Migratory Projects Research Articles

‘You Know What the Truth Is? There are No Touareg Evacuées Here’: On Crisis and Categories of Migration

This paper analyses the practices of (im)mobilities and the accompanying emotions to question the exceptionalisation of crisis and migratory categorisations. Focusing on Kel Tamasheq (aka Tuareg) mobile livelihoods and their fluid interconnections with kinship networks and emotions across time, it argues that the multidimensionality of causes behind a migratory project, and the importance of historically contextualising the relation between a crisis, here the ‘Malian crisis’, and regional patterns of (im)mobilities, reveal the arbitrariness of making crisis exceptional and migratory categories uniquely discreet. This paper is based on a 10-month ethnography among Kel Tamasheq in Bamako.

‘It takes courage to return’: West African migrants making sense of (In)voluntary return from Morocco amid adventure, failure and destiny

ABSTRACT This paper examines how young West African migrant men decide to enrol in the IOM's voluntary return programme in Morocco and make sense of their return while they wait for it to happen. Through an ethnographic exploration of migrants’ affective and moral economy of mobility, it shows that choosing to return is not a single event but a process that implies self-doubt, family negotiations, daunting emotions such as shame, and the need to find the meaning of a migratory project often interrupted in dramatic circumstances. The narrative of adventure and the belief in destiny offer meaning to return, but they are themselves subject to conflicting interpretations, justifying onward migration or return in terms of pride, resilience or failure. By validating, reinterpreting or rejecting return, would-be returnees struggle to exercise some autonomy, however fragile and interstitial, vis-à-vis the constraints weighing on their (in)voluntary decision. During this complex personal process, most returnees’ experience of the IOM's return programme is limited to administrative matters. Although the IOM commits to migrant-centred response, the daily implementation of the return procedure falls short of engaging with returnees’ circumstances, remaining peripheral to the challenges that (in)voluntary returning entails.

Impact of COVID-19 on immigrant people assisted in local reception services

the COVID-19 pandemic had important effects on people's health and socioeconomic conditions. Health surveillance systems fail to provide an adequate epidemiological profile of the pandemic in the recently immigrated population. In Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna Region (Northern Italy), a study was conducted in the public and private structures dedicated to the reception of migrants,Objectives: to evaluate the impact of the epidemic on the migrant population assisted in local reception centres. quantitative analysis based on data collected in reception centres; qualitative analysis which, through 10 focus groups and 35 interviews with operators and migrants, investigated the consequences of the pandemic, their mechanisms, and their explanations. users and operators of reception services for migrants in the cities of Turin (Piedmont) and Bologna (Emilia-Romagna). quantitative analysis: access to services, prevalence of diseases, prevalence of test positivity; qualitative analysis: spread of the virus, organization of services, perceived critical issues and needs, solutions adopted, information received, perceived impact on health, perceived impact on social determinants. a varied picture emerges. The few data available do not show a greater incidence and severity of the virus compared to the Italian population, despite strong elements of risk linked to precarious living and working conditions being reported. Reception services have implemented more flexible organizational methods, with effective prevention measures. The interruption of care pathways has led to the flare-up of previous pathologies, but getting in touch with services for the pandemic control has also allowed diagnosis and management of unknown diseases. Uncertainty, fear, social withdrawal, and crisis of the migratory project have increased mental disorders. in this scenario, close collaboration between public and third sector structures has proved fundamental and must be strengthened to overcome access barriers and make services more inclusive and equitable. It is also necessary to develop information systems capable of monitoring the health needs of this 'invisible' population.

Solidarity Typologies in Dynamics Between Portuguese Emigrants and Their Parents

AbstractMotivations for migratory movements tend to be contextualised at an individual level and refer to opportunities related to the country of destination. In the Portuguese context, this view is increasingly limited when we analyse the emigration of young adults since this process directly involves family figures in the country of origin, as they tend to be the first source of support. This paper aims to explore the dimensions of intergenerational solidarity, analysing conflict as transversal dimension and the presence of ambivalence, for a proposal of behaviour typologies in Portuguese transnational families. Using a qualitative approach, young Portuguese adults who emigrated in the European space and Schengen area (N = 22) were interviewed addressing questions about their migratory projects, as well as their dynamics with their parents in Portugal. A thematic analysis was carried out with the support of the NVivo software. The results indicate four behaviour typologies: (1) high cohesion and dependence, (2) full solidarity tested with resilience, (3) affective and functional solidarities, with normative and value divergences, and (4) no solidarity and irreconcilable differences. The findings suggest the impact of intergenerational norms and values, as they may be at the origin of communicational patterns that increase well-being and resilience in migration projects.

Migration and Crime in a Divided World: Strategies, Perceptions, and Struggles

Contemporary research shows that current migration policies and technologies produce criminality. It would be advantageous, then, to understand how migrants make sense of and respond to these criminalizing migration policies, technologies, and practices. This volume delves deeply into criminalization processes, focusing on how migrants perceive and react to the enactment and implementation of policy. The articles take a close look at the day-to-day experiences of criminalized migrants, advancing our understanding of some of the societal effects of migration policies and of the relationship between criminalization and migration. The collection of work presented in this volume seeks to inspire more critical scholarship, given that public narratives about migration tend to present narratives of tragedy and despair only. We argue that policy and public understanding of migration can improve if we understand more about how, exactly, migrants respond to their criminalization and how they manage to sustain their migratory projects and their lives.

Gender Digital Divide in Migratory Contexts: The Case of Peruvian Migrant Women in Italy and Spain

Aim. This ethnographic study explores the impact of the digital divide within the collective of Peruvian migrant women employed in a highly precarious sector, such as domestic services. Methods. This has become evident in this multisite and virtual ethnography, with the following objectives: to analyse the variables that affect digital exclusion, in addition to identifying and deepening the different digital competencies and uses of Information and communication technologies (ICT) in the migratory projects of Peruvian migrant women. In order to achieve these objectives, we undertook fieldwork during the COVID-19 pandemic in two contexts, Italy and Spain, using semi-structured interviews and virtual observation, during which we employed online social networks as research tools. Results. Although digital inequality was a reality prior to COVID-19, it has been worsened by the pandemic, at which time we began our fieldwork. Inequalities between men and women in the different areas of society are reproduced within the context of new technologies. This is termed the gender digital divide and is considered a form of social exclusion, which intensifies and feeds back into itself. Gender inequality in terms of the use of ICT and digital skills intensifies in communities that are even more vulnerable, such as migrant women, whose plenary incorporation into information society is limited. Conclusion. The use of ICT can aid in social inclusion of migrants in digitally advanced societies. However, Peruvian migrant women face new forms of social exclusion due to limited digital access, economic difficulties, and individual digital skills, leading to a gender and generational digital gap.

In the Skies Over Sofia: Place(s) in Displacement for Syrian Women in Bulgaria

This article shows that policy categories such as “refugees” and “migrants” fail to capture the complex reasons why people move during conflict and how they experience place(s) in displacement. Drawing on ethnographic interviews conducted in the summer of 2021, we explore the ways in which three Syrian women, whose lives have been affected by displacement in complex ways, emplace themselves in Sofia. Although policymakers consider Bulgaria a transit country for refugees on the so-called Western Balkan route, some Syrians have stayed after 2011. Their choice can only be understood in the context of longstanding trade and marital migrations encompassing the Mediterranean and its hinterlands, and we thus develop a mobile and dynamic understanding of Syrians’ acts of emplacement: they may be localized in Sofia, but they also unfold against the backdrop of transnational networks. However, we do not romanticize ideas of constant fluidity. Rather, we put place back into displacement, demonstrating that women’s lives and migratory projects are shaped by the places they pass through, and that they leave an imprint on transitory and more permanent homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods in Sofia, with all the tensions and contradictions that this entails.

“Ain’t I a Woman?”: Feminist Participatory Action-Research with African Migrant Women Living in Spain

There is a growing trend towards a feminization of migration which calls for an urgent intersectional analysis in migration and integration research. Migrant women are exposed to numerous barriers that make difficult to participate in host communities due to the intersections between their gender, ethnicity, migratory status, etc. These barriers range from structural to daily discrimination in the shape of sexism and racism, particularly for women from regions further south of Africa. Undertaken in collaboration with a local NGO in Southern Spain, this study aims to approach African migrant women’s experiences and to promote agency and participation in host communities. It was framed in Feminist Participatory Action-Research (FPAR) based on photovoice. The participants (n = 15) generated and shared photo-narratives about their daily experiences during five sessions that were participatively analyzed, classified into four themes as follows: (1) migratory projects; (2) violence and discrimination; (3) health and social care; and (4) to be and resist as an African migrant woman. Photovoice was valued as a safe, non-hierarchical, and caring environment that promoted agency in participants and reflexivity in researchers. Our results highlight the importance and necessity on undertaking FPAR in collaboration with social organizations for emancipatory research praxis and put the emphasis on photovoice as a transformational method.

The use of smartphones and the quest for a future among West African men in reception centers in Italy

In this article, I will analyse the creative use of smartphone by West African men living in reception centers in Torino, in Italy. As the usurpation of time has become an integral part of the European border regime, I place migrants’ media practices in relation to their claims for temporal justices. Drawing on ethnographic data, I argue that the use of smartphones – and especially the making and sharing of images – represents a practice of future making, which is linked to the dimension of hope and desire more than that of nostalgia. After having considered the mobile phone as an instrument for “killing time” during the slow daily routine of the reception centers, I will go on to analyse how the skillfully crafting of one’s own virtual image helps to carry out migratory projects and to obtain a residence permit. Finally, I will turn my attention to the materiality of the smartphone. As an “object of desire,” it is part of a chain of gifts and counter-gifts capable of unlocking new scenarios through the creation of relationships. I conclude that the smartphone can be seen as a weapon in the battle over time which is proper of contemporary migration politics and governance.

Non-intact Families and Children’s Educational Outcomes: Comparing Native and Migrant Pupils

This study explores whether the association between living in a single-parent household and children’s educational outcomes differs by migration background through comparing natives with first- and second-generation migrant pupils from different areas of origin. While there is strong evidence of an educational gap between migrant and native pupils in Western countries—and particularly in Italy—the interaction with family structure has been under-investigated. We suggest that native children have more socioeconomic resources to lose as a consequence of parental breakups, and thus may experience more negative consequences from living in a single-parent household compared to migrant children, who tend to have poorer educational outcomes regardless of family disruptions. Moreover, for migrant children, family disruption could result from parents’ migratory project (transnationalism) rather than separation or divorce, thus not necessarily implying parental conflict and a deteriorating family environment. Empirical analyses of data from the ISTAT ‘Integration of the Second Generation’ survey (2015) show that native Italian pupils from single-parent households in lower secondary schools are more strongly penalised in terms of grades, and less likely to aspire to the most prestigious upper secondary tracks when compared to second- and, especially, first-generation children. Indeed, the latter have been found to experience virtually no negative consequences from parental absence. Contrary to expectations, we found no substantial differences in the non-intact penalty based on the reason for parental absence (transnationalism vs divorce), nor by migrants’ area of origin.

Survival over safety: non-reporting of criminalised violence by young migrants excluded from protection

ABSTRACT Children and young people seeking asylum on their own face violence in many forms. Little is known about how they seek protection from criminalised violence. This article is based on ethnographic research, interviews and a survey of young migrants living precariously, mostly from Afghanistan, who fled to Sweden alone when they were children, but who did not have their protection needs recognised. Through lived experiences of not reporting criminalised violence to police, the article examines how protection is further denied in the context of recent changes to the Swedish migratory and welfare regime. This article finds that young migrants often perceive non-reporting as a zero-sum strategy of survival over safety. Insecure legal status prevents young migrants from engaging the law for protection from criminalised violence. Experiences of discriminatory and violent police treatment and institutional violence forming part of trajectories of displacement reinforce the lack of protection. Strategies of silence and solidarity are used to ensure the preservation of the self, the migratory project, to protect friends, and, occasionally, perpetrators. By examining young migrants’ experiences of non-protection from criminalised violence, intersecting structural forms of violence become visible. These failures of protection constitute part of a continuum of violence experienced by young people seeking asylum.

Cadenas migratorias en la diáspora de las travestis/trans sudamericanas residentesdel Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires

The article analyzes the migratory chains that constitute South American transvestites and trans women who reside in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area during the period 2017-2019, paying special attention to the role of godmothers. The migratory projects of these people are produced becauseof the hostility and vulnerability they experience in their surroundings and have different instances. One of them is the migratory chains that refer to the social capital necessary to be able to leave the sending society and settle in the receiving society. In this way, South American transvestites/trans women constitute diverse migratory chains that can be characterized as horizontal and vertical, being the godmothers key actors in their diasporas. The focus of the article is qualitative and the method used is grounded theory. According to a theoretical sample consisting of 41 interviews, the information was analyzed usingAtlas.Ti.

The “Don’t come/Go back home” continuum: the use of storytelling in Migration Information Campaigns

Campaigns to encourage return or deter migration have become a priority for European governments, revealing a new way of managing migration flows to Europe. If scholars from social sciences have investigated these campaigns, no study in the field of discourse analysis addressed the argumentative discursive mechanisms at work in shaping migrants’ perceptions. The present research analyses the use of storytelling in migration information campaigns (MICs) by comparing two online European campaigns: a dissuasive campaign (tellingtherealstory.org) and a persuasive campaign (retourvolontaire.be). First, the discursive features of each website are described, highlighting the central place given to migrant’s stories. Second, a narrative and lexical analysis is conducted on these stories to investigate the way in which they constitute the argumentative dimension of these campaigns’ discourses. The results show that the stories of both dissuasive and persuasive campaigns converge towards the same moral: migratory projects are doomed to fail. These migration information campaigns can be seen as part of what we call the “Don’t come/Go back home” continuum

Doing family: Nicaraguan transnational families’ narratives on motherhood

AbstractThis article explores transnational motherhood from the perspective of Nicaraguan migrant workers in Spain and Nicaraguan family members caring for migrant women's children. Our sample included families with children who have special needs, to explore how economically disadvantaged families draw upon migration as a strategy to address educational and physical needs not provided by a weak ‘exclusionary’ social policy regime. Applying the notion of the family display to migrant mothers and their families, our research reveals how gendered expectations of parenting shape their experience and the ways in which they explain and justify the migratory project. Migrants and family members, with certain reservations and limitations, actively reinvent motherhood by (re)constructing financial contribution as a type of caring. Our research also unsettles the classic notion of the ‘other mother’, as respondents describe caring as distributed over extended kin networks.

The ‘New China’ in Brazil: Chinese Migratory Projects in the 19th century

The ‘New China’ in Brazil: Chinese Migratory Projects in the 19th century

Italian Reception Policies and Pandemic: From Exclusion to Abandonment

The article analyzes how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the management of reception centers for refugees and asylum seekers in Italy. By analyzing the transformation of Italian reception policies in the last years, the article shows the relationship between these changes and the condition of refugees and asylum seekers in these centers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overcrowded housing, the absence of institutional guidance on managing the situation, and the interruption of many migrants’ migratory projects are the main findings that emerged. The article is based on digital ethnographic techniques, in addition to phone interviews with key speakers of the social contexts monitored online.

Onward migration: An introduction

Onward migration: An introduction

“É uma vida de sacrifício... faço pelos meus filhos” Crianças e trajetórias migratórias em Cabo Verde

O artigo aborda a centralidade das crianças nos projetos migratórios e nas trajetórias de vida de mulheres-mães no arquipélago de Cabo Verde, África. Primeiramente abordarei a perspectiva dessas mulheres e suas trajetórias de vida vinculadas a projetos migratórios em andamento ou em construção. Por meio das categorias “superação” e “sacrifício”, pretendo demonstrar a centralidade dos filhos em suas estratégias e táticas de mobilidade, sendo as crianças tanto motores que alavancam tais projetos quanto travas que os interrompem ou inviabilizam. A seguir introduzo a perspectiva de crianças e jovens, seus discursos, sentimentos e ações em tais projetos de mobilidade. Busco compreender como é crescer em um contexto em que a mobilidade é um dado que permeia imagens de um futuro que poderá ser sempre vivido em um lugar diferente, imaginado e distante. O artigo pretende abordar tanto a centralidade das crianças nos sucessos e fracassos de projetos migratórios familiares quanto indicar como as mobilidades são centrais nas vidas e projetos de crianças e jovens quando pensam sobre o presente e imaginam um futuro.

Move Abroad to Move Forward? Self-Assessments of Chinese Students and Undocumented Migrants in France

Migrants’ self-assessments refer to their perceptions of social mobility and positioning. These assessments are often ambivalent and counterintuitive for observers. To overcome contradictory first impressions, we propose a comprehensive approach to migrants’ self-assessments that goes beyond the opposition between objective and subjective social mobility and links the transnational context, various social spheres, actors’ migratory projects, and their reflexivity. The empirical materials in this article draw on two studies on Chinese migrants in France and confront the trajectories and viewpoints of undocumented migrants and international students. Beyond the differences between their experiences and their legal, economic, and social statuses in France and China, we highlight several common points: First, both groups considered migration a lever to improve their social status. Second, their evaluations link their regions of origin and destination as well as various social spheres. Third, in a transnational context, many factors at different scales influence migrants’ subjective self-assessments of the success or failure of their migration. The migrants’ assessments can vary according to their emphasis on professional, personal, or family trajectories, or on their choice of reference groups. They are shaped by the complexity of translations of status from one country to another and by rapid social transformation in China. Thus, many interviewees estimate that they are simultaneously in situations of social progression and regression.

Migrar en familia. Reflexiones en torno a la migración peruana a Córdoba

Resumen Este artículo se propone indagar en la articulación entre las trayectorias migratorias de los hijos y las hijas y las formas de migrar de las familias peruanas a la ciudad de Córdoba (Argentina). A partir de los aportes de la perspectiva interseccional y de un trabajo de campo etnográfico, basado en entrevistas en profundidad y observación participante, con familias peruanas que residen en dos barrios ubicados en la periferia de esa ciudad, esta investigación muestra el modo en que las formas en que se consolida la migración familiar están en estrecha articulación con las trayectorias, las edades y los momentos de vida de los hijos y las hijas. Los resultados reflejan la centralidad que adquiere la familia y el lugar que ocupan los y las jóvenes en el proyecto familiar migratorio.