Negotiating male gatekeeper violence in team-based research on Bangladeshi migrant women in Malaysia

While the field of migration studies is expanding to understand the nuanced experiences of women across Asia, there has been little discussion of how these studies were conducted. This article draws on the reflective accounts of three researchers on a team project investigating the lived experiences of female Bangladeshi migrant workers in Malaysia. While the research aims centred on understanding the lives of the Bangladeshi migrant women, the team spent a significant amount of time negotiating male gatekeeper violence in the field. The article further describes the researchers’ experiences of sexual harassment and intimidation, and explores these through the complex locations of the migrant workers and the female researchers in the field site. In addition, the article deals with the way in which the team’s feminist research sensibilities were challenged in the context of negotiating that violence. The ethical dilemma of continuing the research in the face of persistent violence was dealt with by discussing approaches employed in managing the violence. Analysing male gatekeeper violence in the field, allowed for conversations around the intersection of migration and masculinities. This auto-ethnography reveals methodological concerns for female researchers and exposes the negotiated nature of the front line of migration research.     

Family migration decision-making,step-migration and separation: children's experiences in European migrant worker families

Intra-European family migration has extended the realm in which families live and work in Europe. This paper joins a limited number of recent attempts to analyse family migration using a children-in-families approach [Bushin, N. 2009. Researching Family Migration Decision-Making: A Children-in-Families Approach.” Population, Space and Place, 15: 429–443]. In contrast to existing studies on this theme, our focus is on children's migration decision-making, experiences of step-migration and experiences of separation from parents during processes of intra-European family migration. Little is known about children's views and experiences of step-migration and separation from their parent(s) during family migration. Such experiences have implications for the spatial and temporal construction of family and childhood in Europe, where transnational mobility is increasing. This paper discusses children's experiences of separation in two research contexts, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland, to illustrate common features of the phenomena. The paper analyses family relationships relevant to migration decisions and explains their effects on children's agency, as well as on family integrity itself.     

新型城镇化下中部流出地村庄的人口转型特征与微观成因——以湖南岳阳市为例

新型城镇化驱动下,乡村人口转型呈现就近非农化不断增强等新特征。本文以岳阳市为例,首先揭示人口转型的总体格局,选定城关型、偏远山区型、传统农业型三个典型村庄,全面透视其外出、常住人口的转型特征,揭示自然本底、地域经济、社会服务的影响。发现：中部地区人口以流向省外为主,但回流增强,主要流向镇街;城关型村庄人口以就近（地）非农化为主;偏远山区村庄异地城镇化为主、就近非农化为辅;传统农业村庄人口外流、就近城镇化与非农化并存;村庄资源禀赋及利用程度、地域经济水平、生活服务配套等对人口外出程度和距离、择居（业）、年龄和家庭结构、村庄兴衰有不同影响,城镇化应因况施策。     

Migration in childhood and its impact on national identity construction among migrants from Northern Ireland

While there is currently only a tiny literature available on Northern Ireland migration, nothing at all has as yet been published relating to the subject of the province's child migrants. This paper focuses on the migration experiences of individuals who migrated as children to and from Northern Ireland, based on interview narratives collected during the course of two studies on contemporary migration from Ireland, North and South, conducted from 2004 to 2008. In all cases, these experiences triggered identity issues for the individuals which have played out subsequently in their lives in different ways. In particular, the author seeks to understand how the memory of these events continues to construct present realities for these individuals. What awareness did these children have of sectarianism, of the Northern Ireland conflict? What was their reception in the host country and upon return to Northern Ireland? How have these experiences contributed to their identities in the present and their sense of belonging to Ireland, North and South?     

Pre-flight experiences and migration stories: the accounts of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children

Much work about transnational migration and mobility overlooks the active role of children in such processes and experiences. This paper counters the omission from the literature by exploring the pre-flight experiences and migration stories of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Scotland. In doing so, we demonstrate that unaccompanied minors experience a range of traumatic situations in their countries of origin including, the death or persecution of family members, war, forced recruitment and personal persecution. In their experiences of transnational migration processes, the majority are brought by an agent, with accounts of smuggling and trafficking being minimal.     

Climate Testimonies and Climate-crisis Narratives. Inuit Delegated to Speak on Behalf of the Climate

Abstract

The empirical data analysed in this essay will focus on several Greenlanders who were invited to the COP15 parallel event Klimaforum09, held in Copenhagen in December 2009, as well as their experiences with the venue and the dilemmas they confronted as both local and global witnesses. This essay challenges the use of climate testimonies in the international climate-change debate. Specifically, what is drawn upon in these personal experiences with the environment, and how is it useful in a public, political, or scientific context? In the conclusion of this article, it is argued that dominant climate-crisis narratives have framed “the Greenlandic case” in a certain way, which consequently freezes arguments and possible agency. However, at the same time as there is a global framing of climate change and a specific position in this narrative for “local witnesses”, there is also room for an alternative empowerment and ways of engaging in and talking about global and local natures.     

Social relations on stage: Witnesses in classical Athens

The study of witness testimony raises questions which are fundamental for the student of other cultures, whether past or contemporary. What are the standards expected of a reliable informant and how is reliability to be recognised? How is reliable knowledge about the past established?

The aim of this paper is to analyse the use of witnesses in classical Athenian lawcourts both for its epistemological implications — what does it tell us about Athenian ideas of ‘expert witnesses’, of reliability, of truthfulness and bias — and for the information it gives us about Athenian society and court practice. What kind of men did Athenian litigants select to act as witnesses for them, and what effect did they hope their witnesses’ testimonies would have on the jury?

If we start out from the assumption of modern courts that witnesses are called to ‘establish the facts of the case’ we shall misunderstand the Athenian data. What witnesses actually testified often was not very important: their testimonies might be insignificant, irrelevant or repetitive. To understand their role it is necessary to see them as minor characters in a drama, whose presence provides the backdrop against which the litigant wishes his own actions and character to be seen. Respectable witnesses — officials, members of the ‘professions’, reputable politicians — establish his own respectability. The support of neighbours, associates and kin shows that those who know the milieu in which the dispute arose are on the litigant's side. Denigration Of the opponent's witnesses, kin and associates presents him as a vicious and unreliable character. In the construction of a character‐portrait in court witnesses had an important role to play.     

Turbulent Lives: Exploring the Cultural Meaning of Regional Youth Migration

Migration is an important part of the lives of many young adults. In numerous areas around the world, and particularly in regional and remote areas, cultures have emerged where the migration of young adults is normalised and expected. While the impact of the migration of young adults on the areas they have left and have moved to has received considerable attention in both political and academic arenas, there is a need for more research that addresses the cultural meaning of migration and the importance of the migration process for young people themselves. The paper is based on two large research projects undertaken between 2000 and 2005, which focused on the experiences of migration of young adults in Tasmania, and includes data sourced from interviews and focus groups with young migrants as well as an analysis of media and policy documents. We discuss the ‘turbulent lives’ of young people in Tasmania, including the expectations and aspirations of young adults growing up in a culture in which migration is normalised and their experiences of leaving, and returning to, their childhood homes. These issues are considered in the context of recent theoretical debates surrounding the impact of mobility and attachment to place on the identities of migrants.     

On the Side of Light: Performing Morality at Rwanda’s Genocide Memorials

Abstract

In Rwanda, numerous memorials have arisen to remember the 1994 genocide and its victims. This paper considers the effect of the national genocide memorials on Western tourist visitors, in the context of research on ‘dark tourism’ and Western attitudes toward death and the dead. It draws on the idea that, in a Western context, viewing the remains of violent death can be a kind of ‘soft murder’, and on the concept that the act of witnessing violence creates a community of witnesses implicated in that violence. Western visitors to Rwandan genocide memorials therefore form a community, and their responses are guided by a set of community rules regarding behaviour and experiences during and after the visit. These rules, this paper argues, are rooted in pressures to assert oneself as a properly moral individual through performing morality in a morally ambiguous setting.     

Migrant mothers and the geographies of belonging

Much academic research on migrant mothers focuses on mothers who are separated from their children, often through their integration into global care chains, or on mothers within the context of family migration. This paper argues that co-resident migrant mothers' experiences provide an important window on the complexities of the migration experience. Using a specific case study of Ireland, and drawing from a broader longitudinal research project that focuses on recent migrants, the paper explores migrant mothers' understandings and experiences of belonging and not-belonging. We argue that structural obstacles and cultural understanding of care actively conspire to undermine migrant mothers' potential to develop place-belongingness. Interviewees' discussions of their status as full-time mothers were often framed through images of ideal motherhood, but equally highlighted how the absence of affordable childcare and family members isolates them and prevents them from creating a sense of belonging outside of the process of mothering and the home.     

‘You’re not big,you’re just in Asia’: Expatriate embodiment and emotional experiences of size in Singapore§

This article brings together work on privileged migration with critical geographical work on body size. In uniting these areas together I focus on the role of embodiment within expatriate experiences of migration to Singapore. I argue that despite a developing body of critical work on migration, this work has failed to explore embodied experiences of size. To counter this gap, this research demonstrates the importance of recognising how sized narratives and experiences are shaped through gendered migration and the need to explore the multiplicity of experiences of women in different places of the city. Drawing upon empirical research with expatriate women in Singapore I advance work within critical geographies of body size by presenting original work that challenges dominant and medicalised understandings of fatness as inherently bad. Furthermore, I contribute to the growing area of work that places emphasis on the subjective nature of size through recognition of work on migration. In this article, I explore how migration was embodied and discussed through size, firstly by looking at how women discussed losing their sense of identity. Secondly, the temporal and spatial embeddedness of size. Finally, how women rejected and resisted dominant discourses through humour and indifference.     

‘Like it,don’t like it,you have to like it’: children’s emotional responses to the absence of transnational migrant parents in Lombok,Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the experiences and emotions of children in rural East Lombok, Indonesia, who stay behind with relatives or neighbours while their parents leave the country for work. The article contributes to recent scholarship of children’s experiences of transnational migration in Southeast Asia by drawing out the complex emotions of children who stay behind. Based on research conducted in four ‘sending’ villages, the article describes children’s lived experiences of their parent’s transnational migration, and their intense feelings that whether they ‘like it or don’t like it’, they have no choice but to acquiesce to their parents’ long, often indeterminate absences. The research suggests that stay-behind children are entangled in community anxieties pervading the emotional economy of transnational migration, including the embodied emotion of shame (malu) which shapes children’s responses to parental absence. By focusing on children’s own views and experiences, we contribute to growing debates about the implications of migration for children’s rights and well-being in Southeast Asia.     

Risk and security on the Mexico-to-US migrant journey: women’s testimonios of violence

In this article, I argue that immigrants’ meanings, perceptions, and feelings of risk and (in)security are relational, multi-scalar, and contextual to lived experiences before, during, and after the migration journey. Paying attention to and analyzing Mexican women’s testimonios of intimate experiences uncovers why they migrate, how migration is experienced, and how migrant women frame their lives in the US. In this article, I compare how national and transnational policies of the War on Drugs in Mexico, which increased militarization of the US-Mexico border and created tougher immigration policies in the US (all in the name of US national security), form and transform intimate experiences of risk and (in)security across the migration journey for the same population. This comparative approach challenges and expands US-Mexico literature that does not read across experiences in the three sites of the migration journey.     

MINDING HISTORIES: EXPLORING EARLY EXPERIENCES OF MIGRATION,SETTLEMENT AND WELLBEING THROUGH LIFE HISTORIES OF MIGRANTS RESIDING IN THE LONDON BOROUGH OF BEXLEY

Abstract

This article reports on oral history interviews undertaken with migrants residing in the London Borough of Bexley from the 1950s onwards. It focuses on the significance of early migration and settlement on their mental wellbeing. The findings reflect the diversity of Bexley’s communities and highlight some of the unique experiences that impacted on mental wellbeing for participants. Significantly this project has had important educational benefits, giving the people of Bexley the opportunity to speak out about their experiences, thereby generating awareness in public attitudes towards the complex issues of mental wellbeing and migration.     

Domestic violence,safe space and vicarious abuse: inside a Pennsylvania Exchange and Visitation Center

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted in the ‘safe space’ of an exchange and visitation center, this article examines center staffs’ experiences of vicarious abuse. Vicarious abuse refers to the emotional effects that occur when someone – other than the victim in the relationship – experiences or witnesses the coercively controlling tactics of a domestic violence abuser. This article examines the limitations of safe space that fails to consider the physical and emotional security needs of all who utilize the space. By tracing the fears of staff who interact with abusers, this article also frames domestic violence as a public safety concern with implications beyond the intimate. With recognition that staff experiences of vicarious abuse differ from the embodied experiences of victims in abusive relationships, this article applies a feminist geographic analytic to examine how the ‘safe space’ of an exchange and visitation center enables fear and normalizes vicarious abuse.     

Blending ‘home’ and ‘away’: young Israeli migrants as VFR travelers

This study explores the nexus between migration and tourism by focusing on the experiences of young Israeli migrants who engage in return-visits to their country of origin. The experiences of the migrants are examined with respect to transnational theory, VFR (visiting friends and relatives) travel and conceptualizations of ‘home’ and ‘away.’ The migrants’ sense of ‘being at home’ is deconstructed in terms of familiarity with place, privacy and situational control, and sociability in associations. The findings of this multidimensional analysis reveal that the young migrants’ experiences of ‘home’ and ‘away’ is transformed across time in accordance with their sense of adaptation in the receiving country. While in terms of familiarity with place and sociability in associations the sense of being at home is weakened considerably, it is actually strengthened in terms of privacy and situational control. These findings stress the complexity of VFR experiences in the context of transnational migration.     

Unpacking children in migration research

In the light of calls for children's geographers to attend to happenings beyond the localised perception of children themselves, this piece considers the state of migration studies when it comes to the experiences of children and young people. It provides an overview of existing research and suggests that in the context of migration, more could be done to foreground the perspectives of children in their own right. Given that attending to everyday experience is an endeavour of concern to adult-centric migration research, the paper concludes by suggesting that this might be an area in which children's geographers could contribute to another sub-discipline.     

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.     

‘They shut them out the road’: Migration,mental health and the Scottish highlands

There is a small literature tackling migration and mental health, but less is said about the migration of people with mental health problems (incipient or diagnosed). The present paper considers what might be claimed about such migration, particularly when entailing movement into rural and remote areas where lack of anonymity, high social visibility and certain differences in how ‘locals’ and ‘incomers’ are treated may have serious consequences for those displaying psychological and behavioural differences. Drawing upon qualitative evidence from in‐depth interviewing of in‐migrants with mental health problems living in the Scottish Highlands, light is thrown on the connections between their problems and the decision to relocate to this predominantly rural region. Attention also focuses on dissonances between expectations regarding their new situation and their actual experiences of it in terms of both natural landscapes and, more importantly here, social milieux. There are further implications for changing regional attitudes towards mental health, suggesting certain impacts that arise not just from the in‐migration of people themselves who have mental health problems, but also from the ideas and practices that they often carry with them.