Migration Studies Research Articles

Representing Her Trajectory: reflections on an arts-based research on women migration and data visualization

In recent decades, women have increasingly left their countries of origin, leading to an increase in transnational migration. Her Trajectory (2020), a project created by the author, represents women migrants’ paths, affects and experiences through counter-mapping and data visualization. Presented in web form (see https://hertrajectory.com/ ), this arts-based research project shows the migratory trajectories of 18 women participants by placing them and their personal objects onto a map, alongside their own object narratives. This article reflects on how the aesthetics and deployment of the textual, visual and kinetic designs re-humanizes migrants through their own narratives. The article also discusses how arts-based research could encourage participants to contribute their vernacular creativity to emotively transform migration studies.

Biosurfactant-Assisted Cu Doping of Brushite Coatings: Enhancing Structural, Electrochemical, and Biofunctional Properties.

Stainless steel (316L SS) has been widely used in orthopedic, cardiovascular stents, and other biomedical implant applications due to its strength, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility. To address the weak interaction between steel implants and tissues, it is a widely adopted strategy to enhance implant performance through the application of bioactive coatings. In this study, Cu-doped brushite coatings were deposited successfully through pulse electrodeposition on steel substrates facilitated with a biosurfactant (BS) (i.e., surfactin). Further, the combined effect of various concentrations of Cu ions and BS on the structural, electrochemical, and biological properties was studied. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirms brushite composition with Cu substitution causing lattice contraction and a reduced crystallite size. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) studies reveal the morphological changes of the coatings with the incorporation of Cu, which is confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and elemental mapping. The Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy confirm the brushite and Cu doping in the coatings, respectively. Increased surface roughness and mechanical properties of Cu-doped coatings were analyzed by using atomic force microscopic (AFM) and nanohardness tests, respectively. Electrochemical assessments demonstrate corrosion resistance enhancement in Cu-doped coatings, which is further improved with the addition of biosurfactants. In vitro biomineralization studies show the Cu-doped coating's potential for osseointegration, with added stability. The cytocompatibility of the coatings was analyzed using live/dead and 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assays; cell adhesion, proliferation, and migration studies were evaluated using SEM. Antibacterial assays highlight significant improvement in the antibacterial properties of Cu-doped coatings with BS. Thus, the developed Cu-doped brushite coatings with BS demonstrate their potential in the realm of biomedical implant technologies, paving the way for further exploration.

Analyzing the Theme of Forced Migration in Amit Majmudar’s Partitions through the Lens of Everett Lee’s Pull-Push Theory

Partitions, the novel written by Amit Majmudar, provides a vivid insight into the complex forces behind forced migration that are based on Everett Lee’s Pull-Push Theory. The novel revolves around two main characters – Keshav and Shankar whose lives are destroyed due to India’s partition in 1947. Our qualitative case study investigates numerous “pull” and “push” factors in order to understand what triggers this process of migration. The current study aims to explore by employing textual analysis and utilizing theoretical frameworks to dissect how socio-political, economic, and cultural forces define decisions made by the characters we meet throughout the story. The results illustrate the complexity of migration stories and emphasize the importance of placing individual biographies within a larger context. This effort helps in understanding deeper levels of forced migration studies and how they can influence historical perspectives and contemporary global issues, as described in this research.

Migrations, Citizenships, and the Right and Choice to Play for a National Football Team with a Focus on the Croatian National Team

Contemporary national football teams mirror numerous migration processes. The research was focused on the formation of football teams, examples of migrations of national team members, and changes in international rules (civil and sports citizenship, options of playing for the national team). The analysis of examples of footballers who have chosen to play for a country other than their country of birth shows multiple practices. However, the most prominent choice is to represent their parents’ country of origin. The research results contribute to studies on obtaining privileged citizenship and opportune citizenship, to integration theories, and to studies of elite migration.

Feminist foreign policy and global (health) care work migration: Addressing the invisibility of colonial gaps in feminist policy making

ABSTRACT The state-sponsored recruitment of migrant healthcare workers from the global South into the global North is a contemporary practice that requires critical engagement. Germany, like many other like-minded countries, has developed its own recruitment program Triple Win which aims to sustainably and ethically secure its national health care system through the use of foreign labor. Absent from Triple Win is an awareness of the ongoing colonial power relations that reproduce the program as a practice in neocolonial care extractivism. This lack of awareness is set against the country’s promotion of a feminist foreign and development policy, which seeks to transform international politics through a gender centred approach. Locating Triple Win within the context of feminist foreign policy we analyse how Germany’s feminist foreign and development policy makes visible, addresses and changes the colonial power relations that sustain care work migration programs. In doing so, we seek to build on existing studies of care work migration as a gendered and racial phenomenon. To do this we adopt a postcolonial feminist approach that is grounded in an ethics of care in order to remap the local and the global through a critical analysis of care work migration as a neocolonial development practice.

Exploring the drivers of internal labour migration for the regions of Great Britain

ABSTRACT The role of internal migration in reducing regional inequalities is a common feature of classical economic theory and urban economics models. If regional migration is important in reducing spatial disparities, then understanding its causes, and barriers, is crucial. This paper explores the drivers of regional migration behaviour in Great Britain. Findings point to rigidities in housing that deter mobility across regions; and regional differences in the drivers and effects of regional migration. Our paper supports greater focus on spatial disaggregation, since migration studies conducted at the national level ignore important spatial differences in migration behaviour.

Living together or apart? International migrants and family coresidence in Yiwu, China

ABSTRACT Most studies of migrant family separation and reunification concern migration to Europe or North America, where many migrants settle permanently and some institutions facilitate their integration. Among migrants to China, permanent residency and naturalization are rare and integration is limited. How can we understand migrant family separation and coresidence in this kind of destination? Through a survey of 367 international residents and in-depth interviews, we investigate characteristics of migrants in single, sole, couple, and family arrangements in Yiwu, a trading hub and host city to more than 13,000 international migrants. We find that when a male migrant lives with a fellow-migrant wife, the wife is rarely employed, and the employment rate among fellow-migrant wives in Yiwu is lower than the employment rate among wives who remain in the origin. This suggests maximizing household income is not the purpose of the wife’s migration to China. We use logistic regression to identify factors associated with family coresidence among male migrants who have at least one dependent child and a wife who is not a Chinese national. High income, professional occupation, having preschool-aged children, years in the destination, and being from a country at war are associated with family coresidence, while the more children the migrant has, the less likely he is to live with his wife and children. This study offers evidence that where settlement is restricted and integration of migrants is limited, some migrants still pursue family coresidence, but affordability is a major constraint on this arrangement, especially in connection with the cost of children’s education.

Humanising research on migration decision-making: a situated framework.

The question of why some people (re)migrate while others choose to stay remains one of the important preoccupations in migration studies. It underlines the need to further conceptualise transnational migration to identify the drivers behind individuals' aspiration or intention to (re)migrate or stay where they are. Drawing from several migration theories and perspectives in various disciplines, this paper proposes the situated framework of "humanising research on migration decision-making", that is, highlighting its human aspects. This scholarly enterprise is critically important as mainstream migration theories put more emphasis on individuals' rationality and some life dimensions, thereby overlooking other human aspects of migration and stasis. Viewing individuals as persons, this framework offers three ways to humanise the analysis: thick contextualisation, life dimensions-focused analysis, and time-situated inquiry. It also calls for the engendering of the analysis and decolonising the methodologies adopted in the study of (non-)migration decision-making.

Reinventing the politics of knowledge production in migration studies: introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT This special issue (SI) calls for reinventing the politics of knowledge production in migration studies. Academic migration research should make knowledge production an essential part of its research agenda if it wants to remain relevant in the transnational field of migration research. A risk of marginalisation stems from three interrelated tendencies: First, non-academic actors producing authoritative knowledge about migration have proliferated in recent years. Secondly, academic knowledge production is challenged both by counter-knowledge produced by social movements as well as new digital methods and information structures owned by policy-oriented and private actors. Thirdly, academics no longer hold a hegemonic position in the transnational field of migration research. The contributions to this SI interrogate the politics of knowledge production on migration along three lines of inquiry: (1) the enactment of migration as an intelligible object of government through practices of quantification, categorisation and visualisation; (2) the production of control knowledge in border encounters about subjects targeted as migrants and (3) the modes of thought seeking to unknow and re-know migration beyond dominant nation-state centric understandings. This introduction elaborates how the nine articles of the SI intervene in the politics of knowledge production in migration studies along these lines of inquiry.

Doing migration studies with an accent

ABSTRACT I use accent as a metaphor and a conceptual tool to epistemologically reflect over the field of migration studies. Accented thinking is a response and a reaction to the condition of coloniality that structures the processes of knowledge production. In this article I aim to explore the potentiality of accented thinking in the formation of knowledge within the field of migration studies. I approach accent both as a way of knowing and a form of struggle. The combination leads to an epistemic refusal. I use accent as refusal not only as a tool to scrutinize how epistemic injustices arise and what forces maintain them, but also as a tool to find out what forces are available to create alternative ways of knowing. I argue that accented thinking can stimulate the emergence of new perspectives and approaches. It takes us beyond notions which have restricted the possibility of any alternative order.

A Socio-Ecological Exploration of Sub-Saharan Migrant Students in Moroccan Public Schools

Education and migration intertwine as complex issues, impacting historical, social, cultural, economic, and political domains. While migration studies in the global north have extensively explored education trends among migrants, research in the global south, particularly in Morocco, where public schools host a significant number of Sub-Saharan migrant students, remains scarce. This study seeks to delve into the experiences of four Sub-Saharan students in Moroccan public schools, examining how they navigate the educational environment and the multifaceted impacts it generates. The study gathered data through in-depth, individual interviews with these migrant students. Utilizing a qualitative approach and drawing on the theory of social ecology of human development, the analysis reveals that despite a strong self-awareness, these minority students have unmet academic and non-academic needs. Their development is notably influenced by the diverse structures within their environment. Additionally, the study highlights how the interplay between conflicting microsystems, such as the school and the family, alongside broader macro-level structures like culture and belief systems, hampers the progress and education of these individuals. However, their personal attributes and support from key figures, notably teachers, play a pivotal role in assisting them in overcoming challenges within and outside the school environment. Consequently, the presence of cultural and religious minority students in Moroccan public schools represents a growing trend requiring thoughtful planning and targeted interventions.

Can Geometric Parameters Enable Direct Prediction of Non‐Fickian Transport in Rock Fractures Across Diverse Flow Regimes?

AbstractAnomalous solute migrations in fractured rocks are governed by geometric characteristics and flow regimes. Although existing inverse models can describe this behavior, the underlying physics for quantifying key transport coefficients remains largely unexplored. Here, we investigate the quantitative impacts of geometric heterogeneity and flow regimes on solute transport in rock fractures. We conduct numerical experiments to simulate water flow and conservative solute transport in 3D fractures with varying geometric features and Reynolds numbers. Our results show that the non‐Fickian transport is prevalent across the entire flow regime, with Darcy flows attributed to geometric heterogeneity and non‐Darcian flows influenced by additional eddy zones. We employ the mobile‐immobile (MIM) domain model and continuous time random walk (CTRW) model to inversely model simulated breakthrough curves. Inverse analyses demonstrate that both models effectively characterize anomalous transport behaviors. The fitted transport coefficients of the MIM model exhibit stronger quantitative relationships with aperture and roughness parameters, as well as Reynolds number, compared to the CTRW model. By incorporating parameterized transport coefficients, we propose physics‐ and statistics‐based models to directly predict anomalous transport behaviors under different flow regimes. These prediction models accurately reproduce solute transport processes of all simulated cases with acceptable errors. The feasibility of directly predicting solute transport under varying flow regimes using geometric information is thus validated. Our study not only supports the study of substance migration based on geometric structure features, but also serves as a foundation for investigating geological activities based on substance migration information.

The course of love in the migration process: Germans in Israel, and Israelis in Germany

Love, to a significant other, can be the motivation for migration, inform a migration trajectory, or provide reasons for remaining in situ. Even so, love remains in the undercurrents of migration research. It is not explicitly addressed, even though it underpins migration within the constellation of arranged marriage, or if the pursuit of love is limited by social structures, or law. This paper links the dynamics of agentic love and self-initiated migration by way of German (non-Jewish) and Israeli (Jewish) migrants in Israel and Germany, respectively. It highlights individual trajectories of love migrants, establishing that love within the area of migration studies needs to be conceptualised as multifaceted and complex, at times contradictory, and as part of an affective trajectory of the migration process; and that the ability to follow up on falling in love, and to actualise love, cannot be unhinged from privilege.

Market making and the production of nurses for export: a case study of India–UK health worker migration

BackgroundHigh-income countries increasingly look to the international recruitment of health workers to address domestic shortages, especially from low-income and middle-income countries. We adapt conceptual frameworks from migration studies to examine...

Migration information infrastructures: power, control and responsibility at a new frontier of migration research

ABSTRACT The nature and production of migration statistics are in flux. State bureaucracies are no longer the primary source of migration data. Instead, there are a myriad unofficial data sources and processing collaborations which produce migration and mobility data as a by-product of both commercial and governmental processes. This has implications both for international processes of migration assessment and control, and for states’ domestic policies with respect to migrants. This paper brings together migration studies with Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature to take stock of these new data sources’ theoretical and empirical implications for both migrants and the links between migration and broader social processes. We identify migration information infrastructures: configurations of data assemblages which involve private and public sector actors, where data originally collected for one purpose (billing customers, sharing social information, sensing environmental change) become repurposed as migration statistics. We explore the implications of such migration information infrastructures for migration researchers: what are the entanglements that such infrastructures bring with them, and what do they mean for the ethics and practicalities of doing migration research?

Understanding Diaspora Pasifika (Sāmoan and Tongan) Intergenerational Sense-Making and Meaning-Making through Imageries

This article presents imagery representative of Pasifika (Sāmoan and Tongan) diaspora (nofo ‘i fafo o Sāmoa/ tu‘a Tonga) intergenerational sense-making and meaning-making. The main author, Ruth (Lute) Faleolo, presents a selection of eleven photographs shared with her by Pasifika knowledge holders across Aotearoa (New Zealand), Australia, and the United States, alongside six personally photographed people/events in Aotearoa. Collectively, these images show important Pasifika meaning-making and sense-making processes that are occurring intergenerationally in tu‘a Tonga/ nofo ‘i fafo o Sāmoa. These selected images were collected as part of an ongoing larger study of Pasifika migration and mobilities (2013-2023). The second author, Sh’Kinah Tuia‘ana Nauna Faleolo, presents pieces from her art collection (2015): Two Woven Identities and discusses her meaning-making and Indigeneity enfolding these pieces while growing up in Aotearoa. The third author, Lydiah Malia-Lose Faleolo, presents her Identity artwork (2019) and Duality design pieces (2023) that demonstrate her current and continued Indigeneity as a Sāmoan Tongan woman, living and studying in Australia. The fourth author, Nehemiah Thomas Faleolo’s artistic expressions captured in his annotated sketches and sculpture work were selected from a collection he had created in Australia. Nehemiah’s respected artwork and meaning-making, carefully documented by him in 2020 was (posthumously) selected by Faleolo family members, from his private exhibition and collection (Brisbane). Scanned documents and photographs stored on his mobile device have been contributed to this article on his behalf, with permission. For many Pasifika living in Aotearoa, Australia and the United States, the processes of intergenerational sense-making and meaning-making occur in the diaspora contexts of faith, family, community, and education. The imageries presented by Ruth (Lute) Faleolo follow these thematic contexts, with short analyses about the intergenerational sense-making and meaning-making observed per photo. The purpose of her contribution to the discussion is to promote imageries as a way of conveying Pasifika understandings and knowledge. Sh’Kinah Tuia‘ana Nauna Faleolo, Lydiah Malia-Lose and Nehemiah Thomas Faleolo’s contributions present personal accounts of intergenerational sense-making and meaning-making as experienced through their artistic expressions, within nofo ‘i fafo o Sāmoa/ tu‘a Tonga contexts of Aotearoa and Australia.

Does Ethnicity Affect Ever Migrating and the Number of Migrations? The Case of Indonesia

This paper is the first to examine to what extent ethnicity affects ever migrating and the number of migrations across the lifespan for the case of internal migration in Indonesia. We use all five waves of the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS) to study migration behaviour of respondents belonging to some of the largest ethnic groups in Indonesia. Our logistic regression results show that the Minangkabau, Betawi, Madurese, Balinese, Buginese and Makassarese, and Sasak, Bima and Dompu are less likely to ever migrate than the Javanese. Using only migrants and controlling for the first migration and other characteristics, truncated negative binomial regression results show that, in comparison with the Javanese, the Minangkabau and Banjarese have a higher expected number of migrations while the numbers are lower for the Betawi and Balinese. Thus, ethnicity contributes to ever migrating as well as the number of migrations, but we find that the differences between the ethnic groups diminish for the latter. These results also point out that a higher likelihood of ever migrating does not always correspond with a higher number of migrations, highlighting the importance of studying migration count to complement the study of migration as a one-time event.

Wartime (im)mobilities: effects of aspirations-capabilities on displaced Ukrainians in Canada and Germany and their viewpoints on those who remain in Ukraine

ABSTRACT In war times, what differentiates those who manage to flee from those who remain behind? Based on 468 qualitative interview and survey responses with displaced Ukrainians’ in Canada and Germany, and the aspirations-capabilities framework, we identify how macro-level policies and individual resources and aspirations combine to shape wartime (im)mobility outcomes. Canada and Germany have relaxed their entry-stay policies to facilitate the displaced populations’ arrival while Ukraine has implemented exit restrictions for conscript men aged 18–60 and, by extension, for the family members who decide to stay with them in Ukraine. Accordingly, individuals with high pre-war migration aspirations and capital have arrived in Canada, those with mid-ranging aspirations and capital have arrived in Germany, and those with high aspirations to be with the draftees have remained in Ukraine. We make a threefold contribution to forced migration studies. We argue that war acts as an amplifier of preexisting migration aspirations for some individuals, that wartime exit restriction is a distinct example of macro-level emigration policies, and that a proactive-stay-aspirations component extends the aspirations-capabilities framework’s conceptual range.

What Will It Take to Eliminate the Immigration Court Backlog? Assessing “Judge Team” Hiring Needs Based on Changed Conditions and the Need for Broader Reform

Executive Summary This paper examines the staffing needs of the US Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), as it seeks to eliminate an immigration court backlog, which approached 2.5 million pending cases at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2023. A previous study by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) attributed the backlog to systemic, long-neglected problems in the broader US immigration system. This paper provides updated estimates of the number of immigration judges (IJs) and “judge teams” (IJ teams) needed to eliminate the backlog over ten and five years based on different case receipt and completion scenarios. It also introduces a data tool that will permit policymakers, administrators and researchers to make their own estimates of IJ team hiring needs based on changing case receipt and completion data. Finally, the paper outlines the pressing need for reform of the US immigration system, including a well-resourced, robust, and independent court system, particularly in light of record “encounters” of migrants at US borders in FY 2022 and 2023.

Consistent delay in recent timing of passerine autumn migration

Climate change affects important biological processes, bird migration phenology being a particular well-documented one. While spring migration have been found to advance by numerous studies, autumn migration is less studied and show more variable change in timing. Few studies of autumn migration are based on data from after 2000, leaving the last two decades to be relatively less studied. Here, we investigate recent change in autumn migration phenology of European passerines. The most recent available bird ringing data from Denmark is used to analyse phenological change of median and late migration of 14 passerine migrants between 2003–2021. We find an overall delay of autumn migration, mainly driven by short-distance migrants. All short-distance migrants, one out of five medium-distance and three out of five long-distance migrants delay autumn migration. None of the included species advance autumn migration significantly. As climate change has continuously resulted in milder conditions in north-western Europe, we expect this to cause further effects on migration phenology also in recent decades. Our results provide novel insight into recent migration phenology trends, and the observed delay in long-distance migrants may illustrate a changed response to climate change.