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A

‘Brain-gain' return of India’s high-skilled entrepreneurs: home, transformation, and power politics in the cosmopolitan global south

Malasree Neepa Acharya1,2
1Institute for European Studies, Brussels, Belgium, 2Settling Into Motion, Bucerius Foundation for Migration Research, Hamburg, Germany
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (D): Migration systems – Capital and business 1330-1500

This paper investigates the impact of entrepreneurs of Indian origin as social and economic actors that are choosing to return to emerging cities in India. I ask how do entrepreneurs of Indian origin who have lived for a substantial time in the US and/or EU construct their lives upon returning to cosmopolitan cities in India and what factors affect their actions. Entrepreneurs, self-employed owners, financers and managers of their own business or enterprise, are a specific subset of high skilled migrants who take charge of their destinies. I theorize that entrepreneurs— as a unique action-oriented subset of returning elites (Heberer 1999, Drucker 1975)—create their work and home space as a reflection of their hybrid subjectivities and life experiences as cosmopolitan ‘expats.’ These elites transform physical infrastructures of home and work, and social relations among resident Indians and fellow ‘expats’ within emerging Indian ‘Global South’ (Simone 2007, Dawson 2004) cities. The impact of these transformations reconfigure the ways in which global elites move through the world—these entrepreneurs largely redefine transnational networks across periphery and centre while actively creating their own connection to cosmopolitan spaces globally.

Utilizing primary interview data and cognitive social networking ‘maps’ created by entrepreneurs that have returned to Bangalore, India, an emerging ecosystem in India in the wake of globalization, I attempt to investigate the subtext of entrepreneur respondent discussions of ‘opportunity’ and ‘innovation.’ I contend that entrepreneurs who see their return as an opportunity to create a new venture or idea reflect a new cosmopolitan global citizenry whose rootedness and creation of subjective selves within India reconfigures multinational movements and settlement patterns of high skilled elites as part of a larger way in which they move through the world—thereby retranslating transnational ties and engagements with settlement within spaces around the world.

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Coercion and constraint in cumulative causation: forced migration and feedbacks in post-invasion Iraq 

Ali Ali
London School of Economics, London, UK
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session VI (D): Migration systems – Conflict 1530-1700

Cumulative causation has been scrutinised in a range of migration contexts but is still under-explored in forced migration. This paper will outline some of the ways in which the dynamics of cumulative causation influenced migration decisions of Iraqis who left for Syria in the aftermath of occupation and sectarian conflict. It is migrant-centred and based upon narrative interviews with Iraqis in Syria, collected during 2010 and 2011. It shows that in a forced migration context, decisions to leave affected those who remained in coercive as well as facilitative ways.

We know that migration dynamics can facilitate future journeys but they can also coerce agents into migration. Many who were left behind were pressured into leaving by the fear of family separation. Their resources were depleted by the flight of social networks and the psycho-social resources associated with them. In confessionally mixed neighbourhoods in Baghdad, militias with sectarian agendas were attempting to 'un-mix' parts of the city. As neighbours from the same confessional affiliation departed under duress, this had powerful coercive effects on families who were not personally threatened but thrown into a sense of insecurity which prompted decisions to leave.

Cumulative causation also constrained migration as a result of feedback mechanisms. Households that were in crisis and not in possession of significant material resources dared not risk leaving Iraq – they were alerted by other migrants to the drain on resources that living in neighbouring countries like Jordan and Syria could be. Well paid work was difficult to come by in those countries as their laws restricted the majority of Iraqis to working in the informal economy. By examining how migrants experienced the coercive pressures of cumulative causation it is also possible to reconsider other migrations affected by this dynamic and ask if they should be considered 'forced' in nature.

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Migrants' organisations as identity creators: between integration and segregation. The case of the Bulgarians in Valladolid, Spain

Alberto Alonso-Ponga García, María Jesús Pena Castro
Salamanca University, Salamanca, Spain
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session VI (C): Social actors – Settlement 1530-1700

The paper will discuss the role of the forerunners in the settlement patterns of the Bulgarian community in Valladolid (Spain). Among the several examples that shows the importance of particular actors in the settlement system of the whole community, we will focus on the role of the different associations involved in migrations process, as well in the integration. Actually, these organisations operate themselves as social actors. Therefore, it has been established a network of relations that developed an internal hierarchy during the last 12 years.

The initial initiative of an initially small group of people has crystallised in a genuine society that attracts a big group of Bulgarians to the town. This organisation provides a social structure to the group of migrants, as well as a starting point to build up an identity as community. Its influence in the Bulgarians’ settlement system has surpassed the town to the closer villages nearby Valladolid. We will analyse how the role of the internal hierarchy is especially relevant regarding the processes of integration and segregation in a permanent dialogue with the local community. These organisations provide a social network that contributes to the socialization of the Bulgarians, among them and with the local people. However, at the same time the sense of belonging to this group could be seen as an obstacle to reach the integration into the local community. The paper will examine the dialectic of such a process of integration and segregation, and the role of the societies in the generation of communal identities.

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Understanding new migrations in the enlarged Europe: the new migration system and the emergence of multi-local inequalities

Anna Amelina
Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session VI (B): Migration systems – Diversity of outcomes 1530-1700

Current studies of European migration provide evidence to the changing quality of migration flows after the EU enlargement. In particular, migration is increasingly addressed as ‘liquid’ (Engbersen et al. 2000) and ‘incomplete’ (Iglicka 2000) mobility. Moreover, scholars emphasize two particular tendencies: on the one hand, migrant populations from the new EU-member states tend to travel to the old member states on a temporary basis (Engbersen et al. 2011). On the other hand, these (highly) skilled migrants often experience downward social mobility in the labor markets of the destination countries (Favell 2008). Building on this diagnosis the contribution addresses three aspects. First, how did the migration dynamics in Europe change after the EU enlargements? What are the numbers and trajectories of new migrant populations? Second, how do migrants organize their temporary living arrangements between the sending and receiving country? And what role do the EU mobility and migration regulations play in this regard? Finally, the paper suggests addressing the migration between the new and old EU member states as the formation of a new migration system. This innovative proposal modifies the theory of migration systems since it suggests focusing not on the country pairs, but on the division between the old and the new member states. In sum, the paper proposes a new contextualization of current migration flows and illuminates the benefits of migration systems approach under new conditions of Europeanization.

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B

‘We feel at home here': Swedish migrants to industrial Pennsylvania 1880-1940 as social actors in a continuing migration process

Elizabeth Baigent
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (D): Feedback – Labour migration 1330-1500

This paper examines how Swedish migrants to the iron and steel town of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, arrived in the town, that is, the processes which shaped their arrival, employment, and residence in the town. It considers the role of personal contacts (family and geographical) in spreading information, but also the role of the Swedish institutions which the migrants founded, notably church and temperance groups and the locally produced Swedish language newspaper. Finally it considers the role of individuals who left the town, either to return home or to go on to other sites in the USA. It presents a picture of individuals who seem fairly powerless (they were often from religious minorities who faced harassment in Sweden, were almost entirely excluded from McKeesport's corrupt municipal politics, and were employees of huge corporations with little influence over their conditions of work), but who were in fact engaged in active, informed, and continuing decision making regarding their location and employment. It uses a range of outcomes of the migration process to consider how far individual decision making could mitigate migrants' marginalisation in wider economic and social processes. The paper is based on a wide range of sources from official US censuses, to Swedish-American institutional records, to personal letters. It is attentive to subaltern voices, that is, the voices of those whose migration adventure ended in return, bankruptcy, suicide or the workhouse; of the sick and infirm, and of women and children, to try to portray a rounded experience of the migration process.

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Does many migrants a migration system make?

Oliver Bakewell
IMI, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Day 1. Tuesday 24 September 2013: Keynote I: Emergence and development of migration systems 1530-1700

The idea of the migration system is often invoked when significant levels of migration between localities appear to become established over a sustained period. In such cases, the metaphor of the system may provide a useful description of the patterns of movement but does it have any more analytical value or are we seeing nothing more than the aggregation of individual behaviour? The paper argues for enriching the notion of the migration system by conceiving it as an emergent social entity that shapes the way migration at one time influences subsequent movements. It draws on data from the THEMIS project to critically examine the extent to which this theoretical approach enhances the empirical analysis of migration along three ‘corridors': Ukraine-Portugal, Ukraine-UK and Brazil-Norway.

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Does migration from Colombia to the United Kingdom constitute a migration system? Exploring the role of migrant agency and structural factors

Anastasia Bermudez
Instituto de Estudios Sociales Avanzados (IESA-CSIC), Córdoba, Spain
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session III (C): – Shaping systems 1530-1700

There is limited information and analysis of contemporary migration flows from Colombia to the United Kingdom, despite the fact that this migrant community has attracted increased research interest in the new ‘super-diverse’ Britain. Colombians are one of the oldest and the second-largest national group within the growing Latin American diaspora in London, and are behind many of the ethnic-based organisations and businesses created by this group. However, little is known about the origins and development of these flows. This paper has two main aims. The first is to track the emergence and development of a potential migration system linking Colombia and the United Kingdom. The second is to explore the role of both agency and structure in this context, in line with current scholarship on migration systems. This paper is based on the limited secondary data available, and the primary data accumulated during more than ten years of research with the Colombian community in London. One of the main contributions of the paper is the adoption of an intersectional approach that takes into account gender, class and type of migration when analysing the role of agency and the so-called pioneer migrants.

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Aspirations as meaningful (and elusive) glimpses into the future of migration: insights from the narratives of immigrant domestic workers in Italy

Paolo Boccagni
University of Trento, Trento, Italy
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (A): Social actors – Aspirations 1330-1500

My paper aims to contribute to the debate on migrants' potential to shape their life courses, including the implications of an agential focus on the formation of migration systems. It critically revisits the notion of aspirations, as relevant to the life stories of over 220 immigrant domestic workers interviewed in Italy between 2005 and 2007. Aspirations are interrogated as a situated, relational and experience-based display of one's representations of, and desires for, the future. Migrants' purposeful constructions of their future, as individuals and members of families and broader communities, are a promising and under-examined issue for analysis. Apart from being inherently mutable, such constructions face ‘reality checks' which may make them elusive and open up to unintended social consequences (including the systematic postponement or ‘displacement' of their initial migration aims). "What" migrants reportedly aspired then, while leaving home, may significantly differ from what they do aspire now - a revealing disjuncture, which will be at the core of my secondary analysis. Interestingly, the evolution of their ambivalent stances towards the future - apart from reflecting their distinctive backgrounds - is much telling of the way(s) they try to negotiate across their local and transnational life milieus. How is it that migrants' views and constructions of the (desired) future impinge on their life trajectories? How, in turn, are such views and constructions transformed over time, and what does this suggest on their life prospects and on the relevance of ‘aspiration’ as a sociological lens on their lives?

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Worldwide@home: transnational networks in the Digital Age

Maren Borkert
Department of Development Studies, Vienna, Austria
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session I (B): Feedback – Social media 1100-1230

In the almost 20 years of existence transnational studies have focused on a variety of topics and social phenomena (Faist 2000, Levitt 1998, Levitt & Glick-Schiller 2004, Pries 1999 and 2010, Vertovec 2004). Different perspectives on the nexus between transnationalism and migrants networks have emerged that have, on the one hand, led to the diffusion and rapid establishment of transnationalisation as a genuine field of study and approach. On the other hand, transnational concepts have become catch-all phrases for cross-border ties and have been seen as equivalent to such different processes as globalisation, de-nationalisation, de-materialisation, virtualisation or the ‘liquidation' of social relations. While some might mourn the unspecific use of the term, others add to its uncertainty with claims regarding the far-reaching consequences of transnationalisation without providing substantial empirical evidence.

To better understand processes of transnationalisation and shed a fresh light on the emergence, ‘solidification' and breakup of migration networks, this paper explores the role that modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) play in how migrants maintain exchange relationships over long distances and across nation states. Special emphasis is put on the question how virtual networks affect (offline) migration behaviour and how they impact on the countries of origin and destination. Here, the assumption that strong cross-border transnational ties result in making social contacts in residential areas/cities grow weak (Levitt 1998, Levitt & Glick-Schiller 2004, Pries 2001, 2008 and 2010), is put to the test. Empirical evidence is drawn from more than 150 questionnaires and 30 qualitative interviews conducted by bachelor students of the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna.

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Stuck in transit: the Dublin regulation, national discrepancies, and secondary migration of asylum seekers in Europe

Jan-Paul Brekke1, Grete Brochmann2,1
1Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway, 2University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session III (D): Migration systems – Dynamics 1530-1700

Tensions related to a harmonization of EUs asylum policies are reinforced by the current economic crisis. In this paper we look at the interplay between the Dublin Regulation, national discrepancies in asylum policies and individual migrants' strategies. We study mechanisms in the interaction between the supranational, the national and the individual level. The empirical focal point is bilateral secondary migration between Italy and Norway. Interviews with Eritrean migrants, with NGO personnel and government representatives in the two countries provide the basis for a discussion of two research questions. (1) In what ways is the Dublin Regulation challenged by national differences, migrants' strategies and the current economic crisis? (2) How does the Dublin Regulation influence migrants' strategies regarding secondary movements within Europe? We argue that although this particular migration system stretches back further along the route between Eritrea and Norway, it makes sense to study the intermediary stage of the asylum journeys - the unclear transit/destination juncture of Italy and Norway. Secondary movements within the EEA-area are indicators of regime competition and the concomitant migrant strategies. By studying secondary movements between the South and North related to their respective regimes as to the asylum/labour market/welfare policy nexus, it is possible to analyse tensions and interconnections between the supranational and the national policy levels. We draw upon established topics in the field of migration studies, such as destination choices, the role of information, feed-back systems, as well as the importance of experiences in transit. We combine concepts developed by de Haas (2011) with a model of action used by Brekke and Aarset (2009), to present our data: the migrants' immediate situation, their perception of opportunities in transit/other destination countries, destination information, perceptions of hindrances, capabilities (resources, networks, abilities), and finally destination specificity (directedness towards one specific country).

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How low-cost credit facilitates and sustains migration systems: evidence from Cambodia

Maryann Bylander
SOAS, London, UK
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (D): Migration systems – Capital and business 1330-1500

Contemporary studies of migration recognize that migrants often borrow money to finance their international movements, and that debt may also motivate migration. Yet credit use/access is rarely problematized or critically analysed for the role it plays in migration decision-making. Drawing on ethnographic data from a rural area of Northwest Cambodia, this paper argues that expanded access to low-cost loans can facilitate, sustain and promote migration systems. Specifically, the paper explores three pathways through which increased access to credit played a key role in the development of a strong culture of migration in one area of rural Cambodia. These findings suggest that access to low-cost credit can serve as an important feedback loop amplifying and facilitating migration aspirations, and thus migratory systems.

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C

Pulling up the ladder? Migrants' choices about helping others migrate or not

Jørgen Carling, Jennifer Wu
Peace Research Institute Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session VI (A): Feedback – Networks 1530-1700

Chain migration remains an essential element of migration, although its dynamics have changed over time. In the past, networks may have been the only source of information about potential destinations. Today, information is more widely accessible, but the regulatory obstacles to migration have given networks new roles. In a restrictive migration regime, support from people at the destination becomes almost a prerequisite for migration.

As one migration scholar put it in the mid-1990s, settled migrants are becoming ‘gatekeepers' as much as ‘bridgeheads'. Settled migrants can enable the migration of others in diverse ways, including entering a marriage, providing an employment contract, sponsoring a family visit, hosting someone without a residence permit, or financing human smuggling. But under which conditions do migrants offer such help to others, and thereby facilitate chain migration? And when do migrants choose to turn down request for help?

This paper uses a unique new data set from the project: Theorizing the Evolution of European Migration Systems (THEMIS). The data covers twelve origin-destination pairs and survey interviews with a total of 2800 migrants. Respondents come from Brazil, Morocco, and Ukraine and have migrated to the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Data collection also comprised qualitative interviews; this data plays a smaller role in the present paper and is used mainly for illustrative purposes.

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The role of both migrants and institutions in an enduring pattern of migration: the case of Almeria, a province of Spain which acts as a stage for undocumented migrants to pursue regularisation papers

Pauline Carnet
LISST-CERS (University of Toulouse), Toulouse, France
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session III (C): – Shaping systems 1530-1700

Based on my PhD, my paper will examine how an enduring pattern of migration is sustained and the role of both social actors and structural factors in the face of this process. Nowadays, international migrants glide between constraints and strategies, regularity and irregularity. Their migration, built on several stages, constitutes a real ‘snakes and ladders’. In it, Almeria is a stage where it is possible to get ‘papers’. Since the 90’s, this Spanish province specialised in agriculture has centralised African migrants who are in a precarious situation. How is this possible? (1) Migrants have the capacity to be mobile and develop strategies to reach Europe and to look for housing, employment and papers. (2) Spanish governmental institutions fluctuate between control and tolerance regarding migration – fluctuation partly linked with the economic function of undocumented migrants. I will develop theoretical constructs explaining undocumented migrants’ use and development of social networks. Their mobility will be qualified as a mastered roving; mastering that is essentially done through social relations and the constitution of social networks. I will explain why some of them are in a zero square, i.e., a special space-time, intermediate between the border crossing and the insertion in the European space and characterised by the repetition of basic survival situations.

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Following in the footsteps of others? A life-course perspective on migrant networks and mobility trajectories among Senegalese migrants

Eleonora Castagnone1, Sorana Toma2
1FIERI, Turin, Italy, 2University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session I (C): Methodology – Life course and paths 1100-1230

International migration is still mainly analysed as a one-time, one-way movement from an origin country A to a permanent destination B. Yet migration trajectories are often more complex, as migrants may travel through and successively settle in several countries, or engage in circular mobility. However, the factors that shape individuals’ migration trajectories remain little known. In particular, secondary intra-European migration is still an under-researched area, despite the fact that qualitative studies suggest that secondary movements have become a common mobility strategy (Schapendonk 2010; Paul 2012) increasingly adopted in times of crisis (Sacchetto & Vianello, 2012; Cingolani & Ricucci, 2013). Taking Senegalese migration flows as a case study; this paper characterizes the diversity of migration trajectories and explores the drivers that shape them. In particular, it focuses on secondary migration paths within Europe and the role migrant networks play in this form of mobility. We use quantitative, longitudinal data recently collected within the framework of the Migration between Africa and Europe (MAFE) survey. Using sequence and optimal matching analysis, four main patterns of international mobility from Senegal are identified: linear or direct mobility, secondary migration within Europe, stepwise migration from Africa to Europe, and circular migration. Furthermore, preliminary results suggest that intra-European secondary mobility takes place mainly within the first few years of arrival in Europe and is motivated, to a larger extent then first migration, by work reasons or a desire for discovery. However, the unemployed do not re-migrate more than those who have a job; rather, the decision to re-settle is associated with a desire to improve one’s occupational status, and is taken more by the self-employed and the entrepreneurs. Also, social ties in other European countries play a substantial and significant role in triggering re-migration. Especially important are weaker ties - such as friends, extended family members or acquaintances – and migrants having recently moved to Europe. In contrast, close family ties at destination decrease the likelihood of re-settling in another country. Thus, the paper emphasizes the more complex ways in which migrant networks influence mobility, and the importance of distinguishing between various types of ties.

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Mediating migration: the role of the Qiaoban (the Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs) in the rescaling of the Wenzhou region in China

Ya-Han Chuang
Paris IV Sorbonne University, Paris, France
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session III (B): Feedback – Intersections with policy 1530-1700

Based on a multi-sited ethnography, this paper aims to provide a nuanced picture of the meso-level interaction between Chinese migrants, their sending/receiving localities, and the Chinese government through the case of Wenzhou migrants in Paris and the Qiaoban - the ‘Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs’. The paper begins by presenting the evolving relationship between migrants and the Qiaoban of Wenzhou. The Wenzhou region experienced tremendous growth in the decades following the economic reform of 1978, which allowed for the emergence of new patterns of migration as Wenzhou residents profited from the local informal credit institutions and cheap local goods to take their businesses abroad. The Qiaoban has used this success to promote the Wenzhou development model, particularly through the commemoration of emigrant histories.

I then analyse various institutional tools used to establish trans-local linkages. In the sending region, a structured administration and associations for return migrants were established to collect information and provide services for migrants; and, in the receiving country, numerous voluntary associations cultivate networks with political and economic actors. Various summer camps and associations were also created to link younger generations, often born abroad, to Wenzhou. The article concludes by examining the consequences of these initiatives. Despite the Qiaoban's attempts to ‘rescale’ Wenzhou through promoting the ‘global Wenzhou diaspora’ (shijie wenzhouren), interviews with migrants show that the effects vary due to the unequal degrees of development and infrastructure in different sending villages/townships. While the use of the Qiaoban as a political institution to strengthen links and implement policy in the diaspora is not uniformly effective, it does facilitate economic exchange between localities, thus strengthening the trans-local networks between the sending and receiving communities.

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To move or not to move (when one arguably has the social capital): the mediating effect of migrant family networks on migration aspirations and planned and unplanned Mexico - U.S. migration

Fernando Riosmena1, Mathew Creighton2
1University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, 2Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session III (C): – Shaping systems 1530-1700

Prior migrants with ties to migrants-to-be provide the latter with important information and assistance to move and find accommodations and work in destinations. Individuals with better access to migration-specific social capital are considerably more likely to aspire to and eventually migrate themselves. However, it is less understood why some individuals with access to migrant networks and the associated migration-specific social capital do not ‘make use’ of this social capital and remain in their countries of origin. Among potential migrants, instances of leaving social capital dormant could manifest as behaviour (i.e., no subsequent migration) or a change in aspirations (i.e., no longer seeing migration as a potential pathway). As such, they represent an interesting case for migration theory and a way to obtain some analytical leverage to better understand migration decisions. In this paper, we compare the U.S. migration intentions and behaviour according to whether they have no, moderate, or larger access to migrant networks. We use two waves from the Mexican Family Life Survey, collected in 2002 and 2005/6, to assess the translation of migration networks and stated aspirations to migrate into subsequent migration behaviour, taking into account baseline socio-demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, migrant networks and emigration aspirations. Among those that do not migrate, we distinguish those that remain and continue to aspire to a future move from those that no longer consider migration to be an option.

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Emergence, evolution, and dynamic influence of migration systems in northeast Thailand

Sara Curran, Walker Frahm
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (A): Feedback – Intersection with policy (continued) 1330-1500

By the late 20th century, migration theory had shifted significantly and recognized that migration momentum and systems appeared to be an increasingly significant factor in explaining migration behaviour and migration patterns. However, few research programs have been designed to prospectively examine the emergence, evolution and dynamic influence of migration systems upon migration behaviour and the reciprocal dynamic of how migration behaviour generates feedback mechanisms that influence the evolution of migration systems. In this study from North-eastern Thailand we draw upon both longitudinal qualitative and quantitative information from 22 villages in North-eastern Thailand that observes the emergence, evolution and dynamic influence of migration systems. The author has been involved in the design and data collection of qualitative fieldwork and surveys of all households in these 22 villages from 1989 until 2007 (N=25,000 individuals in 7,000 households). This study builds upon a series of analyses that have been conducted previously by the author and includes the modelling of the reciprocal dynamism of migration systems and individual or household migration behaviour, complemented with an analysis of the qualitative field work to elaborate on the possible mechanism at work.

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D

Dislocating the local: a study of the migrants originating from the Indian enclaves

Sanghita Datta
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (E): Social actors – Political contexts of action 1330-1500

Borders divide nations and with it, it also divides localities irrespective of class and religion. The partition of India happened in two folds: firstly with Pakistan and secondly with Bangladesh. In this entire process of drawing and re- drawing of borders the residue, in this entire process, are the inhabitants of borders. This has been a similar experience in case of all those who have been uprooted due to war and have been displaced internally due to various reasons. The Radcliffe Commission's ‘Blunder Line', demarcated the boundary line between India and Pakistan-East and West Pakistan separately. It gave rise to a number of boundary disputes about the adversarial possession of enclaves. The major bone of contention are the 106 enclaves (locally known as ‘chits') of India in having a total area of 20,957.07 acres situated within Bangladesh (erstwhile East Pakistan).

This paper is an attempt to find answers to the big question of how and what motivated the inhabitants of the Enclave region to migrate and how the actual migration cycle took place. Based on unstructured interviews and mixed sampling techniques it traces the experiences of these migrants and there four decades of struggle to stay in India, mostly without legal citizenship in the two bordering districts of West Bengal: Darjeeling and Coochbehar. Set on the backdrop of partition, the experience of travelling back to the mainland as a complete ‘alien’ makes the journey different and the settling process sets them apart from the rest of the migration taking place in the country.

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Back to square one: socio-economic integration of deported migrants in North Africa

Anda David
DIAL - Université Paris Dauphine, Paris, France
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session III (A): Migration systems – Return 1530-1700

This paper addresses the issue of socio-economic integration of forced return migrants, focusing on the Maghreb countries. Starting from the hypothesis that the return has to be prepared, I test whether a disruption in the migration cycle, such as deportation, increases the individual's vulnerability and affects her integration from both a structural and socio-cultural point of view, using the 2006 MIREM survey. Concerning the structural integration, I only focus on labour market outcomes and thus use econometric models for unemployment probability and labour market status. Using a probit, I find that forced returnees have a higher probability to be unemployed compared to voluntary returnees. They also have lower probabilities of being a business owner or employer. It is interesting to notice that the negative effect is statistically significant not only immediately after return but also in the long run, at survey time. Therefore, there is evidence of medium and long term impact of forced return migration. Drawing on Fokkema & de Haas (2011), I construct a socio-cultural re-integration index that includes aspects from satisfaction with the return to family structure in the origin and destination countries. I show that forced return has a statistically significant negative impact on the re-integration index, using different specifications. As a robustness check, I match forced returnees and voluntary returnees on observable characteristics and find a negative impact of the forced return. I find that forced returnees are more vulnerable to negative labour market outcomes compared to voluntary returnees. Forced return also has a significant negative impact on socio-cultural integration, thus increasing the incentives to re-migrate. The absence of forced returnees from the labor market, or their underperformances, creates a net loss for the origin country and creates incentives to re-migrate.

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How does migration start and stop? Revisiting migration systems and cumulative causation theory

Hein de Haas
IMI, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session I (A): Migration systems – Evolution and decline 1100-1230

This paper evaluates my earlier critique (cf. de Haas 2010) of the assumption that migration processes become self-perpetuating in migration systems and migratory cumulative causation theories. I critiqued their inability to explain why most initial migration moves do not lead to network migration and migration system formation; their relative ignorance of endogenous and contextual migration-undermining feedback mechanisms that may explain the endogenous decline of established migration systems; and their lack of critical analysis of the (mixed) role of social capital in migration processes, emphasising the migration-facilitating (‘bridgehead') role of migrant networks but largely ignoring the ‘downsides' (cf. Portes 1999) of social capital, which can explain selection, exclusion (‘gatekeeping') and the non-occurrence or decline of network dynamics. Recently, a number of individual and collaborative research projects (e.g. MMP, MAFE, THEMIS, DEMIG, EUMAGINE) investigating migration system dynamics have generated valuable insights that shed a more empirical light on these issues and test theory-derived hypotheses. Drawing on these emerging empirical insights, this paper will revisit migration systems and cumulative causation theories with regard to the migration-facilitating and migration-undermining feedback mechanisms at play in the various trajectories and stages of migration system formation and decline. This paper will particularly focus on the fundamentally ambiguous role of networks in sustaining or undermining migration by providing selective access to or exclusion from ‘migration assistance' as well as conveying positive or negative information about opportunities in origin and potential destination countries; and how these meso-level migration system dynamics interact with state policies in sending and receiving countries.

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Migration system dynamics: evidence from global data

Mathias Czaika, Hein de Haas
IMI, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session III (D): Migration systems – Dynamics 1530-1700

This paper provides a critical assessment of migration systems theory based on an analysis of global migration patterns between 1960 and 2000. Migration systems theory pioneered by Mabogunje (1970), predicts that migration that one form of exchange between countries or places, such as trade, is likely to engender other forms of exchange such as people, in both directions. This echoes earlier arguments by Ravenstein (1885; 1889) and Lee (1966) that migration in one direction is likely to engender a counter-flow in the opposite direction. In this functionalist perspective, migrant networks fulfil a vital role in the process of ‘migration diffusion' and in facilitating return migration and counter-migration (of natives of the destination country to the origin), and this can be seen as part of a wider process of social, cultural and political entangling and increasing equilibrium (decreasing skewed-ness) between ‘origins' and ‘destinations'. From a historical-structural perspective, the hypothesis that migration reciprocity increases as migration systems mature can be criticized for its ignorance of structurally embedded power inequalities, the discriminatory role of immigration restrictions and the exclusionary dimensions of ‘negative social capital' in migrant networks. However, these hypotheses have remained strikingly untested, and this paper aims to fill this gap. Based on Global Migrant Stock database, it assess the extent to which bilateral migration corridors become more balances as migration systems mature, and which factors may explain difference in such migration system dynamics (i.e., when does such increasing equilibrium occur).

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Online feedback in migration systems

Rianne Dekker, Godfried Engbersen
Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session I (B): Feedback – Social media 1100-1230

Online media allow for transnational communication in migration systems that does not only directly affect non-migrants who are embedded in migration networks, but also possibly affects a broader community as a channel of indirect feedback. This paper studies the effect of transnational exchange of information via online media on migration processes. We take a migration systems approach and consider both the information sending-perspective of migrants in destination countries as well as the information consuming-perspective of non-migrants in popular origin localities of migration in Western Europe. Our results show that online media have become rather important channels of communication. Online feedback sending and -receiving behaviour can be explained by personal characteristics as well as migration characteristics. Origin country proves to be an important predictor. Online feedback is in most cases direct feedback to existing social ties but may also concern indirect feedback concerning latent ties. Receiving online feedback correlates significantly with non-migrants' self-perceived migration likeliness, indicating that online feedback indeed affects subsequent migration. This does not always lead to more migration movements because online feedback may also be negative and migration-undermining.

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Migrants' expected time of residence in receiving countries: a systems approach

Jack DeWaard1, Guy Abel2
1University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis, USA, 2Vienna Institute of Demography, Vienna, Austria
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session III (D): Migration systems – Dynamics 1530-1700

This paper bridges recent developments in migration systems theory with empirical work on international migration systems to examine the latter in a theoretically informed way. Unlike in previous research, our efforts go beyond merely examining exchanges in the form of migration flows, and further consider the dynamics which govern these exchanges. We synthesize these two components in a fairly new measure of international migration. Termed migrants' expected time of residence, we estimate this quantity each receiving country in the EU-15 every five years from 1960-1965 to 2005-2010 and disaggregate our results by sending region, sub region, and country. In the process, our work helps to clarify three persistent problems in the empirical research on international migration systems, and, more generally, provides a blueprint for moving forward in this area in a way that is consistent with recent theoretical concerns and developments.

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‘How to get into London?’: the role played by travel agencies to move Brazilian migrants to the UK

Gustavo Dias1,2
1Goldsmiths College, London, UK, 2FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, Lisbon, Portugal, 3GEB - Brazilian Migration to the UK Research Group, London, UK
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (D): Feedback – Institutions 1100-1230

How have Brazilian migrants moved into London after the September 11? Who are the social agents and what are the social conditions of movement involved in such mobility? Since 9/11 the EU have reinforced its borders and mobility control in the airports in order to stop undesirable mobile people, including undocumented migrant workers. As a consequence Brazilian migrants have created escape routes to literally escape from that mobility control (Papadopoulos et al. 2008, Frontex 2011). Considering the fact that migratory mobility is not just a matter of network involving kinship and relatives, this paper follows the argument that behind migration there is an informal industry which provides the mobility according to global politics and events (Khosravi 2010).

Therefore, through an empirical study on Brazilian migration from Minas Gerais state to London, this presentation attempts to discuss how migration routes are carefully organized through package tours by travel agencies managed by pioneers, who became specialized in providing tactic of border crossing movement after the 9/11. Such tactic aims to transform the migratory mobility of those migrant workers into a more desirable type of mobility, the touristic one (Adey 2004). In other words, they have promoted a border-crossing movement able to ensure the connectedness between Brazil and the UK through any small airport hubs located in the Schengen area and British territory where the surveillance, according to them, is less strict to tourists. As a result this paper argues that due to the border reinforcement adopted by the EU after the terrorist attacks (Balibar 2002, Mezzadra 2007), friends and family members abroad are not the only ones who provide support to Brazilian emigrating to London, a migratory industry composed by specialized pioneers and their travel agencies have also played important roles in such mobility (Bakewell, de Hass and Kubal 2011).

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What kind of asylum and which destination? Afghan asylum seekers transiting from Greece

Angeliki Dimitriadi
Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, Athens, Attiki, Greece
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (C): Social actors – Conflict and constraint 1100-1230

The paper discusses Afghan asylum seekers in Greece and how migrant agency factors in the context of transit from Greece to other EU member states. Labelled in public discourse as transit migrants, I argue that their mobility, when successfully pursued, is more than the sum of structural constraints; they are not only escaping from specific factors but simultaneously pursuing specific conditions. Thus, an element of choice and active participation in the migratory journey is incorporated in the discussion on asylum. The paper draws from two sources, the fieldwork conducted in the framework of my PhD thesis (2009 - 2012) across Greece and the fieldwork conducted in 2013 in Athens, in the context of the project “IRMA-Governing Irregular Migration” carried out as part of a funded research project. Drawing from interviews conducted with irregular Afghan migrants in Greece, that were ‘in transit’, asylum is discussed not from the perspective of safety, but as a way of acquiring a particular identity and social position coupled with specific benefits. This raises once more the question of whether we can incorporate migrant agency in the context of forced migration, and the case of Afghans shows that agency does not negate the need for refuge; rather the need for refuge can be complemented by the expectations for certain conditions and preferences to be met. From this perspective, it is possible to view the asylum seeker as an active agent of his/her migration, attempting and often succeeding in determining his/her own migration journey.

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Networks and beyond: feedback channels and the diminutive causation of international migration

Godfried Engbersen
EUR, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Keynote III: Feedback processes in migration 1100-1230

This paper explores a mechanism-based explanation of migration flows. It first calls for an analysis of ‘migration mechanisms of the middle range'. Secondly it demonstrates the relevance of such an approach by analysing the social mechanism of diminutive causation, the counterpart of the concept of cumulative causation (Massey, 1990; Massey et al., 1998). Diminutive causation entails a dynamic multi-level explanation with interconnected macro-, meso-, and micro-factors. We analyse the role of migrant networks in reducing immigration from Morocco to the Netherlands in particular. Three aspects are examined: (1) changing beliefs and motivations of migrants in the Netherlands to support prospective migrants (situational mechanism); (2) migration-undermining feedback provided by migrants to prospective migrants (action-formation mechanism); and (3) the changing nature of migration cultures and migratory aspirations in Morocco due to the migration-undermining feedback from settled migrants in the Netherlands (transformational mechanism). Thirdly, this paper argues that it is crucial to move beyond examinations of migrant networks, not only by taking into account macro institutional factors (labour markets, state policies), but also by analysing the relevance of other feedback channels. Cumulative or diminutive causation works not only through migrant networks but also through new feedback channels provided by the social media. We document the role of the social media in the lives of immigrants and analyse how online media use may influence migration aspirations of prospective migrants in Morocco, Brazil and the Ukraine. Insights into the functioning of ‘traditional' and ‘new' channels of feedback are important for understanding endogenous and exogenous feedback mechanisms (de Haas, 2010).

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The mobility turn: a new paradigm for the social sciences?

Thomas Faist
Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
Day 1. Tuesday 24 September 2013: Keynote I: Emergence and development of migration systems 1530-1700

A new paradigmatic turn has reached migration studies, the mobility turn. Following upon many turns in the recent past such as the linguistic turn, the cultural turn, and the spatial turn, the mobility turn seems to be the newest effort in diagnostic descriptions of modern society. Like other turns, the mobility turn generalizes one aspect of contemporary society to the detriment of other features. While such a turn may usefully highlight various forms of spatial mobility, it cannot be fruitfully employed unless the scholars working with this paradigm critically reflect underlying political assumptions about the nexus between spatial and social mobility. Moreover, any analysis of spatial and social mobilities needs to go beyond descriptions and start accounting for the mechanisms underlying the production of social inequalities.

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Should I stay or should I go? The role of relationships in the decision to migrate, stay, or return: the Brazilian migrants case study

Ana Paula Figueiredo
University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session I (D): Social Actors – Families 1100-1230

Despite an estimated number of over 200.000 Brazilians in London, there is no comprehensive research on their experience in the capital. This paper explores the various factors that affect the choice by Brazilians to migrate to and stay in London or to return to Brazil. Based on eighty interviews with Brazilians in London and eight months fieldwork with Brazilians women who work as cleaners in London, this research explores the importance of loving relationships on the decision making process of Brazilian migrants in London. The combination quantitative and qualitative methods of research made it possible to uncover how the breakup of a long term relationship, death of a loved one, new love found on the internet or simply the hope to find love have more influence than studies of migration have previously accounted for. This case study analysis contributes to the understanding of the complexities of human agency and network formation in the context of migration and will thereby contribute to fill gaps in research on Brazilian migration in London.

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The (changing) role of family among Afghan communities in Britain and Germany

Carolin Fischer
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (C): Social actors – Families (continued) 1330-1500

This paper explores how Afghan families shape migration from Afghanistan and processes of settlement and community formation at European destinations. Social relationships based on family and tribal ties are sources of solidarity and make mutual assistance an imperative. How these attributes of Afghan families are maintained or re-shaped through migration and settlement in western countries has not been explicitly addressed. Focusing on the lives of Afghans in Britain and Germany I examine the reconfiguration of families and agency of family members, taking into account structural conditions enforced in the receiving society. I conducted a series of in-depth interviews with people who left Afghanistan at different stages during the last four decades and now live in Britain or Germany. The interview transcripts contain large segments on personal stories and explicitly address experiences of migration and settlement in the two destination countries. Afghan families play important roles at various stages of migration and settlement processes. They are key factors for peoples’ decision to migrate and inform choices of destination countries and places of residence. Families also influence social interaction and shape processes of community formation in countries of residence. However, newly emerging patterns of solidarity and community organization among Afghans in Britain and Germany suggest that dynamic reconfigurations occur in conjunction with peoples’ lives in receiving societies while core attributes of families are being maintained. Such reconfigurations primarily occur as a result of differences between first and second- generation immigrants. When aiming to unpack how structural environments in Britain and Germany enhance peoples’ ability to exercise agency and choice, the challenge is to disentangle how changing scopes of agency affect family ties as a mode of social integration.

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Migration decision making: aspirations and opportunities

Maria Lucinda Fonseca1, Sueli Siqueira1, Alina Esteves1, Jennifer McGarrigle1, Sónia Pereira1
1Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning, Lisbon, Portugal, 2Universidade Vale do Rio Doce, Governador Valadares, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (A): Social actors – Aspirations 1330-1500

The determinants of migration have been long debated in the literature from economic, demographic and socio-political factors in both sending and receiving regions to migration systems. In the context of complex processes of social and economic transformation at the global level, this paper seeks to privilege the migrants' perspective at a very micro level and builds on the acknowledgment of migrants' agency in migration processes. Following a conceptual framework at the level of the individual and the household, centred on the notions of ‘aspirations’ and "capabilities" to migrate (de Haas, 2011; Carling, 2002), we will explore the reasons why some people move and others stay. By drawing on quantitative data obtained through a survey and interviews conducted with members of migrants' families and non-migrant families in Brazil, within the ambit of the THEMIS project, as well as key indicators of structural macro and meso-level conditions, collected from secondary sources, this paper seeks to explore the links between aspirations and opportunities at the individual level, migration networks and as more structural, macro-level determinants (e.g. employment structures, access to education, health and social rights, migration regulations, security conditions). In other words, we will explore, in two different regions in Brazil, how migration aspirations are formed and realized by analysing the significance of individual determinants and opportunity structures using logistic regression modelling. This analysis aims to increase our understanding of the initiation of the migration process which is relevant from a developmental perspective.

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Trasnational families and state-services provision in the communities of origin

Mariana Gabarrot
Tec de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (A): Feedback – Intersection with policy (continued) 1330-1500

The paper explores how transnational and translocal family formations represent a challenge to social development policies in the communities of origin. The text contributes to debates regarding the relationship between individual migrants and other social actors in two main aspects. First, their agency is situated as part of a broader process of social reproduction, by focusing on migrants’ relationships with non-migrant family members. Second, by analysing the role of transnational family members as subjects of social policies within their countries of origin. Case studies are presented in the context of the Mexico-US Migration system. Analysis is based on ethnographic and in depth interviews from recent fieldwork done in the northern state of Nuevo León. Overall, results show complex familial relations which include negotiations for the use of different assets, including economic (stemming from remittances), human (such as formal and informal knowledge) and social (kinship and broader networks). Access to government programs such as public education and health services is crucial to potentialize those assets and ensure wellbeing both for migrant and non-migrant members of families. Finally, the paper argues that viewing migrants in their relationship with other social institutions, such as the family and the state, will help to understand specific contexts within countries of origin which may either perpetuate or hinder migrant networks.

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The complexity of migration: life-strategies of migrant family members and families

Thomas Geisen
University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, School of Social Work, Olten, Switzerland
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session I (D): Social Actors – Families 1100-1230

In migration research the concepts of network and transnationalism gained new insights on migrants as social actors. Most important was that decision-making and balancing processes became bound back to the individual and its network-relations. In this course a new emphasis was given to the relevance of the migrant family as an important social actor in migration processes. For transnationalism the family is the most important social unit, which binds individuals together in an intergenerational social context, often over long geographical distances. It seems that the family has become the most emblematic social form of transnationalism. However, looking at concrete family practices it can be shown, that the family itself is embedded into wider social relations build within the community or the society. Based on own empirical research on migrant families, the proposed paper wants do develop a conceptual approach for migration research which is centred on migrants as social actors. Here migration is understood in a wider perspective as a change in residence beyond communal borders. Starting with such a perspective not only different forms of migration can be identified in a biographical or life-course perspective. It can be shown as well what relevance the experience of migration and mobility has for individual and collective actors, what motifs are relevant for migrants in intergenerational and interactional perspective, and what individual and collective motifs and orientations lead migrants and migrant families to migrate? Under such a process-perspective of migration, the still existing cleavage in migration research between international and internal migration shows its limitations for understanding migrants and their families. Based on Norbert Elias concept of figuration and on Ernest Jouhys concept of social relations, the proposed paper seeks to discuss the complexity of migration by introducing the concept of live-strategies to enrich the understanding of migration networks and dynamics by discussing the decisive relevance of the 'subjective factor' for understanding the migration of family members and migrant families.

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Variability and transitions of mobility patterns in migration from Ukraine to Poland

Agata Górny
Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (A): Social actors – Aspirations 1330-1500

Paper addresses the issues of duration and timing as well as variability and transitions in circular migration constituting an important type of mobility in various national contexts. These issues are studied, with the use of longitudinal perspective, on the example of Ukrainian migration to Poland - a new immigration country where established migrant communities are still absent and where temporary migration constitutes the main type of inflow. Preliminary results demonstrate that, though some changes in mobility patterns of Ukrainians can be observed, transitions from temporary to settlement migration constitute limited if not marginal phenomenon which agrees with the conviction formulated already in the literature that circular mobility usually has a different logic than permanent migration. At the same time, however, detailed examination of mobility patterns of Ukrainian migrants suggests flexibility of temporary migrants in adjusting to dynamically changing opportunity structures (mainly with regard to the labour market and legal regulations) in Poland in the 1990s and 2000s.

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Challenging the borders of intimacy and legality: migrant agency in response to Danish restrictions on transnational marriage

Tess Hellgren1,2
1RAND Europe, Cambridge, UK, 2Oxford University, Oxford, UK
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (B): Migration systems – Role of policies 1100-1230

Based on my 2012 dissertation work for the Oxford MSc in Migration Studies, my presentation will explore migrants' creative agency in response to Denmark's ‘24-year rule' limiting transnational marriage migration. My paper will examine how Danish restrictions have impacted the decisions, identities, and livelihoods of Danish-migrant couples - and how these couples' agentive strategies are creating new migration flows between Denmark and southern Sweden, with implications for regional transnational belonging and on-going legal debates on the balance of national and EU authority. Over the past ten years, immigration discourses have been increasingly politicised in Denmark, tied to the enhanced influence of the right-wing Danish People's Party over mainstream political leadership. Amidst the societal normalisation of anti-immigration sentiments, since 2002 legislation on marriage migration places strict requirements of age, income, and ‘national attachment' upon any third-country national (TCN) wishing to marry a Dane. In practice, these marriage restrictions have been a pragmatic immigration control, considerably restricting the eligibility of potential applicants for family migration. In response to the Danish governments' legal impediments, many Danes wishing to marry TCNs - particularly Danes in the Copenhagen area - have chosen to move to southern Sweden, where their marriage is allowed under stronger rights to family life derived from their status as mobile EU citizens. By relocating across the Danish border, impacted couples are strategically navigating intersecting levels of Danish, Nordic, and EU law in their determination to form a partnership. This provocative outcome establishes new patterns of transnational living and identity, as many couples reside in Sweden but spend more time working and visiting family across the border in Denmark. It also raises important questions about present and future interactions of national and supranational legal structures in the realm of EU family migration and beyond.

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Conceptualising migrants as social actors: reflections from THEMIS

Cindy Horst
Peace Research Institute Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Keynote II: Migrants as social actors 0900-1030

Agency of migrants is increasingly acknowledged and explored in migration studies, particularly work on transnationalism. Migration systems theory however, has traditionally had a more deterministic and structural focus. This paper argues the importance of incorporating a richer analysis of how migrants as social actors influence and are influenced by migration processes. The analysis is based on nearly 90 in-depth interviews with Brazilian, Moroccan and Ukrainian migrants in Norway, and 30 in-depth interviews in Brazil, Morocco and Ukraine with returnees from Norway and family members of migrants in Norway. This allows us to explore opportunities and challenges of the migration system perspective, and the potential role of migrants as social actors within it.  We ask how useful the migration system perspective is for understanding migration to the periphery of European migration destinations. The paper argues that migration systems thinking, with its focus on pioneers, feedback and threshold, only explains certain migration flows while obstructing a better understanding of others.

There are great differences between migrants with relatively easy access to Norway, for example through connections to Norwegian individuals and companies, and those without. We explore these differences between 'wanted' and 'unwanted' migration streams, moving from more 'systemic' cases to those that migration systems theory offers less. First, a discussion of Moroccan migration to Norway places this traditionally network-based migration corridor in a wider European frame. Second, an exploration of the highly diverse marriage migration with Norwegians shows the differentiating impacts of class for Brazilians (and Ukrainians) in Norway. Third, the large group of students and professionals in the Ukrainian (and Brazilian) case illuminate the highly individualized trajectories of Europe's wanted migrants. Theorizing migration dynamics through the lens of systematically exploring socio-economic differences, allows a richer and more diversified picture of migrants as social actors within or beyond a systems perspective.

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A matter of class? The dynamics of Brazilian migration to Europe

Cindy Horst1, Agnieszka Kubal2, Sonia Pereira3
1Cindy Horst, Oslo, Norway, 2Agnieszka Kubal, Oxford, UK, 3Sonia Pereira, Lisbon, Portugal
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (A): Social actors – Class 1100-1230

This paper analyses the role of class for the migration of Brazilians to Norway, Portugal and the UK, based on 120 semi-structured interviews with migrants in these countries and 90 interviews with returnees and families of migrants in Brazil. Class has always been present in the migration debate; the distinction between the desired ‘highly-skilled' migrants and the ‘unwanted' ‘low-skilled' is an example of how this debate has been framed in policy-making and research. Class indeed has an impact on the opportunities that people have to migrate as well as on their incentives to move. In Europe, current immigration regimes offer higher entry opportunities for those with high levels of education and a professional occupation than for those who appear ‘unskilled'. However, differences in access to and processes of migration are not simply rooted in ‘skills' distinctions but also in more complex and contextualized configurations of class. Brazilian migration to Europe provides a good illustration of this. For example, migrants from the poor state of Bahia (Northeast) have higher incentives to migrate and help others than migrants from the large urban metropolises São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, with consequences also for their use of social networks or transnational assistance.

Our paper consists of three parts: (1) critical review of the notion of class and of its manifestation in the Brazilian context, in relation to race/skin colour, place of residence and birth, modes of speech (accent, articulation or way of writing), gender as well as occupation and education; (2) exploration of the implications of this intersectionality for the migration trajectories of Brazilians to the UK, Portugal and Norway: including the ‘making' of the migration and whether and how Brazilian class realities are reproduced and re-enacted in countries of settlement; and (3) teasing out the implications of this for the overall migration processes.

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I

'Se quedó ¿a volver?': crisis, stay, and return in the case of Ecuadorians in Spain

Juan Iglesias
Instituto U. Estudios sobre Migraciones, Madrid, Spain
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (B): Feedback – Socio-economic conditions 1330-1500

The communication is based on a mixed research focused on the study of the effects of the current economic crisis is generating on the migration processes and projects of Ecuadorians living in Spain. Communication seeks to explore, specifically, in the processes of stay, new international mobility and return that the current economic crisis is making among the ethnic Ecuadorian population in Spain. Before the crisis, Ecuadorian migrants formed one of the most significant migratory realities in the Spanish context, not only for its volume, 458,437 (INE, 1-1-2008) but, especially, for their progressive and widespread process of incorporation, settlement and rooted in Spanish society (access regulation and nationalization, family reunification, residential settlement, some upward job mobility within the secondary market, etc.) Crisis has destabilized the on-going process which substantially change processes and migration projects Ecuadorians in a bundle of options that include not only the commitment to stay in Spain, but new international mobility processes, among which the different processes of return to the country of origin. A landscape that has substantially changed the immigration system that Ecuadorians had built with Spain in recent years and it shows not only the impacts of structural origin on migration processes, but the dynamism of the immigrants themselves and their resources and social networks to redefine their migration projects. Communication, which is part of a research project of the National I + D + I (CSO2009-10429) presents the main features of social and migration issues listed above, from quantitative and qualitative study conducted between 2009 - 2012 with the Ecuadorian community in Spain.

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The effect of local transformations on migration aspirations in Brazil, Morocco, and Ukraine

Dominique Jolivet
IMI, Oxford, UK
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (B): Migration systems – Role of policies 1100-1230

The likelihood of having migration aspirations can be higher in regions with a deep rooted culture of migration than in areas where migration is less normative (Kandel and Massey, 2002). However, transformations -or the lack of thereof- in the local context may have an effect on migration aspirations and therefore on the evolving patterns of the culture of migration in the region. This paper explores the effect of perceived changes in the communities of origin on migration aspirations, comparing areas with distinct cultures of migration. The analysis draws on the results of 1246 surveys gathered between 2012 and 2013 in different regions of Brazil, Morocco and Ukraine for the THEMIS project (Theorising the Evolution of European Systems of Migration). THEMIS explores the determinants of migration behaviour and why some of the initial moves to Europe result in the formation of significant migration systems while some migration processes decrease gradually or stagnate. Firstly, the paper examines respondents' views on migration and on the social, cultural and economic effects of migration at the community level. Secondly, it explores the regional exogenous changes perceived by the respondents in the last 10 years at an economic and socio-political level. Finally, it analyses the impact of perceived regional transformations on migration aspirations with three logistic regression models -one per country- that include a variable to control for the effect of research areas with distinct contexts, migration histories, and cultures of migration.

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Life paths of migrants: a sequence analysis of Polish labour migrants' family-life trajectories

Tom Kleinepier1, Helga de Valk1,2, Ruben van Gaalen3
1Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), The Hague, The Netherlands, 2Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, The Netherlands, 3Statistics Netherlands, The Hague, The Netherlands
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session I (C): Methodology – Life course and paths 1100-1230

Polish migration to the Netherlands has increased substantially over the past decade and is one of the main origins of migrants settling in the country nowadays. Nevertheless, still little is known on how migration affects the lives of these migrants in the family domain and what decisions are made by these migrants. In this study, we use register data from Statistics Netherlands to examine to what extent migration affects the timing (“when”) and sequencing (‘in what order’) of family-life transitions. The majority of studies on family-life transitions of migrants exclusively focus on one transition only, which is unfortunate as different events in the life course are not separate experiences but are linked to one another. Therefore, we apply a more holistic approach by using sequence analysis. More specifically, we apply optimal matching (OM) analysis to assess (dis-)similarities between individual life trajectories. We then use standard clustering algorithms to group the different individuals into predominant life paths. In this way we can include multiple transitions in the family domain (union formation, marriage, childbirth, divorce) simultaneously and study life courses as meaningful units. We will investigate the relationship between these trajectories to both migration and return migration. Our analyses focus on young adult Polish labour migrants from two birth cohorts (aged 22 and 26 at migration) who came to the Netherlands in 2004. Data come from a rich individual administrative panel database that covers the entire population of the Netherlands: the Social Statistical Database (SSD) housed by Statistics Netherlands. Data are available for the period 2004-2011 and include detailed information on the place of residence in the Netherlands. The latter allows us to assess the relative importance of the neighbourhood and the potential effects of the ethnic network on life paths.

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Highly skilled migrants and the European mobility industry

Saara Koikkalainen
University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (D): Feedback – Institutions 1100-1230

The paper examines intra-European mobility and migrant agency from the perspective of highly skilled migrants, namely Finns working abroad in other EU15 countries. It is based on a web survey titled Working in Europe (n=364) conducted in 2008, its continuation in 2010 (n=194) and 18 migrant interviews (2011). The paper draws on Karen O'Reilly's (2012) practice theory for international migration. It focuses on understanding highly skilled mobility in Europe through an analysis of the external, macro level structures that ease or impede mobility, as well as the internal, micro level structures that affect the mobility behaviour of this particular migrant group. At the meso level the paper introduces a novel concept of mobility industry, which helps facilitate intra-European mobility.

The term migration industry has been used to refer to the various agents and organizations helping migrants, remittance companies, as well as human smugglers who manage irregular migration. I argue that this term can also be useful in understanding different forms of intra-European mobility. In the European context permanent migration is not the only or perhaps even the main form of transnational movement across borders, so mobility industry is a more fitting term to be used. It can be roughly divided into two categories: firstly the non-commercial institutions and agencies that provide information and facilitate the mobility of students, trainees and academics, as well as job-seekers, and secondly the commercial relocation and headhunting agencies, consultants and job search portals whose business it is to facilitate the mobility of workers and professionals. The paper concludes that the paths that lead abroad from Finland are influenced by both external structures and individual migrant agency, as voluntary, intra-European migrants can choose their destinations according to their life projects focusing on work and careers, but also on quality of life and adventure.

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Children go first! Family strategies and educational migration

Liudmila Kopecka
Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (C): Social actors – Families (continued) 1330-1500

Recent developments in migration studies have shown that is very important to pay attention to how migration decisions are taken collectively. Families and kin group play a significant role in the process of migration and influence individual’s behaviour. However, there have been only a few studies, which focus on family strategies and migration for educational purposes. This paper attempts to show what kind of role does family play in student migration from Russia to the Czech Republic and what kind of transnational strategies and migration projects do have parents, sending their children abroad. The field research for this article was conducted in a few cities in Russia and in Prague, in the Czech Republic, involving in-depth interviews with student migrants and their parents.

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Citizens of Kazakhstan in a Russian city: factors facilitating and limiting transnational activities (the case of Novosibirsk)

Larisa Kosygina
Institute of Economics (Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Science), Novosibirsk, Novosibirsk region, Russia
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session VI (C): Social actors – Settlement 1530-1700

This paper discusses some results of my research, ‘Foreign citizens in the Novosibirsk region: factors for construction of transnational practices’ undertaken within the collective research project, ‘Cross-border relations in the Asian part of Russia: a comprehensive assessment of benefits and risks’ (funded by the Russian Academy of Science). The paper is based on an analysis of semi-structured interviews with citizens of Kazakhstan residing in Novosibirsk, which is the principal city of the region bordering Kazakhstan. It presents migrants’ understandings of their migration process and factors facilitating or limiting their transnational activity (including transnational migration). Both Russia and Kazakhstan participate in one migration system which emerged after the collapse of the USSR. These countries are connected by a common history, cultural ties and social links, and continued mutual economic interests. The recent introduction of the Common Economic Space – the economic and political union which encompasses Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus – presupposes facilitation of migration and social integration of the citizens of these countries across the covered territory. Citizens of Kazakhstan and Belarus can enter Russia without a visa. In Russia, citizens of Belarus and Kazakhstan in comparison with other foreign citizens have the greatest access to social and economic rights. Using the example of citizens of Kazakhstan residing in the region which borders Kazakhstan, my research tries to clarify factors which promote or limit creation of a transnational social space – a social space which is ‘composed from networks that link individuals to institutions in more than one state” (Glick Schiller, Nina, The Transnational Migration Paradigm: Global Perspectives on Migration Research – in print) in other words, the creation of transnational space via the activities of migrants themselves.

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‘I may not be legal, but I am not a criminal’: the consequences of criminalization of migration for migrants' everyday lives in Europe

Agnieszka Kubal
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (A): Feedback – Intersection with policy (continued) 1330-1500

This paper grapples with the interplay between involuntary return and the convergence of criminal and migration law that accompanies this process. ‘Crimmigration’ – the term originally coined by Stumpf (2006) to demonstrate the asymmetric incorporation of criminal law into migration law - now seem to have a life on its own. Academic papers are full of crimmigrant bodies (Aas 2011), gendered crimmigrants (Hartry 2012) - either being deported or detained: foreigners in carceral age (Bosworth and Kaufman 2011). The deportation regime (De Genova and Peutz 2010) seem to extend to more states, and the borders between security of residence and deportability have never been so porous. This paper juxtaposes the above debates in the European context. I give voice to those whose ‘lives are shaped by law' (Sarat 1990) utilizing the data stemming from 270 qualitative interviews with return migrants in Brazil, Morocco and Ukraine from Norway, Netherlands, Portugal and the UK. Based on this evidence, I contest the overwhelming ‘crimmigration' label and propose a return to its original employment - to delineate the convergence between the legal spheres and not as a concept to describe people (as in ‘crimmigrants'), as empirical facts inadvertently escape the overly simplistic categories and terms. I discuss the intersection of criminal and migration law and how they play out in immigrants' everyday lives, voluntary and involuntary return.

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Strong ties, weak ties and protection for domestic workers: Ethiopian domestic worker migration to the Middle East

Katie Kuschminder
Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (E): Social actors – Networks 1100-1230

Few comparisons have been made that examine the difference in migration outcomes for migrants that migrate via a strong versus a weak tie. This paper will contribute to this research area through an examination of Ethiopian female migration to the Middle East by using a network lens to compare migration via weak or strong ties. Domestic workers provide an interesting case for this analysis as they are vulnerable in their migration, and network supports can provide critical resources for the safety and security of the migrant and ensure an economic livelihood. The central hypothesis of this paper is two-fold: first that women with dense ties have greater opportunity to access migration due to their networks; and secondly that women migrating via strong ties would have the greatest opportunity for protection in the Middle East. Women migrating via weak ties, namely a migrant broker, would on the other hand, be less likely to have accurate information regarding migration, and secondly, be more likely to experience abuse in the Middle East. Migration via dense networks should allow for greater access to information and the ability for networks to assist an individual if needed. Migration via weak ties suggests that assistance is less likely to be available upon arrival. It is recognized that networks alone cannot determine the outcome of migration, and other issues such as legality in migration will be explored in the analysis. The paper will demonstrate that networks are not enough to protect migrants against the structural conditions in the Middle East.

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The transnational family as a socio-legal actor for managing migration processes

Encarnación La Spina
University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session I (D): Social Actors – Families 1100-1230

The transnationalism applied to the migratory movements, is based on the fact that migrant population holds multiple household, economic, social, organisational, religious and political relations that surpass borders, hence simultaneously two or more societies. The paper is focused on the transnational family as a significant actor in migration processes due to its notorious contribution to ongoing legal transformations in both societies. However, the family model in immigration law has an ideal and dominant approach openly excluding other family realities in the social context. The legal configuration of kinship ties in immigration law is governed by a restrictive logic that combines a dependent and nuclear composition with mismatches in the concrete form of managing the distances, the dynamics and the times at origin and destination. Thus, the study explores possible changes and emergent needs of the transnational family and its integration. These changes are not only for the recognized disintegrative effects involved, but also for the necessary and diverse legal (re)integrations associated in the home and host society presented by the current European immigration law. Because law in an inherent tendency towards the ideal doesn't allow a legitimate choice between autonomy and individual freedom in order to define or not the family project and it doesn't secure integration in a suitable degree of equality and justice.

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Skilled Iranians in Germany and the United States: exploring migrants' networks

Uta Lehmann
Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies, Osnabrück, Niedersachsen, Germany
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (C): Social actors – Networks 1330-1500

Every year 150.000 highly skilled persons leave Iran and seek new opportunities in the United States and Europe (Carrington/Detragiache 1998). A look back at history shows that these migration flows have a long tradition. They first started with educational exchanges in the early 19th century and reached its climax in the year of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. A well-educated Diaspora has resulted as a result of these movements. However, empirical findings indicate that Iranians immigrating to the United States are more successful in sustaining and promoting their educational and professional potential than Iranians coming to Europe. Here, the complex interconnection of influencing factors at the micro-, meso and macro level within a migration system becomes important. One key trait that emerged in my empirical findings is the role of social networks. My paper explores the dynamics of Iranian skilled immigration from a Bourdieuian perspective on social capital and argues that networks serve to overcome structural obstacles in migration. They help to generate social capital, which can be used to transform educational potential into cultural capital that facilitates swift market access.

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Translocal rhythms of gendered care: Latvian women creating lives on the move

Aija Lulle
University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (C): Social actors – Networks 1330-1500

In this article I propose a concept of translocal rhythms as a novel contribution to the examination of migration dynamics in contemporary Europe. The article is illustrated by examples of translocal migration projects that emerge from a specific kind of interference in the rhythms of work and care. Besides, I demonstrate, how a particular neoliberal version of the good mother emerges, informed by capitalism and gender regimes in post-socialist Latvia, as well as the current demand for female labour in Western European spaces. Translocal rhythms are revealed through a time-geographic investigation of distant emplacements of workplace and home, and neoliberalism-based justifications by mothers themselves about why a certain mobility project of care from a distance is prioritised over physical proximity with those in need of care. Data is drawn from interviews with mothers, who provided care through being mobile between Latvia and the Channel Island of Guernsey. I suggest that this augmented concept of translocal rhythms has a potential to contribute to the existing literature in migration studies, providing new insights into how translocal practices continue over time and space, and how and whether the synchronisation of gendered care ceases to be a translocal practice.

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Egypt: migration, revolution, and social change

Philip Marfleet
University of East London, London, UK
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session VI (D): Migration systems – Conflict 1530-1700

For decades Egypt was a source country for migration to states of the Gulf. Now some of its poorest people leave villages of the Nile Delta for the cities of Europe. Despite formal efforts by European authorities to inhibit these networks, greatly increasing the risks for those involved, the pace of migration has intensified and cross-Mediterranean networks have become integral to the life of some communities. This paper examines the rapid emergence and consolidation of the new networks. It considers the development of new social practices associated with migration and the complex outcomes for migrants and for those who do not migrate. The paper also considers the impact of Egypt's revolution upon migration - the effect of societal upheaval and of a huge rise in expectations of social and economic advance among millions of people. It argues that processes associated with the ‘Arab Spring’ continue to stimulate cross-Mediterranean movements and to reshape regional patterns of migration.

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The impact of sending states’ transnational policies on migration dynamics: a comparative analysis of South American cases

Ana Margheritis
University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session III (B): Feedback – Intersections with policy 1530-1700

The phenomenon of state-led transnationalism (i.e., the policies and programs that nation-states implement to reach out to their citizens abroad) is relatively under-studied within both migration and international relations studies. Although those policies have expanded lately in all regions, the literature is still overwhelmingly concerned with issues that affect receiving (rather than sending) countries, the economic (rather than political) impact of migration, bottom-up transnational practices and networks, and a few cases. The mechanisms of transnational policymaking in the migration area, as well as policy impact on migration patterns and migrants’ engagement in the sending and receiving countries remain largely under-researched. There is also a biased selection of cases that focuses on large and/or politically relevant emigrant communities and transnational practices that are facilitated by geographic proximity between home and host societies. Regarding the Americas, South American cases have been less explored than Mexico and Caribbean countries. In fact, given the unfortunate record of state violence, dramatic economic crises, and recurrent political instability, South American countries can shed light not only on the emergence and maintenance of out-migration patterns but also on the complex, and often conflictive, relationship between migrant associations and state institutions across long distances.

This study assesses the results of recent emigration policies in Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico with an eye on what the outcome tells us about transnational governance. The first three cases have received less scholarly attention than others and are representative of different trends within the region, thus offering the opportunity to expand existing knowledge and revisit critically some assumptions. Mexico provides a good comparative background and long-term historical perspective. The outcomes do not allow for a full comparison or generalizations, but they contribute to specify how transnational policymaking occurs and how new forms of governance are developing in the area of human mobility.

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Policy feedbacks and their influence on the evolution of the North American migration system

Douglas Massey
Princeton University, Princeton, USA
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Keynote III: Feedback processes in migration 0900-1030

Although much research has examined the micro-level feedback processes by which migrant networks operate to sustain international migration and promote the expansion of movement over time to yield a process of cumulative causation, fewer studies have analysed the dynamic interplay between state policies and migrant decision-making in shaping the developmental path of migration systems, or the interdependence between evolving system properties, public opinion, and policy formation in receiving societies. This paper considers the evolution of the North American migration system since 1965 to illustrate how state policy actions may unleash a set of unintended feedbacks that dramatically alter the contours of international migration to produce a path-dependent cycle producing outcomes that neither policy makers nor migrants envisioned or wanted.

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Micro level factors leading to a migratory decision: migrant groups in the Czech Republic

Antonin Mikes1, Živka Deleva2
1Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, 2Previously of Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (A): Social actors – Aspirations 1330-1500

This paper combines the results of research targeting several distinct migrant communities living and working in the Czech Republic. This research further develops work which documented the experience of highly educated Slovak workers in the Czech Republic by including additional linguistic groups. Preliminary findings uncovered a nuanced perspective which elucidated the tendency of young individuals to seek out opportunities in the 'near abroad' whereas experienced workers became migrants only after ensuring the economic benefits of making a move. Further work encompassing a larger cohort has indicated that Individual agency plays a key role in individual decision making. The project has elucidated the complexity of micro level causal factors in relation to migratory decision making. While this work demonstrates that a network effect exists in some cases rational choice and cultural commonalities also play a significant role leading up to migration and indeed in perpetuating flows. It has also become clear that some groups are intent on settlement in the Czech Republic.

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Changing contexts, changing actors: accounting for migration dynamics

Ewa Morawska
University of Essex, Colchester, UK
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Keynote II: Migrants as social actors 0900-1030

I propose, first, some elaboration of Emirbayer's and Mische's (1998) conceptualization of human agency that has become a standard reference for present-day structuration and morphogenesis theorists, including migration scholars inspired by these models. I suggest a distinction between the instrumental- and value-rational evaluative dimensions of human agency in place of the general ‘practical-evaluative' one; an addition of the ‘aesthetic' aspect of the agency's evaluative component; and a refinement of the understanding of the term ‘social' that in an un-reflected upon manner usually accompanies the use of ‘actors' in social-science studies. I then offer some suggestions regarding the (re-)conceptualization of the role of human actors in different phases of the migration process: as the pioneers of population flows, in the emergence of migration systems, and in sustaining migration. My propositions are illustrated with empirical examples drawn from studies of past and present international migrations.

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From post-socialist to post-accession pioneering: the shaping of Romanian migration networks to Spain and the UK

Chris Moreh
Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (E): Social actors – Networks 1100-1230

This paper examines the dynamics of Romanian migration networks following the fall of socialism, by comparing two receiving countries, Spain and the UK. While Spain is a well-established destination for Romanian migrants, who constitute the most numerous foreign-born group in the Iberian country, the UK has seen more moderate levels of immigration from Romania, slightly ascending following the latter's EU accession in 2007. The question posed in the paper is why movements to certain places have been more able to develop into systems than others. To answer this question, the paper analyses the development of particular migration networks in the two countries, showing the complex relationships and contingent events that led to the emergence and preservation of these systems. State, market and individual actors come into dynamic interaction to create and shape migration systems, and the paper traces the activities, histories and effects of key pioneers, migration policies and economic developments. The presented data come from an intensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Community of Madrid, Spain, during the first half of 2009, and an on-going research in the UK.

An overarching structural factor analysed is European integration, which can influence all stages of the development and decline of a migration system. Romania's EU accession occurred almost concomitantly with the eruption of the global economic crisis, and the paper examines how these political and economic developments shape existing migrant networks and the initiation of new ones. In this respect, the paper compares the role and position of post-socialist and post-accession pioneers within the political-economic structure prevalent at the time of their migration. Through this double comparative lens, the paper is able to expand our knowledge on the complexity of migration phenomena, and show how the interrelations between individual and structural factors shape migration systems.

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Assessment of effectiveness of RDS sampling method in migration studies

Joanna Napierala, Agata Gorny
Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (A): Social actors – Aspirations 1330-1500

Although, as in comparison to previous decades, people have nowadays more mobility facilitators, the use of migration networks in the migration process is still undeniable as people are socially networked no matter their place of stay. The Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) is a sampling method based on networks, whereby members of a social group under the study refer other members of their own network as the next study participants. In RDS we are following the respondents recruitment process which could be compared to a random walk through the migration network, and as we collect the information on both the structure of the respondents’ networks and the characteristics of their members this advantages us to research the migrant population more profoundly and to some extent research also the migration process itself i.e. differential recruitment, homophily.

The goal of our paper is to examine the effectiveness of the method, based on a network sampling, as compared to quota sampling. We hypothesise that RDS is far more effective, than quota sampling method, and reliable while searching sensitive matters such as legal status of migrants, remittances and others. In this paper we would like to also make an attempt to answer the research question whether RDS sample differ systematically from other samples, such as quota samples. Data sources to be used in this paper are quantitative data collected in two surveys on migrants from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia living in greater area of Warsaw in 2012 – one with use of quota sampling and the other with the RDS.

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Do institutions play a role in skilled migration? The case of Italy

Annamaria Nifo1, Gaetano Vecchione2
1University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy, 2University of Naples II, Naples, Italy
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (D): Feedback – Institutions 1100-1230

The factors identified by economic theory as determining migrants' decisions appear less relevant to the choices of the highly skilled, a fairly small but significant group which is able to wield a major economic impact on regional economies. This paper is based on the idea that in their migration choices the highly skilled are motivated to look for an area or context able to ensure a higher income and better employment opportunities. At the same time, it should be a favourable socio-economic environment with well-functioning local government institutions. The decisive impact of institutional quality on the level of services, the environment, regional development and the overall quality of life in the destination area has been extensively studied in the literature. Building on such previous studies, by using data from the ‘Survey on the professional recruitment of graduates’ in Italy conducted by the National Statistics Office (ISTAT) in 2007 on a sample of 47,300 individuals who graduated in 2004, we study the impact of provincial institution quality on the probability of resident graduates migrating. Our Heckman Probit estimation indicates that institutions do matter for migration decisions and their importance is comparable to that of per-capita income provincial differences.

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Flexible ethnography for practice stories of migration: (elite?) migrants in Asia

Karen O'Reilly1, Katherine Botterill1,2, Rob Stones1,3
1Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK, 2Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK, 3University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session I (C): Methodology – Life course and paths 1100-1230

In contemporary migration research, the dynamics of migration systems and the processes that sustain them have been explained through a narrow focus on origin and destination. Increasingly, however, scholars recognise the importance of historical, social and cultural conditions of movement, institutional frameworks and interactions, individual agency and everyday practices in their analysis of migration patterns and processes. Any focus on a single aspect of the above leads to calls for more attention to other aspects. We argue that structural and agentic processes are always and continually interlinked through the practice of daily life and that the goal should be to tell practice stories of migration (O’Reilly 2012), using practice theory as a meta-theoretical framework. This is, nevertheless, a tall order for researchers, raising new methodological challenges.

Drawing on our experiences of researching lifestyle migrants in Thailand and Malaysia we consider the merits of utilising a ‘flexible ethnography’ that learns from and through the mobile, the virtual and the place-based, recognising the changing nature of migrant lives. Lifestyle migrants in Thailand and Malaysia occupy a relatively privileged position in global migration hierarchies, a status shaped by historical conditions and social reproduction. An understanding of their migration involves analysis of macro, micro and network factors as they interact and re-emerge in the practice of daily life. This research is informed by ethnographic methodology, recognising that everyday practices are acted out in the context of constraints that migrants themselves reproduce, create and shape. However, ethnography traditionally involves a long-term commitment, and has tended to be place specific. A flexible ethnography approach integrates traditional methods with virtual, mobile, multi-sited, and digital methods to produce practice stories of migration.

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The influence of networks in the migration decisions of Kenyan and Nigerian women bound for the United Kingdom

Linda Oucho
African Migration and Development Policy Centre, Nairobi, Kenya
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (E): Social actors – Networks 1100-1230

Networks and the information they convey can play a very important role in the decision to migrate. With technological advancements taking place in today's globalised world, potential migrants can consult individuals on information about their chosen destination, but they can also explore their options by using the internet to investigate the information that they need in order to make a decision of whether to migrate to their chosen destination. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the changing nature of networks through time with a focus on exploring how different types of networks were used by Kenyan and Nigerian women in their decision to migrate to the UK as an individual or a family unit. The paper is based on my PhD thesis completed in November 2011 which focused on the migration decision-making experiences of Kenyan and Nigerian women in London from 1990 to 2010. The aim of the research was to capture women's agency in migration decisions and networks played a very important role in the decision-making process. Fawcett's conceptual framework (1989) was useful for understanding the linkages that exist between networks and potential migrants in terms of the information/ assistance shared and how they operate within a migration system. Fawcett's primary focus was to examine the communication between potential migrants and their networks as well as observable links such as trade flows or family obligations (1989: 673). He identified three types of linkages (tangible, regulatory and relational) and four categories of networks, namely State-to-State Relations, Mass Culture Connections, Family and Personal Networks and Migrant Agency Activities (1989: 673). Although outdated, Fawcett's conceptual framework provided guidelines to understand the relationship between migrants and how the information influenced the Kenyan and Nigerian women's decision to migrate to the United Kingdom.

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Elites and emulators: the evolution of an Iraqi Kurdish - European migration system

Erlend Paasche
Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Oslo, Norway
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session VI (D): Migration systems – Conflict 1530-1700

This paper deals with both emigration and return, applying a systems approach on 'forced migrants'. Empirically based on more than 100 in-depth interviews and 7 focus group discussions with Iraqi Kurdish emigrants and returnees to/from the UK and Norway, this paper explores the evolution of an Iraqi Kurdish - European migration system through three time periods, 1975-1991, 1992-1998, and 1999 until today. The first wave, comprised of political elites, were often granted asylum by sympathetic host states in Europe. Through their existentially important remittances, transnational marriages and high-profile return visits these elites had a signalling effect triggering the emigration of a more mixed group of second-wave ‘economic refugees'. Second-wavers emulated the first-wavers in search of wealth and freedom but were also fleeing a complex of civil war, generalized insecurity and economic deprivation. The final third-wavers tend to be less wealthy and younger, and idealize Europe as a vehicle of social mobility in lieu of inaccessible patronage. Unprecedented though incomplete political stability and rapid though inequitable economic growth in Iraqi Kurdistan hence produces return and emigration simultaneously. It prompts the return of political and financial elites, well positioned to capitalize on investment opportunities and benefit from personal networks and any foreign-earned skills and education they might have acquired. It also produces third wavers who continue to emulate the elites by seeking asylum in Europe to accumulate wealth and enjoy social freedoms, but are poorly positioned to do so as increasingly restrictive asylum regimes and economic downturns in Europe combine to produce irregularisation, marginalization, and unfavourable exchange rates vis-à-vis the booming Kurdish economy. When these third-wavers eventually return, often forcibly, they are largely empty-handed and face disappointed households and poor prospects in an increasingly specialised labour market. In other words, emigration to Europe has been democratised but return has not.

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New immigrant groups, integration and forms of citizenship in the global city: the case of Latin Americans in Europe

Fabiola Pardo Noteboom
Externado University of Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (D): Feedback – Institutions 1100-1230

In the last two decades, and with the so-called failure of multiculturalism, an important debate has emerged on the formulation of integration policies for immigrants in Western Europe. While these policies should aim to strengthen the participation of immigrant groups in all spheres of society and encourage intercultural processes, particularly in large cities, in practise, immigrants must assume the entire responsibility of their integration. This paper is based on the results of a recent comparative study on the integration practices of Latin American migrants in Amsterdam, London and Madrid in the framework of their specific local integration policies. Given the international socio-political context, Europe is undergoing a moment of resistance to non-western immigration and there is a strong tendency towards enforcing control measures and the establishment of strict selection criteria. In relation to integration, governments are resorting to short-term legislation interventions in an attempt to achieve results. Integration becomes a democratic urgency and rapid solutions are given for processes that need long-term perspectives. As shown in the case of Latin Americans, the efficiency of these policies is limited and migrants are more influenced by their informal social and civic networks and trajectories than by the formal policies designed to integrate them. In the context of the global city, these migrant intercultural trajectories have created alternative forms to experience citizenship and a genuine city identity without a direct connection to the national identity promoted by formal integration policies. The resurgence of the concepts of citizenship and national identity as a strategy for integration and social cohesion, and the urgency that characterised integration policies for processes that requires long-term views are leading to the inefficiency if not, the failure of these legislative efforts.

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Migrant negotiations/negotiating migration: a gendered variation on the new economics of labour migration

Anju Paul
Yale-NUS College, Singapore, Singapore
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (C): Social actors – Families (continued) 1330-1500

The new economics of labour migration theory has been frequently criticized for ignoring the gendered social norms and inequitable intra-household power distribution that make it difficult for prospective independent female labour migrants to leave their homes to work overseas. And yet increasing numbers of independent women labour migrants leave countries in the Global South every year. Interviews with 142 Filipina migrant domestic workers located in Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Canada, and the United States, reveal that prospective female migrants initially develop an individual-level aspiration to migrate and then have to negotiate with family members to secure these relatives' support for their migration decision. They win their family's approval by agentically manipulating gendered scripts in Philippine society. A multilevel model of the migration decision-making process that distinguishes between migration aspirations and migration negotiations is proposed to incorporate these findings.

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Return migration and the development of migration systems: the end of a cycle or a new beginning?

Sonia Pereira1, Sueli Siqueira2
1IGOT-University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal, 2UNIVALE, Governador Valadares, Brazil
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session III (A): Migration systems – Return 1530-1700

The development of migration systems is sustained by ‘flows and counter flows of people' (Mabogunje 1970) as well as flows of information, goods and remittances. Nevertheless, migration studies have been more concerned with the ‘flows of people' than with the reverse flows, made up of returned migrants. Fazito (2005) highlights the important role of return migration for the constitution of migration systems both at the level of the discourse and of the actual practices of return. According to this author migration flows of return are fundamental for the consolidation of migration systems.

This paper seeks to explore the role of return migration in shaping migration systems by drawing on the experiences of Brazilian returned migrants. Research done on return to Brazil (Pereira and Siqueira 2012) already pointed to the fact that return does not necessarily correspond to the ‘end of a cycle' leading to a stable reestablishment in the country of origin but can actually lead to ‘new beginnings' both through re-emigration and through the intermediation of new migration flows of friends and family. Particularly in the case of Brazil, return has often taken place after short to medium term stays abroad and while the migrants are still of working age. By drawing on qualitative data obtained through interviews with returned migrants in Brazil and quantitative data obtained through a survey in Brazil (both for research project THEMIS) we will seek to explore more in-depth the dynamics of return and to discuss the ways in which the development of migration systems also depends on these counter flows of people.

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Agency and migrants in the labour market: social actors or submissive players?

Sonia Pereira
IGOT, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (A): Social actors – Class 1100-1230

Migrant workers tend to cluster in particular industries, occupations and geographical areas (Castles 2000: 33, Waldinger 1996, Anderson and Rhus 2010). These concentrations have been considered to be more dependent on structural factors related to the demand of workers in destination countries and on the spatial organization of their (capitalist) productive structures than on migrants' agency (Castles 2000, Piore 1979). Nevertheless, some authors have looked at the role of meso-level factors in shaping the access to and position of migrant workers in the labour market such as employment and recruitment agencies, employers (Peck 1996, Krissman 2005) and migrants' social networks (Waldinger 1996: 27, Sanders et al. 2002: 306). These agents have been considered instrumental to ensure that successive waves of migrants continue to have access to specific occupations and industries, following the entry of the pioneers (Pereira 2010, Elrick and Lewandowska 2008), leading to the constitution of the above-mentioned clusters. Other authors have also put forward arguments pointing to the agency of workers (migrants and others) in shaping their own spaces and time as well as their working lives (Herod 2001, Rogaly 2009, Coe and Jordhus-Lier 2011).

In this article I will discuss the role of migrants as social actors in the labour market in terms of how they are able to influence their working lives and the impact of that for subsequent migrants. I will look at questions as: have entry occupations for migrants been similar throughout the years or have they changed with time of arrival? How is this related to shifts made by migrants to other occupations or to changes in the demand side? I use quantitative data collected for THEMIS in destination countries (Portugal, United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Norway) to engage in this discussion complemented with qualitative data collected through interviews in the same countries.

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Violence, surveillance and agency experiences of the women refugees in the Italian reception camps

Barbara Pinelli
University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (C): Social actors – Conflict and constraint 1100-1230

This paper focuses on the relation between agency and the process of becoming refugees. In the last four years, I have carried out an ethnographic research in southern Italy refugee camps organized by the Italian government for the detention and control of undocumented migrants, in order to document the violence experiences of women asylum seekers who have reached Italy after spending a period of time in Libya, and crossing the Mediterranean Sea. These women have endured terrible abuses in their trajectory toward Europe; once inside the camps, they are subject to forms of moral and institutional violence, surveillance mechanisms, that shape their subjectivities as women and refugees. In particular, they are exposed to the disciplinary regimes of the camps and the imaginary of assistance culture that perceive them only as victims, female subjects to be emancipated and devoid of any agency. In this paper, I will show how refugee women are not mere bodies to be educated, controlled or emancipated: I will describe the weight of the memory of violence and of the power abuses experienced in the arrival context, paying attention on how women refugees have coped with these burdens, how they read the power networks they were involved in or the gap between refugees' self-perceptions and imaginary produced by the system of protection. I will refer to the issue of subjectivity (as multi-positioned and an ongoing process) as an important key for exploring both signs suffering, and the dimensions of agency, desire (to reconstruct a new life) and hope for the future, and the practices performed by women asylum seekers to reconstruct their existences after the flight. My intention is to show how the recognition of agency has an important political valence when ethnographic research involves subjectivities affected by violence and living in extremely marginal conditions.

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Accounting for diversity in Polish migration in Europe: motivation and early integration

Renee Luthra2, Justyna Salamonska3, Lucinda Platt1
1Institute of Education, London, UK, 2University of Essex, Colchester, UK, 3University G. D’Annunzio of Chieti, Pescara, Italy
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session VI (B): Migration systems – Diversity of outcomes 1530-1700

Research on the decision to migrate overwhelmingly draws from neo-classical and revised economic models of international flows, in which individuals and their families choose migration strategies to maximize and diversify their incomes (Borjas, 1989) and reduce their exposure to financial risks (Taylor, 1999, Stark and Bloom, 1985). Yet these models do little to explain the large amount of remaining variation in the type and size of migration flows across receiving countries after the costs and benefits of migration are accounted for. We also know relatively little about how non-economic determinants of migration impact the integration process of new immigrants in the destination country. This paper examines cross-national variation in the non-economic motivations and early integration of Polish immigrants to four Western Europe destinations: the UK, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands. We rely on a unique new data set that contains standardized measures of pre-migration and post-migration characteristics among recent Polish migrants in all four countries, enhancing comparability and sample size and reducing return-migration selection bias. Focusing only on Poles allows us to control for many economic confounders in the relationship between non-economic migration determinants and social and economic integration, because the legal and financial costs of migration from Poland to Western Europe, as well as the potential wage returns, are fairly uniform across destination countries. Despite this seeming interchange-ability, we show considerable variation in the size and socioeconomic characteristics of Polish migration flows to these four countries. We link this variation to differences in the migration motives, pre-migration social networks, and settlement intentions. Furthermore, we show that these non-economic variables exert a significant impact on early socioeconomic integration in the destination countries, influencing the likelihood of unemployment as well as occupational status and subjective life satisfaction of Polish immigrants within the first 18 months after arrival.

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‘Now smells like revolution': migrants' activism, subjectivities, and agency in contemporary London

Gabriela Quevedo
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (E): Social actors – Political contexts of action 1330-1500

Over the last sixty years London has transformed itself into a service based city where global economic forces have developed an expanding low-paid economy that relies heavily on migrant labour (Sassen, 1991; quoted in Evans et al., 2005). These historic and social processes have been the fertile ground of new forms of political, social and cultural mobilisation often led by migrants. It is within this setting that my doctoral research seeks to illuminate empirically the links between migrant's activism -as it comes into being- and the question of agency and social change.

Using ethnographic data from my engagement with the 3cosas campaign at the University of London, I argue that the epistemological premises of feminism, and in particular the notions of subjectivity and reflexivity can be instrumental to develop a deeper understanding of how migrants in London have become authentic pioneers in the resurgence of radicalised and somewhat unconventional forms of union activism (Seidman, 2011). I take a ‘carnal' approach to ethnography (Wacquant, 2005) that is grounded in my personal engagement as an activist in the left wing London scene for more than three years. Departing from Bourdieu's concept of ‘habitus' as methodological focus (Bourdieu, 1990), together with Touraine's theory of ‘the subject' (Touraine, 1995), this paper hopes to provide some insights into the question of how activism ‘occurs', and the entangled articulations between the migrants' sense of self in relation to their current positions (material and symbolic), and the marks of their unique histories. This approach moves on from mono-causal understandings of collective action and seeks to expand the traditional remit of current anthropological research by adopting a dialogic, bottom up methodology to explain migrants' mobilisation (Pèro and Solomos, 2010).

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Migration feedback effects in networks: an agent-based model

Miriam Rehm1, Asjad Naqvi2
1Chamber of Labour, Vienna, Austria, 2Center for Economic Research in Pakistan, Lahore, Pakistan
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (A): Social actors – Aspirations 1330-1500

This paper develops a computational network model of migration. The importance of ties between family members and friends in migration has been long recognised by other social sciences and is increasingly confirmed by econometric studies. The paper presents a micro simulation of an economy in which the heterogeneous population moves between three locations, a rural and urban location of origin, and the destination. The key elements in (return) migration decisions are network feedback effects and income opportunities. The simulations generate stable patterns and detailed information on distributions, which reproduce available data for the geographical population distribution, wealth, and remittances. The model generates the clustering of migrants both at the origin and at the destination that is one of the most pervasive and resilient stylized facts of migration research.

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Transformative stages of migrant identity: a diachronic and synchronic study of the first-generation Romanian migrants in the UK

Oana Romocea
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session VI (C): Social actors – Settlement 1530-1700

Part of my doctoral research, the present paper aims to explore how migrant identity transforms over time in response to political and social changes. For the purpose of this study, I conducted in-depth interviews with first-generation Romanian migrants settled in the UK over the last half a century. Using the timing and reason of their relocation, I identified three sub-groups: pre-1989 political refugees, post-1989 knowledge diaspora and post-1989 labour migrants. The study is both a diachronic and synchronic analysis which follows the identity transformation, dynamism and re-adaptation of the Romanian migrant community.

I argue that political and social changes have led to major identity shifts within the migrant community at both individual and collective level. If before the 1989 revolution, the Romanians settled in the UK had formed an active diaspora, during the 1990s, they lost this status and became known as an immigrant community motivated by aims of personal development. However, we have been witnessing a new transformative stage since 2007 when Romania joined the European Union. The Romanians settled in the UK have again started displaying traits specific to an incipient diaspora.

The study takes into account patterns of migrant integration in the context of everyday experiences in order to understand how Romanians in Britain have, over time, delineated their relationship both to their homeland and the host society across the transnational space of Europe. This interrelation is a dominant element of the diasporic imagination of what it means to be Romanian, given the migration experience. Based on this analysis, my study will reveal how the Romanian migrants responded to political and cultural changes, addressed identity crisis, adapted to new contexts and reinvented themselves. All these processes are reflected in the transformation of their migrant identity.

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'Do as I say, not as I do?': analysing the potential effects of immigrants' representations of the crisis on migration systems. Insights from a peripheral southern European country

Dora Sampaio, Rui Carvalho
Centre for Geographical Studies (University of Lisbon), Lisbon, Portugal
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (B): Feedback – Socio-economic conditions 1330-1500

The current context of economic crisis is producing multiple challenges, particularly evident in European economies and societies. This has and will continue to influence the reshaping of international migration streams in Europe, both at the countries of origin and destination. These changes can be felt more vividly in those migratory destinations facing major financial constraints and higher unemployment rates, as is the case with most southern European countries, among which Portugal is included. Bearing this in mind, this paper examines how the representations of the crisis may contribute to (re)define the migration pathways of international migrants in Portugal and how they influence the evolution and dynamics of the country's positioning in the European migration systems. Resorting to data from the THEMIS project, a comparative analysis of three immigrant groups (Brazilians, Moroccans and Ukrainians) - drawn mostly from qualitative information obtained from interviews seconded with quantitative data from key questions of a questionnaire - is proposed. The focus will lay on both individual and contextual variables, aiming to verify if analytical dimensions such as the country of origin, the stage of maturation of the migrant system, or individual socio-demographic variables (e.g. gender, age, educational level, socioeconomic status), assume an important role in shaping these immigrants' representations of the crisis, their stated intentions towards future migration movements and also the feedback they transmit to co-nationals in their countries of origin. Preliminary results suggest that the intensity and contours of the immigrants' social and spatial discourses and representations of the crisis appear to differ between immigrant groups. Moreover, these visions do not tend to translate directly into intentions to redefine individual and family migration trajectories nor even into the advice given to co-nationals in their countries of origin, being instead influenced, although to a different extent, by the analytical dimensions previously considered.

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Similar but not equal: the differing evolution of (gendered) migration systems in Moldova and Georgia

Melissa Siegel1,2, Michaella Vanore1,2
1Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands, 2United Nations University-MERIT, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session I (A): Migration systems – Evolution and decline 1100-1230

This paper comparatively examines the evolution of migration systems in Moldova and Georgia, focusing on the changing gender patterns of migration and the different paths each country has taken regarding female migration. While large-scale migration from both countries can be traced to the end of the Soviet period, important differences in the post-Soviet social, political, and economic transitions experienced by each country have resulted in unique migration patterns. In reviewing the beginnings, development, and sustained importance of migration systems in Moldova and Georgia, this paper documents how changing economic needs and opportunities coupled with evolving political relationships with neighbouring countries have moulded gendered migration processes in each country. Using household survey data collected from 2011-2013 in Moldova and Georgia, this paper finds that political and economic relationships with Russia and the EU are critical determinants of gendered migration patterns in both Moldova and Georgia. Recent shifts in migration patterns reflect changes to the quality and substance of these relationships over time: while migration of low- and medium-skilled male workers has continued relatively unabated from Moldova to Russia, the antagonistic political relationship between Georgia and Russia has stymied the flow of male labour migrants from Georgia to the countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Such evolving dynamics are important to understand for both Moldova and Georgia, which have experienced the loss of 25 per cent of their populations to migration over the past two decades.

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Beyond migrant lives: the rise and fall of meso-level actors

Joana Sousa Ribeiro
CES, Center for Social Studies, Coimbra, Portugal
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session VI (B): Migration systems – Diversity of outcomes 1530-1700

This paper examines the migration from East European countries to Portugal as a particular pattern of the named `southern European model´ (Baldin-Edwards, 1999; King, 2000). It discusses this sub-system through the analysis of the emergence, development and decline of migratory dynamics. Biographic interviews to physicians and nurses coming from Russia Federation, Moldova and Ukraine to Portugal are explored in order to sustain the debate. These non-EU citizens arrived in Portugal without their credentials recognised before they left their country of origin; as a consequence, they do not benefit from any professional, organizational, or supra-national framework. The analysis of the East European doctors and nurses’ pioneer paths into the Portuguese Health Service underlines the importance of multi-level actors: either as service providers (e.g. of language courses, of training programs), as bridge-builders of social capital, as mentors for newcomers or as gatekeepers. The biographic approach of this study allows perceiving the role of the initial movers on the sustainability of the flows. Moreover, it contributes to emphasize the range of mechanisms that is on inter-play over time, namely, the ones resulted from the interactions with state institutions, employers, educational establishments, professional associations, NGO´s, Foundations, migrants fellows. This paper argues for the need to overcome the structure/agency divide on the (re)valuation of the migratory dynamics.

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From bridgeheads to gate closers: how migrant networks contribute to declining migration from Morocco to the Netherlands

Erik Snel, Marije Faber, Godfried Engbersen
Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session VI (A): Feedback – Networks 1530-1700

Migration research offers abundant research and theories to describe and explain why migration flows, once started, appear to have an inherent tendency to grow, but offers few insights why migration may also decline (De Haas 2010). This paper focuses on an example of declining migration: migration from Morocco to the Netherlands. Although the Netherlands houses a large Moroccan immigrant community (established by former guest workers who arrived since the mid-1960s and their offspring) immigration from Morocco to the Netherlands is steadily diminishing since the mid-1990s. One possible explanation of this decline in migration is the diminishing support of settled Dutch-Moroccan migrants in the Netherlands to potential newcomers.

We try to explain these declining support intentions of Dutch-Moroccans in terms of their perception of the three ‘contexts of reception' of Portes: governmental policies, labour market changes and societal reception. Data from 420 Moroccan-born respondents living in and around the city of Rotterdam (the Netherlands) show that the majority of them, although most of them received assistance from others during their own migration, do not intent to support potential newcomers from Morocco. These declining intentions are partly explained by their perception of a stricter migration policy in the Netherlands and the more hostile societal reception of Moroccans in the Dutch public opinion. These figures clearly show that settled Dutch-Moroccans are not only selective ‘gatekeepers' anymore but in fact have inclined to be ‘gate closers'.

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Developing migration systems in Europe and Asia

Hideki Tarumoto1,2
1Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, 2Sciences Po, Paris, France
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session I (A): Migration systems – Evolution and decline 1100-1230

As globalisation is accelerated in twenty-first century, surely migration systems have been emergent and developed in the globe. But, it is still ambiguous what differences migration systems hold and through what mechanism they appear. Among various factors and actors, we cannot ignore the role of the state. In one aspect, the state seems to be an inhibitor against emergence of migration systems. Not only Western countries but also non-Western countries are struggling to handle massive international migration and to reconcile social issues appearing from it. But in the other aspect, the state takes a role of facilitator for migration systems. It tends to select migrants who can enter and/or stay in the society. What differences of migration systems does the state create? What mechanism does it produce, with relating to the other state, social groups, migrants and the society? To these questions, this paper will take two approaches. Firstly, we should examine not only Western countries but also non-Western countries. With comparison to Western world, much less research has explored situations of migration in non-Western world. Asia is not an exception, although it has been remarkably shifting to multicultural societies. So, we will undertake comparative study of Europe and East Asia, such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, to examine differences and factors of migration systems. Secondly, some theoretical perspective is needed to examine the questions. One theoretical key concept is citizenship. To create or limit migration systems, the state utilises citizenship of migrants composed of status, rights and duties, and identity. Then, with reference to a theoretical model called the Hammar=Koido=Tarumoto model (the HKT model), we will approach mechanisms of development of migration systems. This exploration will lead us to comprehensive understanding emergence and development of migration systems which has been evolving all over the world.

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The relevance of ‘feedback mechanisms' in migration impacted regions in relation with changing macro socio-economic contexts: a case study on Moroccan and Turkish emigration regions

Christiane Timmerman1, Kenneth Hemmerechts2,1, Helene de clerck1, Roos Willems1
1University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium, 2free university of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (B): Feedback – Socio-economic conditions 1330-1500

People form migration related perceptions – especially in regions with a long emigration tradition where migration has reached a certain momentum - from a range of specific local, national and international sources (Timmerman et. al 2010, De Haas 2010, Portes 2010). However, these regional migration impacted cultures are situated in changing socio-economic macro contexts that also influence people's perceptions of opportunities that migration may generate. Europe is going through an economic crisis while some ‘source countries' are witnessing considerable economic growth; as for example Turkey. This does not apply for Morocco, another important ‘source country' for Europe. In this contribution we focus on the relation between (1) the significance of feedback mechanisms of international migration and (2) changing macro socio-economic contexts. Data are collected using a survey with a representative sample (2000 respondents) and in-depth interviews (80) in two seemingly similar regions in Turkey (Emirdag, Dinar) as well as in Morocco (Todra Valley, Central Plateau) which, however, have different emigration experiences: Emirdag, Todra Valley being high migration impacted regions, while Dinar, Central Plateau are not (FP7 EUMAGINE Project).

Using multiple regression analyses and qualitative cross-country analyses we found that people in the Turkish migration impacted region (Emirdag) who belong to transnational family networks are less eager to migrate and that the European crisis is considered an important issue compared to similar people in the low emigration area (Dinar). In Morocco, however, people in the migration impacted region (Todra Valley) still have higher migration aspirations regardless of transnational family networks than in the low emigration area (Central Plateau). Thus, feedback mechanisms (presence of transnational family networks) matter for explaining migration dynamics. Moreover, with changing larger socio-economic contexts – European economic crisis versus Turkish economic growth – the impact of negative feedback of transnational family networks on migration aspirations is likely to increase.

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Remaining subjects despite structural constraints: migratory strategies among refugees hosted in Italy after their expulsion from Libya

Gabriele Tomei
University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (C): Social actors – Conflict and constraint 1100-1230

During the 2011 Lybian crisis, Gheddafi decided to expel many African and Asiatic workers, forcing them to illegally migrate to Italy as a reaction to the government support of the international military intervention against his regime. As a consequence of that mass expulsion, and under the menace of the regime army, more than 30.0000 refugee arrived in Italy where they all have been requested to seek for refugee status and, consequently, they have been hosted for months into special centres, waiting for the conclusion of the application process under administrative limitations of their freedom and of their mobility in space and time. Despite the strong pressure of these constraining new conditions, some refugees reacted in order to give chances to their own migratory projects, using administrative dispositive as opportunities: someone used government programme to return home; others became illegal and escaped to other European countries; others decided to remain in Italy, using the welfare system to integrate in the host society.

There seems to be three main strategies against the structural constraints: (1) improving their social capital, through informal networking among people of the same nationality and fraternizing with centres' personnel and local population; (2) defending their basic rights, mobilizing collective protests against the inactivity or the abuses of the Italian bureaucracy; (3) sustaining their livelihood, mapping the territory looking for some working opportunities. According with the theoretical approaches that unveil the autonomous structuring power of subjectivity against the strength of the context structural conditions, with a special focus on the role of social networks and of their cultural and symbolical dimensions in orienting migrant's habits and trajectories, the hypothesis above mentioned will be tackled using a set of qualitative data from first hand interviews with refugees and centre's personnel, collected in Italy between April 2012 and February 2013.

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Female migration and intergenerational relationships: the use of ICTs by Brazilian migrant women in the United Kingdom

Tania Tonhati1,2
1Goldsmiths College, London, UK, 2Geb- Brazilian Migration to the UK Research Group, London, UK
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session I (B): Feedback – Social media 1100-1230

This presentation aims to reflect on how the use of ICTs has reshaped the experience of Brazilian pioneer women in the United Kingdom and their relationship with their parents in Brazil. The literature on Brazilian migration argues that the second wave, initiated in the mid-90s onwards, was the period when women began to leave the country in search for employment, study and career improvement (Assis 2007, Padilla 2007). This paper argues that in the case of the United Kingdom, the migration of Brazilian women had also begun in the 1980s. Thus, Brazilian women moving to the UK should not be seen as followers of male migrants. They were active in the construction of the network effect. Therefore, I present that Brazilian female migration should be seen as a wide phenomenon in which women no longer stay at home and men are no longer the main breadwinner.

There is an increase in individualization and women are searching for ‘a life of their own’ in which elements such as education and employment have strongly become part of women's biography (Beck-Gernsheim 2002). Beyond these general social trends, female migration has a consequence for traditional family practices such as care for elderly parents. Therefore, Brazilian pioneer women are now facing intergenerational expectation to care for their elderly parents. In this context, ICTs play a role in reconciling women's search for a ‘life of their own’ and their intergenerational obligation. Throughout my fieldwork I have observed that the use of ICTs has allowed the continuation of family relationships and the creation of everyday family practices even at a distance. Nevertheless, they have also affected emotional feelings with regards to family relationships. Thus, the use of ICTs cannot be only analysed as minimising the effects of migration. Their use also creates ambiguous feelings in the migrant about their migration trajectory.

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What migration means: recognising the diversity of practices embedded in cultures of migration

Guri Tyldum1,2
1Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies, Oslo, Norway, 2Institute of Sociology and Human Geography, Universtity of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (D): Feedback – Labour migration 1330-1500

Building on Douglas Massey's concept of a culture of migration, this article shows how ideas of when and how migration can be appropriate will vary, just like ideas of proper behaviour will differ between regions, at different stages of life and according to, for instance, gender, responsibilities and class. Consequently, migration is rarely perceived to be either good or bad. Instead it is understood as a potential response in particular situations for particular groups. The article shows how approaching migration studies with an awareness of the variation in meanings attached to migration, makes us better equipped to understand why some migrate and others do not. The approach is illustrated through a case study of migration from Western Ukraine.

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Revisiting migration and class

Nick Van Hear
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (A): Social actors – Class 1100-1230

Forms of social difference, affinity or allegiance such as ethnicity, gender, generation and lately religion have recently eclipsed what used to be a mainstay of social science - socio-economic differentiation or class. This is the case in migration studies as much as in other fields. This paper puts the case for a rehabilitation of class in the study of migration. It revisits the argument that the form of migration and ultimately the outcomes for the migrant are shaped by the resources a would-be migrant can muster - whether monetary or network based. Those resources are largely determined by socio-economic background or class, which, drawing on Bourdieu, can be conceived in terms of the disposal of different amounts and forms of capital (economic, social, symbolic etc.). Possession of such capital, and the ability to convert it, shape the routes would-be migrants can take, the destinations they can reach, and their life chances afterwards. This argument will be illustrated by reference to conflict settings where members of households with different endowments of capital can access different forms of migration. For example, asylum-seeking to affluent countries has for the last two decades or more required substantial outlays to agents and smugglers for all but a few. It follows that it tends to be the better endowed in terms of economic or social capital that can pursue this route. Less well-endowed households may pursue labour migration as an option since this does not require such large outlays. Other routes such as migration for study or marriage also entail various levels of outlay that households may or may not be able to meet. The paper will explore the degree to which this argument holds up in the light of migration experience in conflict settings.

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Guyanese migration since independence: migration policies, migrant networks, and postcolonial ties

Simona Vezzoli
International Migration Institute, Oxford, UK
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session III (B): Feedback – Intersections with policy 1530-1700

Historical migration patterns in the Caribbean saw a transformation in the 1960s-70s as many former colonies gained independence and new migration policies were introduced at origin and destination. If some policies potentially may have reduced migration opportunities towards former colonial states, migrant networks and post-colonial ties established before independence may have acted as migration-facilitating factors to sustain migration. Without overlooking important contextual factors at origin and destination, we could hypothesise that border controls and migration policies, migrant networks, and postcolonial ties should explain in part the variations in migration patterns following independence.

To explore this hypothesis, I use data from an in-depth case study of Guyana. From 1960-2000 the overall emigrant stock grew from 6 to 48 per cent of the total population, whereas the emigrant stock in the UK fell from over 37 to less than 1 per cent during the same period. Immigration policies, negative economic performance and growing racial tensions in the UK have been provided as explanations of such drop. At the same time, less restrictive immigration policies in North America may explain the development of new destinations. But why such a severe drop, unlike other British Caribbean countries? This case suggests that the beneficial connectivity provided by migrant networks and post-colonial ties may in fact have been left ‘unused' as the objectives of migrants evolved and their interest towards the old migration destination declined.

This paper considers migration not uniquely as the result of structural forces, but as dynamic responses of individuals to the diverse opportunities created by contextual national and international structures. In so doing, this paper aims to improve our understanding of migration processes and dynamics, the relevance of migration policies, migrant networks and postcolonial ties, and also provide some evidence surrounding the decline of migrant networks.

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American migrants in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom: diversity of migration motivations and patterns

Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels
University of Kent at Brussels, Brussels, Belgium
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (D): Feedback – Labour migration 1330-1500

Migration between two countries, or localities within those countries, is usually examined only uni-directionally (although return migration may, often in a context of transnationalism, be taken into account). Examining the less-studied half of such a migration dyad can help us to understand more clearly the ways in which migration feedback processes function. This paper considers the case of Americans in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, three key receiving countries for American migrants (estimated at 2.2 to 6.8 million worldwide), and will examine the role of networks and interactions, broadly defined, which have played a role in leading these Americans to migrate. To do so, it will draw on 115 semi-structured in-depth interviews carried out in London, Paris and Berlin in 2011, as well as upon 450 survey responses from France, Germany and the UK.

These data will be analysed with respect to factors leading to migration, exploring what role a range of interactions and networks have played in migration. These include professional, educational, state-organized and a wide variety of personal networks (including nationals of France, Germany and the UK) - a far broader range than is usually considered. The dualism of temporary versus permanent migration will also be questioned; the paper will suggest that a continuum is more helpful in understanding the nature of migration, and will be drawn upon. This recognition, in turn, has an impact upon the ways in which personal and institutional resources are drawn upon by migrants. The paper will examine which factors, including networks and/or social interactions, are most significant in each country, whether there are key differences between receiving countries, including historically, and in how far these contribute to strengthening the bi-directionality of these migration systems. The paper will thus contribute to our understanding of migration feedback processes and development of migration systems.

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Mixed return migration: the case of the Finnish and Swedish migration system

Östen Wahlbeck
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session III (A): Migration systems – Return 1530-1700

The focus of this paper is on the long-term development of migration systems. The paper argues that return migration patterns develop over time and in later stages they might include an increasing number of people of non-migrant origin. The argument is based on a study of the development of the migration system involving Finland and Sweden. The two countries provide a good case for studying the long-term development of migration patterns, since there has been a full freedom of movement and the migration patterns are well documented. The paper argues that the post-war labour migration from Finland to Sweden created a transnational social space (Faist 2000) that still today facilitates migration between the two countries. Although Finnish citizens dominate the migration flows in both directions, the number of Swedish migrants has steadily increased. Especially, we find an increasing number of Swedish males moving from Sweden to Finland. Interviews with Swedish immigrants in Finland indicate that this new pattern can be explained by the development of the transnational social space involving an increasing number of mixed families. The paper argues that the return migrant population becomes increasingly diverse with the passing of time and in later stages the migration system is characterised by a ‘mixed return migration’ rather than by a simple return migration of people of migrant origin.

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The ‘Neogramscian approach’: using 'Critical Theories' to explain migration systems

Robert Westermann
BQN Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (E): Social actors – Political contexts of action 1330-1500

Until now World System approaches, also known as Critical Theories, are mainly applied in International Relation research. In the following I will illustrate on one example, the Neogramscian approach of Robert Cox, how global correlations of social forces, forms of state and global orders profoundly affect International Migration processes and should be considered by theoretical debates in Migration Studies. Furthermore, I will show how the specific perspective of social transformation in combination with the awareness of local rescaling processes can be a promising extension for the research of Migration Systems.

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Changing migration opportunity structures of Roma and their hosting societies: the case of Belgium

Johan Wets, Heleen Touquet
KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session IV (B): Migration systems – Role of policies 1100-1230

The overthrowing of the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe lead to different societies, with more freedom on the one hand, but disappearing social safety nets, economic disruption and often booming unemployment, especially amongst ethno-cultural minorities like the Roma. As a result of the accession of Eastern European countries, some communities saw their ‘migration opportunity structures’ change dramatically. This has led to increasing numbers of Eastern European migrants with a Roma background in other European countries. Roma populations are on a policy level often approached as one homogenous group. The Roma themselves are however an extremely heterogeneous group having different nationalities, speaking different languages, adhering to different religions, having different visions and experiences on the labour market an defining themselves in different ways as Roma, Sinti, Kalderash, etc. There live in the different European countries, some are EU citizens and some not. Some rely heavily on social security benefits and others work and provide for their own sustenance. But there are many common characteristics: they have been (often suppressed) minorities for centuries, they have extended networks spread over different countries and they have specific forms of organization. The question that can be raised is what exactly makes them Roma? Is it the fact that they are very often poor, is it a ‘culture of poverty’ or is it a ‘Roma culture’? Is the migration of these ethno-cultural minorities to (other) EU countries a ‘Roma migration’ or a migration of Roma individuals? The paper proposed will address this issue and look at the dynamic of new Roma migration, on the ‘push and pull’ factors (reaction of host societies), at opportunity structures and networks. The data used in this paper results from an analysis of international research on the one hand and of a research project executed in Belgium in 2012.

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Migrant networks and the migration process: considering the spatial and temporal dimensions of social capital

Alexandra Winkels
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (D): Migration systems – Capital and business 1330-1500

This paper investigates the different functions of migrant networks at different stages of the migration process. Migration processes are conceptually divided into three stages (a) decision making; (b) transition; and (c) adaptation. Looking at migration as a spatial as well as a temporal process allows us to consider the role of social capital in managing the risks and opportunities of mobility, and to gain a deeper understanding of migrant agency. Based on a case study of internal migration in Vietnam the research shows that migrants are highly reliant on their family and friends to access resources and information to reduce the challenges associated with moving, settling and both accessing and maintaining income opportunities at the destination. This is particularly pertinent in the context of Vietnam, where household registration and poverty combine to exclude many migrants from accessing opportunities at their chosen destination. I argue that it is important to view the role of social capital over time, and in parallel with economic and political changes, as relationships also change over time and space so that the resources accessible through these social contacts do not always remain constant throughout the migration process.

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Mobilizing resources in transit: configurations of transnational social networks of African migrants in Turkey and Greece

Marieke Wissink, Valentina Mazzucato
Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session VI (A): Feedback – Networks 1530-1700

This paper critically analyses the nature of transnational social networks (TSN) and the value they have for mobilizing resources for irregular migrants. TSN are commonly considered to constitute a major source of social and economic capital to migrants, and a wealth of literature shows how the transnational circulation of resources, or the absence thereof, impacts on the opportunities for migrants to realise migration objectives, particularly so for irregular migrants with poor access to (non) governmental support. Less is known about the actual configurations of TSN that migrants are engaged in. By using both ethnographic and social network data collected among irregular African migrants residing in the transit contexts of Turkey and Greece, the paper investigates the diversity of transnational network configurations, how these were formed, and how this diversity relates to different ways in which migrants mobilise resources in order to facilitate processes of migration in transit. The paper ultimately argues that understanding and distinguishing between network configurations is crucial to gain a profound understanding of different ways in which resources circulate in migrants' TSN and accordingly affect migration processes.

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Respondent-driven sampling as a recruitment method

Rojan Ezzati, Jennifer Wu
PRIO, Oslo, Norway
Day 2. Wednesday 25 September 2013: Parallel session II (A): Social actors – Aspirations 1330-1500

Respondent-Driven Sampling (RDS) is a peer-to-peer sampling method similar to snowball sampling, but with a mathematical model that weights the sample to compensate for biases in such recruitment. In this paper we focus on the recruitment side of the method, describing how we used RDS in our data collection among Brazilian and Ukrainian migrants residing in Oslo, Norway. The peer-to-peer recruitment approach of RDS helped us succeed in reaching our target sample size in the Ukrainian case, but not the Brazilian. In this paper we explore possible reasons for this. First, our two cases demonstrate that the target population size is not determinative of the failure or success of RDS, as the Brazilian and Ukrainian populations in Norway are roughly the same size. Nor does it appear that the social network size of the initial individuals selected to get recruitment started played a role. In our data collection, we detected considerable concerns regarding stereotypes within the Brazilian community. Hence we question whether alternative incentives to the monetary ones we offered for participation and recruitment (as part of the RDS procedure), would have provided us with better results. Furthermore, we find that our questionnaire-based interviews were longer with Brazilians than with the Ukrainians. Given that RDS relies so heavily on the recruiters' accounts of their experiences to potential recruits, it is highly vulnerable to any negative experiences. Finally, how different populations respond to RDS design varies from one case to another. In the Brazilian case, we found that the need for respondents to recruit others following the required RDS procedures was perceived as a burden, which impeded further recruitment.

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Migration networks in action: case of Daba Tianeti

Tamar Zurabishvili1, Tinatin Zurabishvili2
1Center for Social Sciences, Tbilisi, Georgia, 2Caucasus Research Resource Center, Tbilisi, Georgia
Day 3. Thursday 26 September: Parallel session V (C): Social actors – Networks 1330-1500

International labour migration started from most of the former Soviet republics only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and Georgia is no exception. Since then, however, migration flows and the character of migration from Georgia changed drastically from being overwhelmingly directed towards Russia and consisting of male migrants, to redirecting itself towards the EU and Northern America and becoming feminized. Present paper analysis how migration networks develop and work based on the analysis of two waves of fieldwork, conducted in a small migrant sending community in Georgia, Daba Tianeti. First fieldwork was conducted in Daba Tianeti in 2006 and employed a mixed method approach, consisting of the survey of all Daba Tianeti Households (1062 cases) and 23 in-depth interviews with return migrants, family members of current migrants, and potential migrants. In 2008, a survey of all Daba Tianeti households was conducted (957 cases) together with a survey of Daba Tianeti migrants in Athens (52 cases), Greece.

By 2008, every third household in Daba Tianeti had at least one migrant abroad, mainly in Western Europe, Israel, and the US, and about half of the migrant stock from the community emigrated with the help of a close relative or a friend. Present paper argues that despite the relatively short period of inclusion in the migratory processes, migrants from Daba Tianeti have already developed migration networks that effectively connect them with both each other and members of Daba Tianeti community left behind. The paper draws on both qualitative and quantitative data to demonstrate how migration networks developed and to closely examine several cases when migration of one family member led to the migration of several other family members and/or friends from the community.

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