Humanitarianism as conflicted care: Managing migrant assistance in EU Assisted Voluntary Return policies

Assisted Voluntary Return (AVR) programs occupy a central role in Europe's “management” of migration today. These state-funded programs allow migrants to meet with humanitarian counselors about the decision to return voluntarily, offering reintegration assistance and one-way travel booking to migrants' country of origin. This paper draws on interviews with practitioners at humanitarian organizations, those who counsel undocumented migrants and appeals rights exhausted asylum seekers about their decision to leave Europe via AVR, to consider the limits and potentials of humanitarian assistance for migrants in the EU's security-focused context. We query the degree to which care, as much as it is incorporated into regimes of bordering, can potentially disrupt hegemonic politics of assistance-as-governance. AVR provides a lens onto the politics of care and humanitarian assistance in migration management today, as migrants and practitioners negotiate together the decision to stay (with a limited range of legal options) or return via this increasingly relied upon policy.     

In‐Between Places: Trans‐Saharan Transit Migrants in Morocco and the Fragmented Journey to Europe

Abstract: As undocumented migration becomes more difficult, migrants' journeys become longer and more fragmented. This is a response to new spatialities of migration control which are continually reconfigured in an effort to eliminate clandestine movement. In the trans‐Saharan region, this pattern of fragmented journeys also arises from a network of transnational social organisations that depend upon newly available technologies. Migrants' social networks provide both the means and the motivation for continued movement, even as destinations become more elusive. This paper investigates the imbalanced conflict between the social organisation of Sahara transit migrants and the developing spatial logic of control. It is based on recent research with undocumented migrants in Morocco.     

Negotiating gender dynamics in heteronormativity: extramarital intimacy among migrant Filipino workers in South Korea

This article examines the liminal space that exists both as a structural condition engendered by transnational migration and as a state that is self-consciously carved out by migrants. It demonstrates that this space provides the grounds for migrants to develop ‘deviant heterosexuality’, such as extramarital relationships while simultaneously causing dilemmas and contestation of gender dynamics in conjugal and familial relationships. Drawing on ethnographic research and in-depth interviews, I elucidate the extramarital relationships among migrant Filipino workers in South Korea. By incorporating discussions of ‘queer heterosexualities’ and Hubbard's geographical engagement of sexuality into analysis, I argue that migrants' extramarital practices are shaped not only by dominant discourse, but also through the particular social and spatial positioning of individuals. First, I demonstrate that the liminal space gives migrant Filipino workers a certain degree of autonomy from the power and ideological interventions of both sending and host societies. Second, I highlight the liminal space that is extended by migrants themselves, especially through the increasing economic ability and mobility of migrant women, which can reconfigure the modes of heteronormativity and gender structure in conjugal, familial and extramarital relationships. In the end, I argue that transnational migration results not only in provisional liminality but also prolonged liminality through migrants' initiative in pursuing their desired heterosexuality and their endeavour to convert extramarital relationships into long-term intimacy. This study contributes to the discussion of the interplay between heterosexuality/heteronormativity and gender in recent human migration.     

Unwanted sea migrants across the EU border: The Canary Islands

In the early 2000s, the Canary Islands emerged as the main gateway for unwanted sea migrants from Senegal into Spain. In this paper, I draw from a year of multi-sited ethnographic work to discuss the relationship between state actions to secure the border against these migrants, on the one hand; and smugglers and migrants' efforts to subvert those actions, on the other. My argument is that the relationship between the two is mutually constitutive: anti-immigration policy is a reaction to the actions of unwanted migrants, and unwanted migrants adapt to state efforts to seal the border against unwanted migration by finding and exploiting spaces of opportunity in the border. In the context of sea migration from Senegal to the Canary Islands, 2005 marks a major shift in this relationship. That year the European Union adopted a new framework for migration control (the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility), Frontex became operational, and Spain and Senegal deepened their cooperation to stop unwanted Europe-bound sea migration. This forced unwanted migrants to find creative ways to enter EU territory. I argue that combining the institutional and migrant perspectives allows us to explore the decentering of the state in the contemporary anti-immigration border regime, the emerging spatialities of the contemporary border, and understand the migrant's journey. This perspective also illuminates the messiness, violence, and multiplicity of interests involved in the bordering of Europe.     

Home and beyond in Aotearoa: the affective dimensions of migration for South African migrants

The integration of immigrants into local labour markets is a key focus of contemporary migration scholarship in Aotearoa New Zealand. While acknowledging the importance of these economic aspects of migrant settlement, in this article we examine instead how new arrivals from South Africa actively reconstitute a feeling of home and belonging post-migration. Drawing on the concept of affect, we illustrate the ways in which the experience of migration and settlement is embodied, situated and relational. We do this by examining the affective dimensions of home-making, both within and beyond the physical boundaries of a chosen dwelling and its location. Memory bridges all these experiences of transition, suffusing migrants' lives as they understand, frame and negotiate their affective present within the context of their affective past. Our focus renders visible important aspects of the migrant experience, and contributes to a more holistic understanding of why migrants come, how they settle and what encourages them to remain.     

“Choking without killing”: Opacity and the grey area of migration governmentality

This paper focuses on the “grey area of migration governmentality” by dealing with modes of border violence which are opaque and remain under the threshold of political visibility and that, however, highly disrupt and hamper migrants' lives and movements. It starts by conceptualising the notion of “grey area” by building on scholarship that questions the biopolitical formula “making live/letting die” highlighting modes of governing migration through choking and injuring. Building on that, the paper shows that the grey area consists of heterogenous political technologies that choke migrants and disrupt their infrastructures of liveability. In light of that, it moves on by analysing how migrants across Europe are contained and governed by being choked and cramped, with a specific focus on Calais and Ventimiglia. The third section shows that to be disrupted are not only migrants’ but also their infrastructures of liveability: migrants are hampered from building collective spaces of life. In the last part, the article comes to grips with opacity as a constitutive feature of the grey area of governmentality, analysing how this is played out both in local decrees and through police tactics.     

Geography of belonging: nostalgic attachment,transnational home and global mobility among Romanian immigrants in Spain

This article explores how human global mobility is linked to a sense of home and belonging and outlines ways in which European Union (EU) enlargement could contribute to broader debates about migration, both empirically and theoretically. To accomplish this aim, I use the context of Romanian migration to Spain. Since EU enlargement in 2007, Spain has emerged as a major destination for Romanian migrants. The main argument of the paper is that transformations in the EU over the past 20 years through its open border policy have changed migrant workers into EU movers, and this change affects people's perceptions about sense of home. This analysis is prompted by a qualitative and narrative turn in migration studies, and an emphasis on new mobility pathways in accounting for the embodied dimensions of migration. Key to the paper is an analysis of how people can maintain a sense of home while being on the move. It attempts to demonstrate that migrants' experiences of belonging in their host country may vary greatly depending on the time of movement, the politics of EU borders, the nature of mobility and personal and individual circumstances.     

Forced migration and legal-spatial violence in the United States and Germany

Asylum laws cannot function without spatial technologies and practices. Refugee camps, detention centers and accommodation facilities, in addition to dispersal and residential obligations, highlight the spatiality of asylum laws and policies. They are not only designed to regulate forced migrants' movement and place them in alternative legal and spatial regimes, but they are also spaces where migrants’ legal rights are violated and access to integrating institutions are restricted. Based on findings from Germany and the United States, this paper argues that current asylum regimes are characterized by a system of legal-spatial violence; a process in which a form of violence is embedded in law, implemented through policies and formal processes, and realized and reproduced spatially. This entanglement between the law, space, and violence involves complex and paradoxical processes: immobility and internal bordering practices (where forced migrants are confined and their movement is limited), as well as forced mobility and situations of unbordering (where movement is forced, and where spatial restrictions are either repealed or replaced). These processes fragment and prolong the trajectories of forced migration. Compulsion, displacement, and the dispossession of rights—which constitute the process of forced migration—do not cease on entering Germany or the United States, but can continue. The rationale for legal-spatial violence goes beyond the securitization of forced migration and the control and deterrence of forced migrants, and also includes economic logic and profit making.     

Minangkabau Migration: Developing an Ethnic Identity in a Multicultural Society

The ambiguity which often surrounds the definition of ethnic identity stems from its wide ranging utility in humanistic studies. The breadth and flexibility of meaning attached to ethnic identity assists in uncovering the diversity of issues which relate to migrants' everyday experiences, expectations and aspirations. This paper seeks to establish how a relatively recent group of migrants to Australia, the Minangkabau from West Sumatra, Indonesia, develop and maintain their sense of ethnic identity during the migration process and in their everyday lives. A framework is developed which places the development of ethnic identity into a wider social context by examining links with the country of origin, involvement in the host community and the home environment.     

The strange case of ‘John Black’ and ‘Mr Hyde’: constructing migrating Jamaicans as (un)worthy nationals

This paper examines how migrating Jamaicans were constructed as ‘worthy’ or ‘unworthy’ of Jamaican diasporic membership in the early years of statehood, to demonstrate the role of nationalist cultural repertoires in constructing particular diasporic imaginaries. I conduct a discourse analysis of Jamaica's national newspaper, The Daily Gleaner, between 1962 and 1966, a period encompassing crucial transitions in Jamaican migration movements and from colony to statehood. I argue that tropes of respectability present in Afro‐creole nationalist ideology form the cultural repertoires used to distinguish migrants' actions as worthy or unworthy of national membership. These distinctions specify who ‘counts’ as part of the diaspora and how migrants of different social positions may claim and articulate their membership.     

The role of equilibrium and disequilibrium in modeling regional growth and decline: a critical reassessment

ABSTRACT. The assumption of interregional equilibrium in migration research has recently been attacked. At issue is the motivation for on-going migration if rents and wags accurately compensate for spatial amenity variations; but if rents and wages fail to accurately compensate potential migrants, then amenity valuations must be flawed. We here show that arguments supporting substantial disequilibrium in the US. economy are unconvincing. The substantive issues are then clarified by a model which allows for both equilibrium and disequilibrium migration. We conclude that intertemporally systematic migration stems predominantly from equilibrium forces.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF THE RECENT INTERREGIONAL MIGRATION FLOWS IN ITALY: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS*

ABSTRACT This study investigates the determinants of interregional migration flows in Italy in the light of the upsurge occurred in 1996, after two decades of decreasing internal migration rates. The fixed‐effect vector decomposition estimator (FEVD) is applied to a gravity model using bilateral migration flows for the period 1996–2005. It is shown that the FEVD improves the estimates with respect to the traditional panel data estimators. The GDP per capita and the unemployment rate appear to be the key determinants whose changes push migrants out from their regions and direct them to “better off” destinations. Migrants leaving the regions in the Center‐North respond differently to the push and pull forces compared to southern migrants. The dynamic model provides evidence for the presence of social networks, which in this analysis take place for each pair of regions.     

中非关系的发展与非洲中国新移民

本文从新移民的规模、特点、构成类型及其与当地社会关系等方面,简要分析了中国在非洲新移民群体所普遍存在的问题。认为中国新移民与当地社会某些阶层经济利益上的竞争关系、中国新移民相对封闭的文化和生活方式、所在国的政治斗争和政治动员以及西方媒体的渲染歪曲等因素,影响到新移民与当地社会的关系。就目前情况来看,除少数的移民个人具有较为突出的成就外,新移民群体还没有达到足以在非洲各国产生影响的程度。语言、文化和价值观念的差异可能会妨碍新移民融入当地社会。     

Spaces of Not Belonging: Inclusive Nationalism and Education in Scotland

This study addresses the issue of the role of national identity-making through education and how this positions migrants in the national discourse in Scotland. The issue has been highlighted by the arrival of European Union migrants post-enlargement, whose children are being schooled in Scotland. The study discusses the tensions, particularly in relation to migrant populations, between the policy discourse of inclusive nationalism and emphasis on performance that promotes standardization processes and individual accountability. Giving particular attention to the language regulations and practices in education, this article notes the fact that language creates a barrier to the fair benefits of education for migrant populations. Rather than facilitating migrants' inclusion, language has become a vehicle for assimilating migrants into the dominant social and cultural norms of the host society. The study concludes by reflecting on the notion of inclusive citizenship and the implications of social responsibility to balance the economic benefits of people's mobility with cultural recognition and protection.     

ESTIMATING INTERREGIONAL UTILITY DIFFERENTIALS*

ABSTRACT The major objective of this paper is to estimate regional utility levels based on interregional migration data. We first revealed three stylized facts concerning migration behavior by examining long‐term Japanese data on interregional migration. We then uncovered inconsistency between net migration and utility differential in the presence of distance‐related migration costs. Based on the stylized facts and the inconsistency problem, we formulated an operational model and estimated interregional utility differentials. We showed that the interregional utility differentials converged until the late 1970s. We also showed that the utility estimates are highly correlated with the per capita real income. We also applied the model to interregional migration data in the United States and Canada and confirmed the model's validity.     

Disaggregate Migration Behavior and the Volume of Interregional Migration

Nested multinomial logit models are used to investigate migration behavior during the 1971–74 period for a large sample of the population of Ecuador. The nested form of the model makes it possible to test hypotheses about the importance of destination characteristics in conditioning the odds for out-migration. Our empirical results indicate that the odds for migration from each origin are conditioned by the expected utilities of the available set of destinations, as well as characteristics of the origins and the personal characteristics of potential migrants. The association between destination characteristics and the frequency of out-migration allows the total volumes of migration to be adjusted to interregional differences in place-specific utilities.     

Transient dwelling: trains as places of identification for the floating population of China

China has experienced massive rural–urban migration, producing the huge so-called ‘floating population’ (liudong renkou). This article attends to what it means to be thus between places by focusing on the embodied and emotional experience of migrant travel. Each year sees the Spring Festival rush (Chun Yun) with the largest annual movement of people as millions of these rural migrant laborers (nongmingong) return to their homes for the holidays. The Spring Festival rush is marked by huge crowds queuing overnight for train tickets, with throngs of migrants carrying woven bags of belongings and gifts on their shoulders, who end up standing in the overcrowded ‘hard-seat’ carriages of trains. By closely reading some of the poems from the emerging genre of ‘Hired laborers literature,’ this article explores migrants' affective and emotional journeys. It argues that this transit experience is one of the key shared sites of common identification for a migrant population whose mode of inhabitation is through circulation and mobility. It also argues that mobility creates shared experiences characterized by specific corporealities, material cultures, and senses of social stratification.     

Independent Child Migration and Education in Ghana

Drawing on interviews with young migrants who have moved from rural, farming households in northeastern Ghana to rural and urban households in central and southern Ghana, this article explores the inter‐connections between children's migration and children's access to formal and non‐formal education. In contrast to the positive light in which education is usually presented, the findings of the research suggest a more ambiguous and complex picture, and illuminate both positive and negative aspects of the linkages between education and children's independent migration.     

Husband's Circular Migration and the Status of Women left behind in Lamerd District,Iran

Iranian women often serve as temporary heads of household as husbands work elsewhere, returning home at intervals for several months. Results of this preliminary study in Lamerd District in Fars Province, with a high incidence of such patterns, show that, overall, wives of migrants are not ‘left-behind women’ as reported in other countries when husbands migrate. Rather, wives of migrating husbands report a higher level of satisfaction with economic resources and no greater physical or mental health problems relative to those in non-migrant relationships. Counter to expectations, autonomy reported by migrants' wives does not differ from that reported by wives of non-migrant men. Data suggest that work-migrant males, in particular urban migrants, may be more exposed to sexually transmitted diseases. Our findings are limited, being based on data on experiences of women in one district in Iran. There is need for more comprehensive studies based on representative samples.     

CHARACTERISTICS AND MIGRATION EXPERIENCE OF AFRICANS IN CANADA WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO GHANAIANS IN GREATER TORONTO

While the migration of Africans is an age-old phenomenon, the most documented aspect has been rural-urban migration. Better life chances in the urban areas, compared with the rural areas compel the young and energetic rural people to migrate to the cities even if their chances of finding decent jobs are slim. In recent times, however, deteriorating national socio-economic and political conditions have made living conditions in African towns and cities as precarious as is in the countryside, and consequently the migrants' dream of better lives in the cities most often proves to be a mirage. These conditions and the increasing desire to make better lives for themselves have precipitated international migration among Africans. This paper argues that the unprecedented international migration among Africans should be seen as an extension of the rural-urban migration in quest for better opportunities. A sample of 149 Ghanaian immigrants in the Greater Toronto area was surveyed through a questionnaire. It appears that for most of them, their arrival in Canada has completed a series of step-wise moves which may have started from their home towns via the regional cities to the national capital and across the borders to a number of countries before arriving in Canada. The paper demonstrates, among other things, that stepwise migration characterizes the Ghanaian migration experience at both local and international levels. Bien que la migration des Africains soit un phénomène ancien, l'aspect le plus documenté a été la migration rurale-urbaine. Les meilleures chances de vie dans les régions urbaines, comparées avec régions rurales incitent les jeunes personnes énergiques des milieux ruraux à migrer aux villes, même s'il y a peu de chances que ces personnes trouvent des emplois de qualité. Ces dernières années, cependant, la dégradation des conditions socio-économiques et politiques nationales ont rendu les conditions de vie de villages et des grandes villes africaines aussi précaires qu'à la campagne, et par conséquent, le rêve d'une meilleure vie s'avére, la plupart du temps, un mirage. Ces condiitions et le désir grandissant d'une vie meilleure ont accéléré la migration internationale chez les Africains. Cet article soutient que la migration internationale sans précédent chez les Africains devrait être vue comme un prolongement de la migration rurale-urbaine en quête des meilleures chances. On a fait une enquête d'un échantillon de 149 immigrés Ghanéens dans la région de Toronto par questionnaire. II semble que, pour la plupart d'entre eux, leur arrivée au Canada ait terminé une série de mouvements graduels: de leurs villes natales via les villes régionales à la capitale nationale et, à travers les frontières, à beaucoup d'autres pays avant d'arriver au Canada. L'article démontre, entre autres choses, que la migration graduelle caractérise l'expérience au niveaux local et international.