Stuck in Mobility? Interrupted Journeys of Migrants With Precarious Legal Status in Europe

Abstract

Due to lack of access to work and support services migrants with precarious legal status engage in onward mobility within EUrope and thus contest the migration regime that aims to control and limit their mobility. This article highlights the ambiguous nature of mobility from a critical mobilities perspective based on multi-sited ethnographic research and interviews with migrants in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. By focusing on their interrupted journeys, the article shows how migrants use mobility to secure basic needs and avoid migration control attempts and how this enhanced mobility aggravates emotional instability.     

Psychosocial Considerations in Working with the Chinese Immigrant

Abstract

Asian Americans have been the fastest growing segment of the United States population. Additionally, there is a continual influx of both legal and undocumented Chinese immigrants as well. Providers of social and health services, particularly in the public sector, have been coming into increasing contact with these individuals who bring with them a complex and multi-faceted history and background. The purpose of this paper is to highlight some of the psychosocial considerations when working with this population and some of the challenges encountered.

The Chinese immigrant's migration history and acculturation experience need to be appreciated within his or her cultural framework. Challenges facing the treatment of the Chinese immigrant include language barrier, shortage of bilingual staff and the associated difficulties in interpretation. Public education and outreach efforts have been targeting stigma reduction and developing primary prevention activities. The predicament service providers face when working with the undocumented aliens is underscored. A case illustration is included.     

Manufactured exports and terms of trade of developing countries: Evidence from Sri Lanka

Terms of trade implications of diversification into manufactured exports in a traditional primary‐exporting country are examined in the light of the Sri Lankan experience over the past two decades. The empirical analysis focuses on trends in both commodity and income terms of trade, employing a methodology which takes care of the ‘spurious regression’ problem. The results suggest that, contrary to the ‘new’ terms of trade pessimism, export diversification has brought about significant terms of trade gains for the Sri Lankan economy. Overall, the study casts doubt on the robustness of results coming from analyses of price trends in aggregate manufactured exports and calls for systematic time‐profile analyses of the countries which have achieved significant export diversification in order to inform the policy debate.     

“It Is Better to Do Business in Africa than in Europe” – Socio-Economic Positionings among Business-Minded European Somalis Moving to Kenya

Abstract

Using the example of European Somalis moving to Kenya, this article argues that although these middle class return migrants share many similarities, they also differ in significant ways. Focusing on economically independent migrants, this paper will show that their move to Kenya is both return and onward migration at the same time. The transnational socio-economic positioning of Somali returnees in Kenya, this article demonstrates, rests on the importance of legal capital for enabling transnational mobility, which in turn is relevant for the convertibility of capital in the various local settings in which migrants settle.     

Islands and Undesirables: Introduction to the Special Issue on Irregular Migration in Southern European Islands

This introduction presents the challenges to studying irregular migration in the southern European islands. After presenting the debates surrounding the category of irregular migration and recent developments in irregular migration to southern European islands, we argue that the situation of islands needs to be contextualized within the broader scheme of Euro-Mediterranean irregular migration. We then propose considering islands as remarkable “places of condensation” in the Euro-Mediterranean migratory setting. The article introduces two themes that will be developed throughout the special issue: (1) analyzing and challenging narratives of islandness and (2) policing and bordering the islands.     

Mixed Welfare Systems and Hybrid Organizations: Changes in the Governance and Provision of Social Services

Abstract

The provision and governance of personal social services is nowadays often thought as a matter of finding the right balance between market principles and state regulation. However often, personal social services depend as well from a third resource and mechanism of governance: It is the impact of the social capital of civil society, which makes itself felt not only by resources such as grants, donations, and volunteering, but as well by networking and social partnerships. A number of crucial changes in welfare and service provision have led to a situation, where service systems and service units, rather than being part of a clear-cut sector, have increasingly to be seen as hybrids, combining varying balances of resources and mixes of governance principles usually associated with the market, the state, and the civil society.     

Gender as Survival: Women's Experiences of Deportation from Romania to the Soviet Union, 1945–1950

This paper offers hypotheses on the role that state social welfare measures can play in reflecting nationalism and in aggravating interethnic tensions. Social welfare is often overlooked in theoretical literature on nationalism, because of the widespread assumption that the welfare state promotes social cohesion. However, social welfare systems may face contradictions between the goal of promoting universal access to all citizens on the one hand, and social pressures to recognize particular groups in distinct ways on the other. Examples from the post-Soviet context (particularly Russia) are offered to illustrate the ways in which social welfare issues may be perceived as having ethnic connotations.     

Dangerous Places and Nimble Fingers: Discourses of Gender Discrimination and Rights in Global Corporations

This paper considers how women's employment rights are being constructed in multinational corporations by examining three high-tech organizations—a U.S. company in Silicon Valley, its subsidiary in New Delhi, India, and a comparable local Indian company. It first describes the legal frameworks for addressing gender employment discrimination by state governments in India and the United States. Then it examines how these frameworks are appropriated and negotiated within the local contexts of the workplaces in the study. Finally, it reflects on recent transnational attempts to legislate and enforce women's employment rights in multinational corporations, specifically the challenges that such attempts face in light of the three case studies.     

Ripple effects: the groundnut scheme failure and railway planning for colonial development in Tanganyika, 1947–1952

While the reasons for the failure of the groundnut scheme are well understood, its effects on colonial development in Tanganyika are not. Drawing from the voluminous paper trail that development planning leaves in its wake, this paper traces the effects of the groundnut scheme demise on a contemporaneous plan to build a railway across Tanganyika to the Northern Rhodesian copperbelt. Tensions arose among the railway planners – civil servants, politicians, and consultants from Britain, Africa, and the United States – when, midway through the planning process, the scale of the groundnut scheme collapse became public. I demonstrate how this revealing crisis prompted planners to eschew the project's production-oriented impetus and embrace a welfare-oriented conclusion. By demonstrating the interlinked nature of development projects, this paper proposes a new angle for studying the history of development in an era characterised by the rapid proliferation of projects.     

Citizen to Stay or Citizen to Go? Naturalization,Security, and Mobility of Migrants in Italy

We analyze the relation between naturalization, mobility, and security through 50 in-depth interviews with migrants of different origins living in two Italian regions. We show how migrants pursue naturalization both to protect themselves against bureaucracy and deportation and to move to a third country. The second migration is motivated by improving one's conditions, forced by the economic crisis, or completes the original migratory project once a strong passport is obtained. We argue that citizenship is not essentially linked to either stability or mobility and that mobility should be understood as neither exceptional nor always chosen.     

‘No place like home': experiences of an Ethiopian migrant in the host country and as a returnee to the homeland

ABSTRACT

Using an in-depth interview with an Ethiopian returnee who lived abroad for 17 years, this study examined both integration and reintegration experiences. For this returnee, the experience of migration was psychologically costly. Challenges in the host country included acquiring a resident permit, overcoming language barriers, and contending with oppression and marginalization. Being treated unequally was a major push factor for his return to Ethiopia. Despite his relief upon reentering his home country, he faced challenges which made reintegration difficult, including the inefficiency of government offices, lack of a work ethic, time mismanagement, and the unsystematic processes in a developing country. To facilitate integration and reintegration processes, more effective policy responses of both the host and home countries are needed. Developing countries should not miss the opportunity to capitalize on the potential contributions of returnees who are committed to bringing about positive change in their homeland.     

Daughters and Displacement: Migration Dynamics in an Indonesian Transmigration Area

This study considers the ways 'indigenous' people have responded to the constraints and opportunities posed by the Indonesian government's transmigration programme in North Lampung, Sumatra. Migration is of increasing importance to the livelihoods of this group; particularly that involving the employment-related movement of young, unmarried women to the export-oriented factory zones of West Java. Female migration is notable in the context of customs confining unmarried women to the house, and negating their working in agriculture. The paper explores how factory migration has developed, drawing on field work conducted in 1994 and during the economic crisis in 1998, and focusing on the shifting terrain of intrahousehold power relations and decision-making in the community. Key to understanding migration dynamics in this area is the emergence of a culturally-conditioned social network linking village and city. This network has altered the terms upon which migration decisions and remittance practices are made, and may have cushioned.