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This article examines social transformation and mobility dynamics in Caracara\u00ed, a rural frontier town in the State of Roraima, Brazil, from the 1950s to the 1990s. During this short period, we observe a rapid diversification of migration in Caracara\u00ed: from non-migratory mobility tied to the micro-scale extraction of local products to more-permanent settlement in town, rapid shifts in the direction of internal migration patterns and back to non-migratory mobility patterns again. Drawing from frontier migration studies and mobility transition theories, this paper adopts a social transformation perspective to explore the relation between social change and these mobility transitions. The changing role of the state, from a promoter of infrastructure to a provider of services and public employment, the restructuring of the local economic fabric and its reorientation towards more secondary and tertiary activities, and inhabitants\u2019 imaginaries of the development potential of Caracara\u00ed all explain the shift in migration processes. Investigating these processes, we observe that (i) the state promoted new opportunities, leading to a decline in traditional circular mobility, alongside the growth of temporal workers and spontaneous migrants; (ii) infrastructure advancements encouraged non-migratory mobility patterns between Caracara\u00ed and Boa Vista, the capital city of the State of Roraima; (iii) the provision of public employment intensified internal rural-urban and urban-rural migration patterns, from communities in the interior of the State of Roraima to Caracara\u00ed and vice versa, and (iv) development imaginaries \u2013 the perception of how Caracara\u00ed should and could be in the near future \u2013 prevented voluminous emigration, during periods of socio-economic slowdown. This research highlights the meaningful role of the state in altering livelihoods and migration decision-making processes. In particular, it shows how state expansion framed cultural imaginaries of the \u2018good life\u2019, favouring the desire to stay put in periods of high economic uncertainty, even when life aspirations were not being met by local opportunities.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper studies the evolution of internal and international migration in Italy over the mid-nineteenth to the late-twentieth centuries. Notwithstanding Italy\u2019s large international emigration flows, most Italian migration has been inter-regional, with rural-rural, rural-urban and urban-urban migration systems expanding in geographical scope and complexity over time. This paper analyses the interplay between internal and international migration, revealing four distinct patterns of (i) regions where internal migration always dominated and that turned into the destinations of internal migrants in the early-nineteenth century; (ii) regions that were initially characterised by strong international emigration before evolving into important destinations for internal migrants, (iii) regions that transitioned gradually from sources of to destinations for international and internal migrants and (iv) regions that largely remained sources of international and internal migration. Overall, these patterns reflect Italy\u2019s social transformation from a feudal system in agricultural production to a modern welfare state with an industrial economy, a transformation which affected regions in strikingly different ways. More specifically, these ways are linked to state (re)formation, urbanisation, the rise of agricultural and industrial capitalism and the peripherisation of the South. These profound transformative processes altered the social structure and people\u2019s livelihoods, engendering new opportunities in some regions and greater uncertainty in others. Rather than poverty, it was the combination of these transformative processes that encouraged many Italians to pursue migration. Because the social transformation unfolded unevenly across the Italian peninsula, it engendered inequalities and the (re)framing of central and more peripheral areas, which explains the different internal and international migration patterns.
\n \n\n \n \nMigration drivers are structural elements that have the potential to facilitate, enable, constrain, and trigger migration processes. Migration drivers might increase or decrease the salience of migration, the likelihood of certain migration routes, and the desirability of different destinations. Migration drivers affect migration directly but also, sometimes even more importantly, indirectly as part of a configured migration driver environment. In our assessment of the migration literature we broadly distinguish between nine migration driver dimensions (demographic, economic, environmental, human development, individual, politicoinstitutional, security, socio-cultural, and supranational) and 24 migration driving factors. The circumstances, ways and modes, but also the extent to which a set of driving factors may influence migration (decision-making) processes are dependent on the functionality of migration drivers, which is a central aspect in understanding the specific role single or combinations of migration drivers may play in migration. We propose to distinguish between predisposing, mediating, proximate, and triggering migration drivers, and beyond the degree of immediacy, drivers of migration can also be characterised by their temporality, elasticity, selectivity, and geography.
\n \n\n \n \nThis PDF provides you with quick access to all IMI working papers. Last updated version, March 2020.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper studies return aspirations and current return movements of Syrian refugees residing in Turkey and Lebanon to understand who aspires to return after the end of the war, and why and when refugees return with the conflict still ongoing. To do so, we embed future return aspirations into refugees\u2019 broader life aspirations and study how these interact with perceived opportunities (capabilities) in the home and host countries in shaping those aspirations to return. Drawing on 757 survey interviews we present, first, quantitative analyses of the factors underlying current return reflections and future return aspirations. They differ significantly across individuals, and more refugees residing in Lebanon consider to return currently and in the future. Second, we analyse information from 41 in-depth interviews and show how life aspirations (i) are a crucial element in shaping return aspirations and (ii) interact particularly with social, professional and political aspects in home and host countries in shaping return aspirations. The paper also highlights that while most refugees retain a profound belief in return, there is a strong mismatch between aspiring to return and realising it. While return after the war\u2019s end is driven by a wish to realise broader life goals, current return migration is driven by legal, medical and financial vulnerability, family obligations and discrimination in the host country.
\n \n\n \n \nThis article studies immobility aspirations \u2013 or aspirations to stay \u2013 among individuals with high migration propensities (aged 16 to 23) in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. Assuming that aspirations to stay are not simply the absence of migration aspirations, we explore which individual and household factors determine who aspires to stay and why, using unique survey data collected for the Young Lives project. We find that the majority of young people surveyed \u2013 between 61 percent (Ethiopia) and 82 percent (Vietnam) \u2013 aspire to stay in their home country. Between 32 percent (Ethiopia) and 57 percent (Vietnam) of young people aspired to stay at their current location, meaning they aspired to move neither internally nor internationally. Across country contexts, aspirations to stay were most often highest among the poorest. Further, the desire to stay decreases with higher levels of education, which suggests that widening access to formal schooling is an important driver of internal and international migration aspirations. Finally, respondents most often mentioned family-related reasons as the main motivation to stay in place. These findings contribute to a broader debate about the relationship between development and migration by challenging the linear relationship between poverty levels and migration aspirations that conventional migration theories implicitly or explicitly assume. Moreover, our findings on family reasons driving the aspiration to stay highlight the importance of non-economic factors in migration decision-making.
\n \n\n \n \nIn this paper, we investigate how state and non-state provides of return counselling try to influence aspirations for return among (rejected) asylum seekers. Existing literature has highlighted both the importance and malleability of migration aspirations in a wide range of migratory trajectories. Yet, it paid little attention to the situation of people who at some stage of their asylum procedure are confronted with the prospect of eventually having to return to their country of citizenship. This confrontation is institutionalised in the form of state or NGOled \u2018return counselling\u2019, which helps the returning state to uphold the fine line between forced and allegedly \u2018voluntary\u2019 returns. Building on Carling\u2019s aspirations/ability model and using qualitative data from Austria and the Netherlands, we identify three ways in which return counsellors try to obtain the departure of (rejected) asylum seekers. Firstly, by identifying existing aspirations among potential returnees who for personal reasons decided to return but lack the ability to do so. Secondly, by merely obtaining informed consent to return \u2018voluntarily\u2019 in the absence of aspirations to return. And thirdly, by actively inducing the wish to return with the aim of aligning migrants\u2019 own aspirations with the requirements of restrictive migration law. We argue that this distinction is important to better understand the critical role and everyday workings of \u2018migration aspirations management\u2019 (Carling and Collins 2018) within contemporary migration governance in Europe.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper reviews key trends in migration patterns within and from Ethiopia over the last century, with a particular focus on 1960 onwards when more national-level data is available. It shows that both gradual and dramatic shifts characterize Ethiopia\u2019s migration history. Regarding gradual shifts in the movement of populations within the country, Ethiopia shows a two-fold process of sedentarization of nomadic and semi-nomadic lifestyles alongside a slow but steady urbanization of internal migration trajectories. Alongside this, rising levels of international migration have diversified in terms of the composition and destinations of Ethiopian emigrants. Ethiopia\u2019s history also shows more punctuated and dramatic shifts in population movements over relatively short periods \u2013 a consequence of political conflict, famine, conscription, resettlement schemes, and/or development-induced displacement. At the same time that Ethiopians left their country in times of distress, Ethiopia was also an important destination for hundreds of thousands of refugees from neighboring countries in the Horn of Africa. This paper provides evidence for these trends, and considers how they relate to other processes of social change. In particular, it applies a social transformation framework to show how different dimensions of social change \u2013 the political, economic, cultural, technological and demographic \u2013 impacted population movements over time. We distinguish between \u2018deep\u2019 drivers of migration transitions (e.g. the expansion of formal education, infrastructure development and industrialization) and the (often) stateled policy interventions (and failures) that can suddenly affect the movements of large segments of the population (e.g. resettlement programs, development-induced displacement, political conflict, or famine). We ultimately argue that while migration driven by the latter can be addressed and mediated through policy-interventions, overarching migration transitions driven by the former are part and parcel of development strategies in the modern period, and are thus unlikely to be significantly affected by policies aimed at stemming migration\u2019s \u2018root causes.\u2019
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper examines how Ethiopia\u2019s \u201cdevelopment\u201d over the last century impacted the mobility patterns of a traditionally seminomadic peoples in the central lowlands of Oromia. Using original survey data, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic methods, this research uncovers how, within just four generations, one village experienced two mobility transitions: from seminomadic pastoralism into settled agriculture, and then from rural agriculture into more mobile, urban-centric lives. To explain these transitions, this paper advances a social transformation framework to explore how different dimensions of social change \u2014 the political, economic, demographic, technological, and cultural \u2014 impact aspirations and capabilities to migrate or stay. It finds, first, that the sedentarisation of seminomadic lifestyles was an integral part of modern nation-state building in Ethiopia. The integration of this once peripheral region into a centralised, hierarchical state disrupted traditional patterns of socioeconomic organisation with the effect of tying people to places. Second, it finds that rural out-migration among younger generations \u2014 whether to neighbouring towns or to the Middle East \u2014 is primarily driven by rising access to formal education, growing rural-urban connectivity, and the expansion of the market economy. In Ethiopia, where most analyses of rural out-migration focus on the factors that \u201cforce\u201d young people to abandon agriculture and rural lives, this case study shows why rising rural out-migration is part and parcel of \u201cdevelopment\u201d as it is practiced today. Rather than alleviating the need to migrate, this research suggests that development often creates the need to migrate.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper examines the social transformation processes that led to a mobility transition in Cisternino, a small agricultural town in Southern Italy. This transition entailed a shift from seasonal regional mobility in the 1940s to migration towards long-distance national and international destinations from the 1950s and to regional commuting and return migration from the 1970s. Building on mobility transition theories and the social transformation framework, the analysis examines the relation between the profound social change that affected this small agricultural town in the post-World War II period and shifts in migration. A combination of three broad processes explains the changing migration patterns: the expansion and consolidation of the state, the reshaping of the local economy and cultural transitions. By analysing the interplay and sequencing of these processes, we observe that, firstly, long-distance migration initially increased largely in reaction to deep cultural and political-economic shifts that altered local livelihoods; however, long-distance migration subsequently decreased as it was substituted by commuting in association with local economic growth and the expansion of state-driven sectors and safety net provisions that bore fruit in the 1960s. The article reveals the powerful and varied ways in which, in crucial moments of transition, the state affects local livelihoods and the population\u2019s decision to either adapt locally or migrate.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper argues why and how migration should be conceptualised as an intrinsic part of broader processes of development and social change instead of as the antithesis of development, as dominant discourses hold. When societies go through the various economic, cultural, technological, political and demographic transitions associated with \u2018development\u2019, this leads to increasing levels of internal and international out-migration. Low-income societies generally have lower emigration levels because poverty tends to constrain people\u2019s movements. Development leads to more instead of less migration because it increases people\u2019s capabilities and aspirations to move. The paradox of development-driven emigration hikes shows the inability of conventional push\u2013pull and neoclassical models to explain migration as well as the need for a new vision of migration as part of broader development. Migration is shaped by development in both origin and destination societies and also contributes to further change in its own right. However, the embeddedness of migration in broader processes of social transformation and development also means that its potential to affect structural change is fundamentally limited. This shows the logical fallacy of narratives that cast development as a \u2018solution\u2019 for perceived migration problems or that cast migration and remittances as panaceas with which to solve fundamental development problems.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper examines how different \u2018contexts of reception\u2019 in Toronto and NYC shape the size, programmatic domain (social, cultural, economic, political), and geographic scope of action (local vs. transnational) of non-profit organisations serving the Pakistani immigrant community. Existing literature tends to employ a one-sided focus on the role of state-policies in determining the prevalence of immigrant organisations. This literature is also divided into two epistemic camps, one focusing on organisations promoting settlement/incorporation and others on transnational organisations. This study addresses these limitations by examining how state-policies, socioeconomic incorporation, community characteristics and societal attitudes combine to shape the composition of an immigrant group\u2019s collective organisational space \u2013 comprised of incorporation and transnationally-oriented organisations. Data come from a new original database of the universe of Pakistani non-profit organisations based in Toronto and New York and from qualitative data gathered in both cities. Contrary to our expectations and previous research, we find that state-sponsored multiculturalism is not associated with a larger or more transnational Pakistani organisational space in Toronto. Rather, the size, programmatic domain and geographic scope of Pakistani organisational spaces are determined by the intersection of state-policies and the immigrant community\u2019s socioeconomic incorporation \u00ac\u2013 where the more affluent New Yorker Pakistani community is associated with a larger and more transnational organisational space. Findings also reveal tensions between locally- and transnationally-oriented organisations in both cities, reflecting growing fragmentation between affluent cosmopolitan, immigrant elites and the impoverished segments of the Toronto and NYC Pakistani communities.\r\n\r\n\r\nIf you would like to read a copy of this working paper please email the author: ali.chaudhary@qeh.ox.ac.uk
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper studies the long-term evolution of global refugee migration, with a particular emphasis on the post-World War II period. We use the UNHCR Population Statistics Database to explore the intensity as well as the geographical spread and distance of refugee migrations at a global, regional, and country level between 1951 and 2018. The analyses refute the idea that there has been a substantial and linear increase in the intensity of global refugee migration. Moreover, problems with coverage and quality of earlier data give reason to think that levels of past refugee migration were underestimated. Apparent increases in the global number of displaced are mainly driven by the recent inclusion of other populations (such as the internally displaced and people in \u201crefugee-like\u201d situations) and countries that were previously excluded from statistics. Yet the analyses reveal several geographical shifts in refugee migration over the past decades. Refugees tend to come from a shrinking number of origin countries and go to an increasing number of destination countries. This trend reflects an overall long-term global decline in the levels of violent conflict and a concentration of recurrent conflict cycles in a few particular states. The average distance between origin and residence countries has increased over time, although the vast majority of refugees continue to stay near origin countries. Refugee populations continue to be concentrated in countries with low to medium GDP levels, and there has not been a major increase in South-North refugee migration.
\n \n\n \n \nDespite seemingly open immigration policies and rights-based reforms, the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries recently engaged in international and domestic policies to better control immigration. This article unpacks the realpolitik of mass immigration conducted by the Gulf states by showing how they use retaliatory and coercive migration diplomacies as well as migrant rightswashing on the international scene to shape immigration flows. At the domestic level, Gulf governments\u2019 reforms seek to police labour market segmentation and institutionalise a regime of \u201cdifferential exclusion\u201d that officialises intersectional discriminations across nationalities and class. Drawing upon sources in English and Arabic, as well as interviews with public officials, businessmen, and migrants in the region over a decade (2006-2017), this article describes how states and nonstate actors, including businessmen, migrant networks, and brokers, operate policies and practices of control. \r\nI first find that a recent sovereign turn has transformed migration politics in the Gulf. I show that contingent state policies and reforms in the past decades more accurately account for migration governance processes than oil prices and market dynamics, the nature of political regimes, or the rentier structures of Gulf polities. This study thus fills a gap in migration research on the Global South that usually focuses on emigration countries and diaspora policies and underestimates the role of immigration policies. \r\nSecondly, I find that migration policies have become more discriminatory across migrant categories in the GCC, as other studies have shown for OECD countries. Such findings lead us to discuss the global relevance of illiberal practices and policies and introduce the hypothesis of a global convergence in illiberal migration governance.
\n \n\n \n \nThere is a lack of research into the question of how refugees make migration decisions. Building upon the literature concerning migration aspirations and drivers of migration in contexts of forced displacement, this working paper examines the questions of how and why Syrian refugees in Istanbul and Izmir experience mobility and immobility. Drawing on the findings of a mixed-methods study conducted in 2018 amongst refugees in those two cities, it disentangles the many different ways of staying in Turkey. It offers insights into the perspectives of Syrians who aspire to return to Syria but stayed; those who want to remain in the country; those who aspire to move on to another country but stayed; and those who left for Europe but returned to Turkey. The findings of this study show a strong desire to return among the Syrian refugee population in Turkey, should the conflict come to an end. It also finds moderate aspirations to stay in Turkey, and a strong resistance to the idea of migrating further, into Europe. However, aspirations with regard to return and onwards migration were higher than actual migratory behaviour on the ground. The paper highlights that subjective factors such as life satisfaction, imaginings of the future, and hope, are crucial factors at the micro-level that shape refugees\u2019 migration decision-making on a micro-level. The hope for return, one day, to Syria had initially motivated many Syrians to remain in Turkey. However, a combination of having given up hope of safely returning to Syria in the future, relatively high life satisfaction in Turkey, and negative ideas about what life in Europe might entail, have led Syrians to consider settling down in Turkey. Access to work is perceived as being easier there than in Europe, and a sense of a common cultural belonging has created strong counter-narratives to Europe as a potential destination.
\n \n\n \n \nResilience is a concept in world politics that emerged, in part, as a way to respond to the impossibility of guaranteeing security in an era of complexity. Absent a central authority that provides security, risk is devolved to the individual, and those who cannot secure themselves are enjoined to constantly adapt to the unknown. Where control over complex systems is now thought to be impossible, the path to managing risks is through self-control. This paper demonstrates how such a subject is produced, and indeed whose production, I argue, is crucial to the functioning of a global labor market that is governed \u2018without government.\u2019 Migrant domestic workers acutely instantiate the kind of human subjectivity called forth by neoliberalism \u2013 a \u2018resilient subject.\u2019 The paper describes how this ideal worker is produced through resilience training in various stages of the migration trajectory \u2013 during recruitment, training prior to deployment and while on their overseas residency. This paper demonstrates how managing the insecurities of migrant domestic work means working on the \u2018self\u2019 rather than addressing gaps in legal or regulatory mechanisms. In resilience training, the worker becomes the necessary component of neoliberalism as a governmental rationality, one that is enjoined to transform risk into opportunity. This paper draws from an eight-month multi-sited ethnography in the major migrant domestic worker sending and receiving in Southeast Asia \u2013 notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.
\n \n\n \n \nStudying mobility aspirations of forced migrants is a challenge. Refugees are a particularly vulnerable group and displaced persons are often described as a rare or hidden group whose members are hard to identify and to locate. Representative micro-level data is scarce, with surveys frequently based on non-probability sampling techniques. Furthermore, most refugees flee to neighbouring countries which are often politically unstable and sometimes at war with the origin country, posing additional security risks to participants and researchers alike. Building on existing literature and recent fieldwork conducted in Lebanon and Turkey in 2018, we suggest a methodological approach to study mobility aspirations of Syrian urban self-settled refugees in four cities in these two countries. In doing so, we highlight the importance of considering ethical challenges, adopting a mixed methods research design which incorporates randomness in data collection (multi-stage sampling, random walks combined with limited focused enumeration of the nearest neighbour technique), the advantages of including members of the targeted population in research teams, as well as challenges encountered during the research with regards to representativeness, confidentiality, security issues and positionality.
\n \n\n \n \nThe effect of \u2018open borders\u2019 on migration has been the subject of substantial controversy. Political rhetoric and media images help stoke fear of uncontrolled mass migration that in turn fuels arguments in favour of tighter immigration regulations and border controls to \u2018bring migration back under control\u2019. In public debates, removing migration barriers is frequently portrayed as tantamount to \u2018opening the floodgates\u2019. However, immigration liberalisation may increase also circulation and return, rendering the effect on net migration theoretically ambiguous. Drawing on bilateral flow data over the 1959-2010 period contained in the DEMIG C2C database, this paper uses European Union (EU) enlargement as a case study to assess how liberalising border regimes affected migration flows. The analysis suggests that, with some exceptions, liberalisation boosted circulation rather than led to a structural increase in intra-EU migration. While removing migration barriers can lead to migration surges\u2014particularly when economic gaps between origin and destination countries are large\u2014these tend to be temporary, after which migration becomes more circular and tends to consolidate at lower levels. And while intra-regional circulation in the EU has grown, closing external EU borders has increasingly pushed non-EU migrants into permanent settlement along with significant family migration. These factors help to explain the structural rise in non-EU immigration, defying policy expectations that opening internal borders would decrease non-EU immigration.
\n \n\n \n \nSince the 1990s, the agencies of the United Nations (UN) have increasingly been financed through earmarked contributions from an increasingly diverse set of donors. Since the concept of voluntary contributions was absent from the UN charter owing to the concern that it would undermine multilateralism, current funding trends raise concerns about the functioning of the UN as a multilateral system. Despite this concern there is a limited but growing body of literature that examines the relationship between funding and governance. Taking migration as a case study, this paper uses a newly created data set of earmarked contributions to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) between 2000 and 2016 (n=13,306) to examine thematic and temporal patterns in the contributions of IOM\u2019s main donors. The fragmented nature of migration governance may well be a product of the earmarked nature of its funding, and, without concrete changes in how migration is financed, is likely to remain fragmented. However, this fragmentation can be viewed from two broad perspectives. On the negative side of the ledger, it may be observed that contributions to IOM have largely focused on issues relating to the management of certain aspects of migration that are reflective of the specific interests of its donors lending weight to the argument that the fragmented nature of global migration governance may be a product of the largely earmarked nature of migration financing which has allowed bilateral interests to dominate multilateral responses to migration issues. On the other hand, earmarked funding has arguably also allowed the international community to extend protection to displaced populations not covered by the refugee convention.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper examines why young women in one rural region of Ethiopia make the decision to migrate as domestic workers to the Middle East. Based on survey data and in-depth interviews, it examines the forces shaping aspirations and capabilities to migrate. In particular, the paper shows this migration can be reasonable and capabilities-enhancing for young women, while at the same time, a response to a critical lack of capabilities in other domains of their lives. The paper highlights why migration aspirations arise at a particular moment in the life-course, as adolescents transition into adulthood, and how migration aspirations relate to a broader set of capabilities young women have (or lack) to realize the lives they value (Sen 1999). These insights challenge the dominant narrative of trafficking, deception and victimization around this type of migration, while highlighting the usefulness of the aspiration-capability framework to analyze precarious forms of migration.
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