Showing papers in "Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies in 2010"

Understanding Global Migration: A Social Transformation Perspective

Abstract: This chapter examines some of the difficulties of theory formation in international migration studies and suggests adopting a social transformation perspective in response. The starting point is an examination of the dominant perception of ‘migration as a problem’. This is followed by a discussion of some key obstacles to theoretical advancement in migration studies. I argue that a general theory of migration is neither possible nor desirable, but that we can make significant progress by re-embedding migration research in a more general understanding of contemporary society, and linking it to broader theories of social change across a range of social scientific disciplines. A conceptual framework for migration studies should take social transformation as its central category, in order to facilitate understanding of the complexity, interconnectedness, variability, contexuality and multi-level mediations of migratory processes in the context of rapid global change. This would mean examining the links between social transformation and human mobility across a range of socio-spatial levels, while always seeking to understand how human agency can condition responses to structural factors. The argument is illustrated through the example of the changing dynamics of labour forces in highly developed countries.

Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society

Abstract: Carola Suarez-Orozco, Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco and Irina Todorova, Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008, 440 pp., $29.95 hb. (IS...

Trade-Offs between Equality and Difference: Immigrant Integration, Multiculturalism and the Welfare State in Cross-National Perspective

Abstract: This paper investigates how integration policies and welfare-state regimes have affected the socio-economic integration of immigrants, focusing on eight European countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Belgium. It presents comparative data on integration policies and welfare-state regimes. The expectations derived from this comparative policy analysis are tested with cross-national data on integration outcomes regarding labour market participation, spatial segregation and incarceration. The results suggest that multicultural policies—which grant immigrants easy access to equal rights and do not provide strong incentives for host-country language acquisition and interethnic contacts—when combined with a generous welfare state, have produced low levels of labour market participation, high levels of segregation and a strong overrepresentation of immigrants among those convicted for criminal behaviour. Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands, which have co...

The Internal Dynamics of Migration Processes: A Theoretical Inquiry

Abstract: The migration literature has identified various feedback mechanisms which explain why, once started, migration processes tend to become partly self-perpetuating, leading to the formation of migrant networks and migration systems. However, existing theories on the internal dynamics of migration processes are characterised by three fundamental weaknesses. First, their focus on migrant networks coincides with a neglect of indirect feedback dynamics that operate through the impact of migration on the sending and receiving contexts, changing the initial conditions under which migration takes place. Second, existing theories are unable to explain why most initial migration moves do not lead to network migration and migration system formation. Third, their largely circular logic reveals an inability to conceptualise which migration-undermining feedback mechanisms may counteract migration-facilitating feedback dynamics and which may explain the endogenous decline of established migration systems. By drawing on various disciplinary strands of migration theory and by applying insights from the critical social capital literature, this paper proposes a conceptual framework on the internal dynamics of migration processes by elaborating a set of hypotheses on the various migration-facilitating and migration-undermining feedback mechanisms at play in the various trajectories and stages of migration system formation and decline.

‘Mind the Gap!’ Integrating Approaches to Internal and International Migration

Abstract: The interdisciplinary field of migration studies is split into internal and international migration, characterised by different literatures, concepts, methods and policy agendas. Most migration scholars nowadays research international migration, even though, quantitatively, internal migration is more important. Yet the distinction between internal and international moves becomes increasingly blurred, not only because of geopolitical events and the changing nature and configuration of borders, but also because migrants' journeys are becoming increasingly multiple, complex and fragmented. We present a schematic model that sets out 10 migration pathways that combine internal and international migration, and return migration, in various sequenced relationships. We survey the limited literature that attempts to compare and integrate internal and international migration within the same theoretical framework, both general models and some case-study literature from Mexico. We consider three approaches where theoretical transfer seems to hold potential: systems approaches, migrant integration, and the migration-development nexus. We conclude that considerable potential exists for integrating the study of internal and international migration, at both the theoretical and the empirical level. Too often one is studied without reference to the other, yielding a partial analysis. However, we baulk at attempting any 'grand theory' of migration which incorporates all types of migration, in all places and at all times.

Some Reflections on Structure and Agency in Migration Theory

Abstract: This paper explores the complex relationship between structure and agency and the way it has been incorporated into migration theory It argues that attempts to develop a coherent and robust body of migration theory have been thwarted by a structure–agency impasse: some approaches lean too close to functionalism while others veer into structuralism Those who search for middle ground have tended to draw on Giddens' notion of structuration as a way of articulating the balance between structure and agency in migration processes The article shows that, while structuration is beguiling, it has failed to offer any significant advances for migration theory This is a result of theoretical weaknesses in structuration theory rather than a failure of its application; this argument is based on a critical realist critique of the dualism inherent in structuration It is suggested that critical realism offers a fruitful avenue for a more sophisticated analysis of structure and agency in migration processes The article ends with a brief outline of a critical realist approach to migration theory and argues that this may offer a way around the structure–agency impasse

Integration Requirements for Integration's Sake? Identifying, Categorising and Comparing Civic Integration Policies

Abstract: Several countries in Europe have recently adopted obligatory language and country-knowledge requirements for settlement, naturalisation and immigration. Integration tests, courses and contracts are only a few examples of the new ‘civic integration policies’ states are using to promote individual autonomy and common values for newcomers. Are these requirements in response to concrete problems of immigrant integration? Do they enable, or actually inhibit, integration? This paper examines the various pressures behind attaching mandatory integration requirements to status acquisition. To systematically examine these policies, I develop a civic integration index (CIVIX) to measure language, country-knowledge and value-commitment requirements across the EU-15. While there is a general shift toward civic requirements across Europe, evidence reveals important differences in the degree of policy change. Finally, I explore how new civic requirements complement or challenge existing citizenship practices, identifyin...

Gender in the Migratory Process

Abstract: This paper argues for treating gender as a key category in the understanding of migratory processes. Starting with an illustration of the absence of women in mainstream migration research, it presents the debate on this phenomenon and its development from a focus on women to one on gender. Through discussion of the debate on current migration phenomena it is demonstrated how gender can be used in a conceptual framework which includes various levels (micro, meso and macro). The paper advocates the analysis of migratory processes within a broader framework of social change.

Migration and Social Change: Some Conceptual Reflections

Abstract: Examining the multiple ways in which migration relates to social change is a daunting task. It requires, first of all, defining what social change is and, secondarily, delimiting the scope of analysis to certain types of migration and not others. The greatest dangers that I envision in this enterprise are, first, getting lost in generalities of the ‘social change is ubiquitous’ kind and, second, attempting to cover so much terrain as to lose sight of analytic priorities and of major, as opposed to secondary, causal linkages. I seek to avoid these dangers by first discussing the concept of social change, second identifying the types of migration to be considered, and third examining the major factors that link one to another. I conclude the paper with four theoretical and methodological considerations that may guide future work in this field.

On the Move: Emotions and Human Mobility

Abstract: The introduction to this special issue of JEMS discusses some of the major developments in the study of emotions, and suggests ways in which various theories and perspectives can be relevant to the study of migration, in particular to the study of social interaction between migrants and members of local communities and to the study of interaction within transnational families. The paper addresses a series of questions. What are emotions? How are emotional processes shaped by migration? To what extent are these dynamics influenced by structural possibilities and constraints such as immigration policies or economic inequality? How do migrants interact emotionally with the people they meet in the receiving countries, and how do they attach to their new surroundings? How do they keep contact with their absent kin? In which ways do migrant organisations and institutions frame migrant experiences, provide support, increase a sense of belonging, or influence and translate government policies? In summarising curr...

Linking Integration and Residential Segregation

Abstract: In the introduction to this special issue of JEMS, we question the strong link which is often made between the integration of minority ethnic groups and their residential segregation. In the literature on neighbourhood effects, the residential concentration of minorities is seen as a major obstacle to their integration, while the residential segregation literature emphasises the opposite causal direction, by focusing on the effect of integration on levels of (de-)segregation. The papers in this special issue, however, indicate that integration and segregation cannot be linked in a straightforward way. Policy discourses tend to depict residential segregation in a negative light, but the process of assimilation into the housing market is highly complex and differs between and within ethnic groups. The integration pathway not only depends on the characteristics of migrants themselves, but also on the reactions of the institutions and the population of the receiving society.

Sensuous Multiculturalism: Emotional Landscapes of Inter-Ethnic Living in Australian Suburbia

Abstract: Every day, people from different backgrounds mix together, whether by design or necessity, in our multicultural neighbourhoods and cities. This article explores how senses, sensibilities, habitus and affects influence quotidian intercultural encounters in culturally diverse cities. The article is based upon ethnographic research in an Australian suburb which has seen large-scale Chinese migration to the area in recent years and experienced the associated rapid changes to the shops along the local high street. Focusing on a range of sites or ‘contact zones’ along the suburban high street, the paper explores the notion of cross-cultural habitus, in particular the sensuous and affective dimensions of what I term the ‘haptic habitus’. It then examines the sensuous and embodied modes of being that mediate intercultural interactions between long-term Anglo-Celtic elderly residents in the area and newly arrived Chinese immigrants and their associated urban spaces. Ranging through the senses, from sight, smell, s...

Studying Citizenship Constellations

Abstract: The papers in this special issue of JEMS illustrate how the field of citizenship studies is moving towards a much more systematic comparative approach. They also indicate that the gap between political and legal branches might be narrowing. This brief concluding contribution reflects on a perspective that goes beyond the currently dominant framework, without replacing it. For both comparative and normative purposes, we need to study not merely the citizenship traditions, laws and policies of states considered separately, but rather as part of intertwined citizenship constellations.

Tactical Cosmopolitanism and Idioms of Belonging: Insertion and Self-Exclusion in Johannesburg

Abstract: Research amongst immigrant groups in Johannesburg points to the emergence of distinctive ways of negotiating inclusion and belonging that transcend ethnic, national or transnational paradigms. Confronted with new South African nationalism, a restrictive immigration regime and xenophobia, immigrants have reacted with what we term ‘tactical cosmopolitanism’ to negotiate partial inclusion in South Africa's transforming society without becoming bounded by it. Rather than a coherent philosophy, it is a mish-mash of rhetorical and organisational tools drawing on a diversity of more established discourses and value systems. In so doing, they capitalise on cosmopolitanism's power without being bound by its responsibilities. This paper contributes to the emerging literature on cosmopolitanism ‘from below’, conceptualised not as a philosophy but as a practice and form of experiential culture.

Rewarding Integration? Citizenship Regulations and the Socio-Cultural Integration of Immigrants in the Netherlands, France and Germany

Abstract: This paper compares the levels of socio-cultural integration of naturalised and non-naturalised immigrants in the Netherlands, France and Germany. Socio-cultural integration is measured by host-country identification, proficiency and use of the host-country language, and interethnic social contacts. To increase cross-national comparability, we focus on immigrants from two rural regions in Turkey who migrated before 1975. Based on the assumption that easily accessible citizenship promotes socio-cultural integration, we test two hypotheses. First, whether naturalised immigrants display higher levels of socio-cultural integration than non-naturalised immigrants. Second, whether immigrants in countries with few preconditions for naturalisation show higher levels of socio-cultural integration. We find that naturalisation is positively associated with socio-cultural integration only in those countries—France and Germany—that have traditionally required a certain degree of cultural assimilation from their new citizens. Regarding country differences, we find that Turkish immigrants in France show higher levels of socio-cultural integration on all four indicators. For host-country identification, they share this position with Dutch Turks. The results show that limited cultural assimilation conditions tied to citizenship may be helpful in promoting socio-cultural integration, but also that the allowance of dual nationality does not have the negative effects that are sometimes ascribed to it.

Population Ratios and Prejudice: Modelling Both Contact and Threat Effects

Abstract: Are small or large outgroup populations more closely related to an ingroup's prejudice? This paper addresses this question with national probability survey data from Germany focused on resident foreigners Two interlocking processes underlie the complex relationship between population proportions and prejudice Typically, larger outgroup population proportions simultaneously increase both threat and intergroup contact The first process increases prejudice, the second decreases it Using structural equation modelling, our analysis reveals that these two processes can be effectively combined into one complex model Threat is perceptual; it involves what people think is the outgroup proportion and thus can be easily manipulated by political leaders and the mass media Contact is experiential; it can reduce individual and collective threat as well as prejudice The intricate relationship between threat and contact can be substantially altered by numerous moderators Hence, rigid group segregation can limit c

Examining ‘Expatriate’ Continuities: Postcolonial Approaches to Mobile Professionals

Abstract: In recent years, the inter-disciplinary fields of colonial and postcolonial studies have been enriched by nuanced analyses of the ways in which racialised colonial identities (cross-cut by gender, class and sexuality) have been enacted in particular settings. Nevertheless, the quantity and quality of knowledge about the lives of European colonials and settlers can be held in stark contrast with the relative scarcity of studies of those who might be regarded as their modern-day equivalents: contemporary expatriates, or citizens of Western nation-states who are involved in temporary migration processes to destinations outside the West. These contemporary expatriates are rarely, at least explicitly, considered through a postcolonial framework. As a corrective, this Special Issue draws together eight articles, each of which explicitly engages in different ways with this theoretical concern. In introducing the articles here, we argue for the significance of the past in shaping contemporary expatriate mobilities and note postcolonial continuities in relation to people, practices and imaginations. While discussing the resonances across the various geographical sites represented in the articles, we emphasise the need to also consider the particularity of postcolonial contexts. Finally, we suggest that it is also necessary to broaden the current, somewhat myopic focus on Western expatriates, to understand them in relation to other groups of migrants, particularly in globalising cities, and to include the perspectives of locals.

Minority Ethnic Segregation, Integration and Citizenship: A European Perspective

Abstract: Questions of minority ethnic settlement and integration have recently moved up the political and policy agenda across Europe. This paper re-examines the way in which minority ethnic housing segregation and integration are currently represented in political discourse across the European Union and reviews their implications for housing policy, inclusion and the social rights of citizenship. The paper draws on the RAXEN project reports of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia to provide a comparative investigation of housing segregation and integration across the 15 member-states of the European Union prior to its enlargement in 2004. The paper concludes that political discourses on ethnic segregation tend to accentuate the pathological characteristics of ethnic clustering, and to privilege explanations based on ethnicity and cultural difference at the expense of racialised inequalities in power and status. Such discourses are founded on a limited understanding of the link between ethnic se...

Towards Transnational Studies: World Theories, Transnationalisation and Changing Institutions

Abstract: A transnational studies perspective should be able to deal with both new social formations sui generis, such as transnational social spaces, and how ‘old’ national, international and local institutions acquire ‘new’ meanings and functions in the process of cross-border transactions There is now a voluminous literature dealing with the emergence and above all the forms of transnational activities of migrants and the attendant consequences for the social integration of immigrants If transnational ties and formations are consequential for social change and perhaps even social transformation, we also need to find indications about changing institutions in the national, international and local realms of transnational spaces From this perspective we need not only to look at various transnational ties and formations across the borders of national states, but also at the repercussions for national and local institutions In order to address this problem, the paper argues that both the concept of transnationali

Citizenship Attribution in Western Europe: International Framework and Domestic Trends

Abstract: This special issue of JEMS deals with the challenges of migration for citizenship attribution in Western Europe. In this introductory paper we analyse recent developments in citizenship attribution across Western Europe over the past 25 years. Despite the contradictory impact of the instrumentalisation and politicisation of citizenship policies, and the fact that countries have different citizenship traditions and migration experiences, we observe six broad trends. These relate to the descent-based transmission of citizenship by women, men and emigrants; ius soli provisions for second- and third-generation immigrants; the acceptance of multiple citizenship; the introduction of language and integration requirements for naturalisation; the avoidance of statelessness; and the increasing relevance of EU membership. We describe the background and core features of each of these six trends and provide empirical examples from citizenship policies in 18 West European countries since the early 1980s.

Ethnic Segregation and Residential Mobility: Relocations of Minority Ethnic Groups in the Netherlands

Abstract: The degree of spatial segregation and concentration of minority ethnic groups in European cities is well documented. However, little is known about the residential mobility between neighbourhoods that brings about changes in the patterns of ethnic segregation. In this paper we analyse the residential mobility of minority ethnic groups from an assimilation perspective, according to which moving out of ethnic into predominantly white neighbourhoods can be seen as an indicator of immigrants’ incorporation into mainstream society. Residential mobility into white neighbourhoods is therefore expected to be a function of socio-economic mobility and acculturation at the individual level. The prospect for the long term is that differences in residential mobility behaviour based on ethnic status should gradually disappear. However, in our comparison between the biggest minority ethnic groups in the Netherlands and the native majority, we find only partial confirmation for the assimilation perspective.

Do People Who Like Diversity Practice Diversity in Neighbourhood Life? Neighbourhood Use and the Social Networks of ‘Diversity-Seekers’ in a Mixed Neighbourhood in the Netherlands

Abstract: Urban policies in various countries aim at integrating minorities into mainstream society through combating residential segregation. One strategy is to change the housing stock. Assuming that the middle classes leave certain neighbourhoods because they lack suitable dwellings, building more expensive dwellings is an important policy trajectory in the Netherlands. However, living in the proximity of other income groups is in itself insufficient to overcome racial, ethnic and class divides in social networks. The usual policy indicator for defining ‘middle class’, e.g. income, is not a very good predictor for the diversity of networks of people living in mixed neighbourhoods. What, then, is? The first step is to ask what distinguishes people who prefer diverse neighbourhoods. Are people who are attracted by the diversity of an area different from others? Next, we question whether people who like diversity have more diversity in their networks or contribute in other ways to a more integrated neighbourhood th...

De-Segregation, Peripheralisation and the Social Exclusion of Immigrants: Southern European Cities in the 1990s

Abstract: The unfavourable evolution of social conditions and housing patterns of immigrants in contemporary Southern Europe challenges the association of social inclusion and integration with spatial dispersal. Recent housing and socio-urban changes, involving limited public-housing production and few opportunities for self-build housing, have triggered additional processes of socio-residential exclusion associated with peripheralisation, de-segregation in the context of urban renewal, and gentrification. Finally, the strength and specific composition of the major waves of immigrants in the 1990s and early 2000s have also contributed to narrowing migrants’ access to the housing market and promoting distinctive patterns of settlement. Focusing on the six metropolises of Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Turin, Milan and Rome, we explore patterns and dynamics of socio-ethnic segregation in Southern Europe, paying particular attention to the processes of marginalisation through dispersal, and questioning the orthodox associ...

‘New Shanghailanders’ or ‘New Shanghainese’: Western Expatriates' Narratives of Emplacement in Shanghai

Abstract: As in the early twentieth century, Shanghai has again become a site for Western settlement. This paper focuses on case studies of long-term Western settlers—those in the city more than five years—and how they situate themselves in the city through their ‘narratives of emplacement’ or stories of a personalised relationship to the city. Settler stories reference both a postcolonial nostalgia for the lifestyles of the 1930s Shanghailanders, and a newer post-socialist model of cosmopolitan citizenship for mobile urban elites, related to the state-sponsored ideal of the ‘New Shanghainese.’ Taken as a whole, expatriate narratives of emplacement construct an idealised image of a culturally cosmopolitan, locally integrated and economically successful immigrant entrepreneur. Few settlers may actually live up to this ideal, but these narrative strategies allow settlers to construct imagined links to a place and polity that substitute for more substantive forms of urban citizenship, while excluding other categories ...

The Globalisation of Marriage Fields: The Swedish Case

Abstract: Marriage fields - the geographical areas where people meet to partner - traditionally tend to be relatively small and local. Increasing international travel and the use of the internet have broaden ...

Does Spatial Concentration Always Mean a Lack of Integration? Exploring Ethnic Concentration and Integration in Toronto

Abstract: Toronto is Canada's major immigrant-receiving city and contains a wide diversity of ethnic groups Although Canadians are generally receptive to immigration there is evidence that some recent immigrant groups, especially those concentrated in Toronto's inner suburbs, are not faring well economically In this research we question whether spatial concentration necessarily equates with a lack of integration Specifically, we review Toronto's changing ethnic geography, comparatively evaluate the functional integration of selected ethnic groups who entered Toronto primarily in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s with those who came later, and provide a more subjective perspective on integration, drawing from the experiences of recently arrived Bangladeshi immigrants The findings call into question traditional perspectives on ethnic concentration, especially the spatial assimilation model, and highlight the importance of considering subjective integration, particularly satisfaction with life in the new country, as a wa

A Postcolonial Imagination? Westerners Searching for Authenticity in India

Abstract: This article looks at contemporary Westerners in the Indian city of Varanasi. The Westerners claim to appreciate authentic India and I argue that this authenticity refers to India's ancient, romanticised past instead of its modern present. I investigate how the Westerners encounter India and Indians and what kinds of subject positions are constructed in those encounters. The article also discusses how the authenticity becomes constructed, especially in regard to the Westerners who are studying Indian classical music in Varanasi. I argue that the Westerners ‘imagine’ India according their own needs and I ask how their understanding of India and Indian people relates to the ‘colonial imagination’.

The Impact of the Far Right on Citizenship Policy in Europe: Explaining Continuity and Change

Abstract: Over the past decade, the empirical study of national citizenship policies has emerged as a fast-growing area of research. This article contributes to that literature by focusing on the question of continuity and change in the 11 ‘historically restrictive’ countries within the 15 ‘older’ member-states of the European Union. It explains why six of the countries have liberalised their citizenship policies since the 1980s, whereas five have not. The article develops an explanation that focuses on the politics of citizenship. The main finding is that, while citizenship liberalisation is more likely to occur with a leftist government, the most important factor is the relative strength of far-right parties, which can serve to mobilise latent anti-immigrant public opinion, and thereby ‘trump’ the pressures for liberalisation.

‘These People Could Be Anyone’: Fear, Contempt (and Empathy) in a British Immigration Removal Centre

Abstract: Detention is proliferating as a governmental response to human mobility in the ‘war on terror’. Theoretical engagements with spaces of detention and enclosure have been influenced by Agamben's work on the camp and the sovereign exception. Such a view focuses on the abject ‘bare life’ that is produced by the sovereign decision. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among staff at a UK immigration removal centre, the paper makes the case for ‘going inside’ the detention centre. It examines the everyday life of detention through the lens of emotion, with a focus on fear and contempt. Exploring these emotions as forms of judgement or construal can unravel staff dispositions towards the detainees, and can demonstrate the ways in which emotion shapes the treatment the detainees receive. The paper argues for emotion as an analytical tool; in the case of detention, it can supplement abstract accounts of ‘the camp’.

Matters of control: integration tests, naturalisation reform and probationary citizenship in the United Kingdom

Abstract: In the new millennium there has been a shift away from multiculturalism and the politics of difference towards integration, assimilation and a gradual ‘thickening’ of political belonging. The alleged weaknesses of the multicultural model and advantages of thicker, communitarian notions of community are highlighted in recent discourses on migrant incorporation and increasingly reflected in citizenship and migration policies across European countries. In this paper I critically examine citizenship reform and civic integration policies in the United Kingdom and argue that the fashionable language of integration represents a politically dated and normatively deficient approach to ethnic diversity. I furnish the basic tenets of an alternative pluralist mode of inclusion based on respectful symbiosis and the ‘letting be’ of groups of migrant origin, and examine the conditions for such a model's empirical implementation.