizations into migration scholarship, and for considering immigrants in organizational research. By centering immigrant organizations (IOs) as a unit of analysis, migration scholars can reconsider whether and how IOs affect well-being, integration, political voice, identities, globalization, and development. Migration scholars must learn from scholars of organizations, but organization scholars must in turn question assumptions of nativity and citizenship in their research. Doing so illuminates the unique challenges—and, at times, opportunities—faced by IOs, especially regarding inequities tied to legal status and stigmatization. We further argue that cross-national and transnational analyses of IOs help unpack organizational embeddedness—that is, the ways in which contexts at the local, national, binational, and geopolitical levels generate opportunities and constraints. Studying IOs raises critical questions of civic inequality and organizational stigma but also highlights IOs’ potential to give voice to and effect positive change for migrant communities.

Refugees, expellees and immigrants: comparing migrant reception policies and practices in post-war Bristol, Dortmund and Malmö

AbstractThe vital role that cities play in the governance of migration is increasingly recognized, yet migration scholars still perceive this ‘local turn’ as a recent phenomenon. This article presents a cross-country and cross-city comparative analysis of three mid-size European cities during the post-war period: Bristol, Dortmund and Malmö. It analyses administrative cultures and local policy arenas, exposing the complexity of local migration policy-making and the crucial importance of historical perspectives. It reveals the inherent local variation in policies and practices, and argues that traditional national-level studies do not fully capture how urban actors responded to migration.

Development Implications of Labour Migration for Origin Societies: The Case of Manamba of Njombe District, 1900 - 1960s

For decades, labour migration scholarship in Africa has focused on social-economic and political problems instigated by colonial labour migration in the origin societies. Very little is available regarding migrants’ transformational agency. This paper discusses the role that migrant labourers (manamba) played in economic development in Njombe district, Tanzania from 1900 to the 1960s. The paper argues that, apart from the apparent complications, labour migration also facilitated the development of the district in some ways depending on variations in the economic environment of the migrants’ homes and the areas they worked. Deriving from primary and secondary evidence the paper links labour migrants to cash crop production, agricultural innovations and entrepreneurial activities. It concludes that using the knowledge, experience and capital the migrants got in various workplaces, added with creativity, the labour migrants contributed considerably to the wider transformational process of bringing economic development to their places of origin.