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The unique contribution of this paper is to empirically compare and contrast demographic change in settlements with a population between 5,000 and under 50,000 (defined as towns) across different national urban systems in Europe with common definitions for the first time. The analysis uses a new data set based on harmonised small area data and harmonised morphological definitions of what a town is. The paper hypothesises first that a general model of demographic growth can be applied across national urban systems and secondly that regional demographic change is a significant predictor of demographic change in towns nested within those regions within this generalised model. A fixed effect multi-level regression analysis tests the importance of town-level and regional factors among towns from five national systems but also within two individual national urban systems. The findings suggest that national context still matters and within some national systems, regional context also strongly predicts demographic change in towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the methodological challenge of embedding remittances to counter dominant development discourses, this paper aims to contribute to remittances research by discussing financial diaries in Muy Muy, Nicaragua. Based on longitudinal and integrated quantitative and qualitative tracking of migrant household practices, financial diaries facilitate explorations of the social and contextual dimensions of remittances that may help account for their heterogeneous character. In particular, the paper highlights the partiality of diaries as well as the translocal interdependency and irregularity of household practices, providing clues for integrating remittances instead of isolating them as neutral instrumental transfers. It uses the example of household debt to further anchor remittances locally, illustrating how financial diaries can expose the changes and considerations that are part of household practices, including remittances. The paper concludes by suggesting that financial diaries need a decisively qualitative framework and may be particularly useful in contexts characterised by multiple migrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays small cities often lose population. In countries which are forerunners of the demographic transition, depopulation is mainly driven by out‐migration of youth. Through a case study of students from small Russian cities, this paper explores the nature of the association between local identity (LI) and migration intentions. The study suggests that young people with a stronger LI are on average more prone to return to their native cities after graduation. This 'traditional' relationship may be related to the difficulties in maintaining strong ties to a place of personal significance when not residing there in the Russian context. However, overall, youth tend towards a negative association with their cities and LI is formed as an opposition: the denial of place validity. Therefore, both way associations are possible. While a strong LI may influence the intention to migrate, it may also develop as an adaptation mechanism for those forced to return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gauges the reach of the state in regulating the flows of academics and harnessing them for development in China. Drawing upon a review of policy documents, secondary data and fieldwork findings from a research project that studies the developmental impact of academic mobility among Chinese scholars active in the Chinese- German academic space, this paper challenges the 'talents sans frontières' notion on the one hand, and illustrates the limits of the state on the other. Mobile scholars are conceptualised as active agents who are nested in, and hence being regulated by and at the same time shaping the Chinese state and its policies. Mobile scholars (and their local(ised) colleagues) are engaged in multiple relationships (ranging from collaborative, contradictory to conflictual ones) with the state, sometimes reinforcing and at other times toppling its notions of development. These relationalities call for new interpretations of the dynamic, contextualised and complex mobility-development nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to its ageing population and low birth rates, the European Union (EU) will need to import foreign labour in the next decades. In this context, the EU neighbouring countries (ENC) are the main countries of origin and transit of legal and irregular migration towards Europe. Their economic, cultural, and historical links also make them an important potential source of labour. The objective of this paper is to analyse past and future trends in ENC-EU bilateral migration relationships. With this aim, we specify and estimate a gravity model for nearly 200 countries between 1960 and 2010. Next, we use the model to obtain medium-run migration forecasts. Our results show a clear increase in migratory pressures from ENC to the EU in the near future, but probably lower than initially expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the challenge of measuring the extent of immigration to the UK following EU Accession in 2004, and argues that the most commonly used databases (UK Census, Labour Force Survey and Worker Registration Scheme) can be supplemented by the National Insurance Number (NINo) Allocations database, and demonstrates the utility of this data for future research by outlining the geography of immigration derived from NINo. The paper makes three important contributions through the thorough analysis of a data source currently underexploited in migration studies; first that the NINo, when used as a indicator of migration per se offers some interesting insights into migration in the UK, and secondly that as a tool for comprehensively measuring the registration of migrants working legally in the UK, it offers a means of constructing a internal geography of (legal) labour migration, as the paper demonstrates. Third, the analysis also identifies self-employment as a potentially important missing driver behind EU Accession Migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is more and more empirical evidence to show that highly skilled people are an important determinant of economic growth. Consequently, policy-makers are eager to keep their graduates in the region or attract graduates from elsewhere. It is also well known that people with a higher level of education exhibit high rates of spatial mobility. Much less is known about mobility patterns according to discipline and academic grade. Do the best people stay or leave, and does this vary according to discipline and type of region? This paper investigates the relationship between ability, field of study and spatial mobility using a micro-dataset on Dutch university and college graduates. The findings indicate that there are substantial net flows mainly towards the economic centre of the Netherlands, but that there are also flows between peripheral regions and to other countries. The paper finds that university graduates are more spatially mobile than vocational college level graduates and that when one looks at spatial behaviour according to discipline, there are also striking differences between graduates. This, however, does not necessarily mean that peripheral regions also lose their best graduates. For several disciplines, employers in the peripheral areas are able to retain the graduates with the highest grades, contrary to what the standard human capital framework predicts. However, the study finds that if graduates leave the region, those with the highest grades are more likely to move abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to accomplish cross-fertilisation between border studies and transmigration studies, research fields which exist almost separated from each other. It claims that the concept of border can contribute to the theoretical growth to maturity of the relatively young field of transmigration studies, and especially to a deeper understanding of the in-between lifeworlds of transmigrants (migrant transnationalism). In transmigration studies, borders are usually considered as boundaries, the physical lines on the ground, and therefore are seen as beginnings and endings of migrant transnationalism. In this paper, it is argued that borders can also have a constitutive role in migrant transnationalism. This constitutive function of borders has been thoroughly theorised in border studies in the last two decades. Contemporary border scholars regard borders not as passive lines, but as active and polymorphous social constructions which are the outcome of people's need to make differences. By bringing this broader notion of borders to the transmigration debate, it is argued that migrant transnationalism is about experiencing the border, or experiencing the difference. This broader sense of borders might help to bare the soul of migrant transnationalism, namely the condition of being continuously between here and there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we consider the nexus existing between returning transnational migrants to Trinidad and Tobago's adaptation experiences, matters pertaining to their transnational life-paths, family and community experiences and their views on transnationalism and return. The research is based on an analysis of the detailed narratives provided by forty informants by means of semi-structured interviews. The informants consisted of nine ‘second-generation’, seven ‘one-and-a-half-generation’ and twenty-four ‘prolonged sojourner’ returning transnational migrants to Trinidad and Tobago. The main conceptual themes that characterise Caribbean transnationalism are presented at the beginning of the paper. Addressing these in the context of Trinidad and Tobago, we present our narrative-based findings under the following headings derived from analysis of our informant's experiences and views: transnational family and life-course issues; transnational community relationships; keeping in touch; transnational mobility and ‘home as fixed anchor’; transnational identity; transnational economic and commercial interests; and strategic flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between international migration and entrepreneurship, drawing on data on around 300 return migrants to two West African states, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. The paper reviews existing evidence on the role of entrepreneurship and small firm formation in promoting development in Sub-Saharan Africa, before setting out a model of factors that influence whether migrants contribute to entrepreneurial activity by registering a business after their return. Factors tested for their association with entrepreneurship include a range of individual characteristics, duration of stay and reasons for return, and the acquisition of financial, human and social capital while abroad. The analysis suggests that work experience abroad is the most significant predictor of entrepreneurial activity among the return migrants interviewed, although savings accumulated while abroad, reasons for return and the frequency of visits home while abroad are also significant factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last two decades, many rural localities of Navarre (northern Spain) have experienced an increase of population related to the counterurbanisation phenomenon. This reflects the growing lure that rural localities have as residential environments for urban people, especially those coming from Pamplona, the county town of the region. Nevertheless, beyond this restructuring process, a plurality of profiles of migrants and reasons for moving to the country are found. This paper attempts to analyse this diversity through the analysis of the discourses of rural newcomers as expressed in diverse indepth interviews. Whereas most of the academic literature regarding counterurbanisation studies is based on conceptual categories defined prior to the encounter researcher/migrant, this paper explores the possibility of inverting the approach to the study of the phenomenon by considering the starting point as the lowest common denominator; how one experiences an urban-to-rural migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the understanding of non-local migration in the digital age by investigating emerging virtual practices in the migration process. We focus on the initial inspiration phase that theoretically defines the attainable reach of individuals considering moving. Using a case-based approach, we distinguish how online information and social contact influence an individual's early considerations and desires to move elsewhere. We draw on indepth interviews with young adults in Sweden. Our findings characterise how Internet-based information influences the spatial, social, and temporal horizons of inspiration with potential implications for subsequent plans. We find that virtual practices spatially expand these horizons and promote a shift towards insider information. Results further suggest that a flow of information and background knowledge regarding opportunities in other places drives the inspiration phase, extending its duration until it is more or less continuous. Reduced information friction increases the scope for impulsiveness to spark migration inspiration and intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although we are steadily getting a better understanding of why regional population decline occurs, little is known about the causes of differentiated levels of decline between municipalities in the same region. In this paper we address the causes of intra-regional differentiation in decline in the Dutch region Southern-Limburg. The quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that in the 1900-1945 period, differentiation in population development was the result of economic boom and bust in the mining areas. After 1945 (except for 1985-1989) however, the economic argument lost much of its relevance: intra-regional differentiation has primarily been the result of intra-regional and international migration and these flows are steered predominantly by life course motives, the uneven spatial distribution of housing opportunities and access to these opportunities within the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large body of literature problematises the role of the Mediterranean, as both civilisational hearth and liminal frontier, in both ancient and modern Europe. However, much less attention has been directed to the inland sea at Europe's northern edge: the Arctic. Increasingly, as the Arctic becomes attractive to non-Arctic European capitals as a potential site of investment and (in)security, European states, and perhaps the EU as a whole, are seeking to construct the Arctic, like the Mediterranean, as a space that is both marginal and central to the continent's future. This paper seeks to investigate the extent to which the Arctic is, to paraphrase Viljhalmur Stefansson, Europe's 'Polar Mediterranean' and what this means for Europe as it constructs institutions and identities that, as in the Mediterranean, use the concept of the inland sea to both incorporate and differentiate its internal and external 'others.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution has three overarching objectives. First, it seeks to describe the logics of fracture and cohesion governing current geopolitical dynamics in the Mediterranean. Second, in the face of these contradictory tendencies, it proposes the notion of archipelago-frontier as a concept for deepening our understanding of an ever more dispersed and ubiquitous geography defining the Southern border of the EU. In this light we draw on the contemporary resonances of the destabilising cartographic imagination of Al-Idrissi (1100-1165). And we argue that, read today, it helps us rethink the current symbolic, terminological (and hence geopolitical) abduction of the Mediterranean by the European Union, which the very term 'Euromediterranean' encapsulates. Finally, the paper underlines the necessity of forging new vistas on the Mediterranean engendering perspectives that are more dialogical, plurivocal and sensitive to permanent transformation, as evoked by a long-term spatial as well as political horizon of struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of gentrification through the lens of the interactions and perceptions which can be found in local, neighbourhood pubs. By interviewing predominantly Dutch, non-gentrifying customers in the rapidly gentrifying Indische Buurt neighbourhood in Amsterdam, we uncovered discourses which are both welcoming to, and cautious of the process. Three themes were examined: changes in the neighbourhood, changes in the role of pubs in daily life and changes in the interactions within pubs. In many respects, the process of gentrification is welcomed because it represents something ' Dutch' coming into the neighbourhood after years of immigration. Divisions between gentrifiers and non-gentrifiers are not experienced as starkly as is often portrayed in the literature; our respondents tended to be much more ambivalent than other non-gentrifying groups portrayed in studies elsewhere. This may be due to the more managed-nature of Dutch gentrification. However, there is a sense that one's pub is impervious to the changes in the rest of the neighbourhood, a discourse which must be taken into account when drawing any long-term conclusions from this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides insights into the spatial mobility patterns of young graduates in the Netherlands. Both home-to- HEI (higher education institution) as well as HEI-to-work mobility results in net flows towards the central economic region of the Netherlands. However, many graduates move within the larger central and peripheral regions and these flows are focused on cities. There is a strong regional component to graduate mobility as origins and destinations tend to be relatively close to the chosen HEI. Flows seem to be influenced by regional familiarity, with relatively many graduates moving back to familiar home regions. Often, a city's young graduate labour force and graduate residents have studied at a local HEI. Cities close to the economic core areas benefit from outflows of graduates from the largest employment centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In this last decade, Spanish urban areas have received large amounts of international immigrants, modifying (sub)urban dynamics. The paper specifically explores the metropolitan region of Barcelona (RMB), where, between 1998 and 2009, foreign nationality residents rose from 1.8 to 14.9 per cent of total population. Research focuses on the impact of foreign immigration on three specific dynamics: population growth and distribution/segregation of both Spanish and foreign populations within the metropolitan area; their respective residential mobility patterns; and consequences on their age and sex structure. Results show that there are remarkable differences between the two populations: foreign immigrants have preferably settled in the core city's least affluent neighbourhoods and, in a second phase, in inner ring municipalities, while the Spanish population continues to move to suburban municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper explores whether the concept of counterurbanisation, expanded with an international dimension, offers a valuable framework for understanding recent migration flows from the Netherlands to Sweden. Using a geo-referenced database comprising demographic and socio-economic variables, the post-migration employment status, employment sector and settlement location of Dutch migrants in Central Sweden are analysed. In addition, results from observation, interviews and a survey during emigration fairs are employed to describe the motives for migration from the Netherlands to Central Sweden. We argue that counterurbanisation is not an exhausted research topic, when international political, economic and socio-cultural factors are added to the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Second homes are at the nexus of tourism and migration. Previous research has demonstrated that second homes are important domiciles after retirement. Nevertheless, few studies have addressed this issue specifically. Many households claim that they would use their second homes more often, and some even state that they would convert these homes into their new permanent homes. While this is a known phenomenon, its geographical outcome is rather unknown. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the conversion of second homes into primary residences. This is done with respect to timing and geographical patterns. A geo-referenced longitudinal population database allows for identifying converted properties and linking them to information of their owners' households. This facilitates a discussion regarding the impact of conversions on planning and service provision in host communities, too. The analysis refers to the time period from 1991 to 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory contribution to this special issue of TESG, we want to question the usual way of conceptualising places and borders in the debate about transnationalism. We argue, that in studies of transnationalism, on the one hand the idea of nation-states as spatial containers is overcome, but on the other hand also reproduces the same spatial containers. Instead we suggest the use of the term ‘trans-world’ to avoid any connotation suggesting spatial containers. In this framework, places and borders are instead seen as multi-dimensional and dynamic concepts which can be applied to almost any kind of relationships transgressing and reconfiguring borders and places at all scales. The papers which follow this introduction show how in particular situations and contexts, these transgressing and reconfiguring activities can be conceptualised in very different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Netherlands has de facto always been a country of immigration. Yet, it does not consider itself as such. One out of five inhabitants in the Netherland has an immigrant background or has been born in a family in which one of the parents is an immigrant. Yet, large numbers of indigenous Dutch find it hard to acknowledge this fact. Likewise, the reception of newcomers has been rather awkward and sometimes in contradiction with the widely celebrated image of the Netherlands as the heartland of tolerance and multiculturalism. Also, many complaints can be heard about the supposedly ‘tardy’ progress of immigrants' incorporation. This paper, providing an overview of immigration into the Netherlands, suggests that immigration is always a painful process, but also that immigrants eventually find their way into the mainstream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Vienna, globalisation has restructured urban society in terms of de-industrialisation, occupational change, migration and unemployment. This paper focuses on the restructuring of urban society and the related neighbourhood changes in Vienna from 1971 to 2001. The study applies social area analysis and factorial ecology to identify the underlying dimensions in the formation of socio-spatial patterns and neighbourhood change through a cross-sectional analysis. The analysis does not directly reveal a trend towards spatial polarisation but rather supports the concept of emerging structural differentiations in a ‘quartered city’. Social housing policies on entitlements and the city's withdrawal as a housing developer just as it was embarking on subsidised urban renewal have contributed to an accentuation of structural differences. Extending the analysis to the Vienna metropolitan region indicates that suburbanisation is reinforcing a socio-spatial polarisation within the city proper, exacerbated by the territorial fragmentation of social housing policies between the city and its suburban region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Segregation of minority ethnic groups is a returning issue in public and political debates in many parts of the world. This paper focuses on Western European cities and presents information on levels and dynamics of segregation. While acknowledging the measurement problems, we feel comfortable in saying that overall segregation levels do not appear to increase. However, big differences exist, not just between immigrant groups in one city, but also between similar groups in different cities and countries. ‘Integration’ processes of those who settled a long time ago may be counterbalanced by new and difficult to predict immigration. Likely, individual preference, availability of resources, the role of the state, globalisation and economic restructuring as well as discrimination simultaneously impact on segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1990s, due to increasing immigration to the Czech Republic, a middleman system has been established in order to organise (irregular) labour of migrants mostly from Ukraine. Due to its extent, the breadth of activities involved and interconnection with Mafia structures, this system is relatively specific and plays a significant role within the labour migration environment. With respect to the fact that the middlemen and the migrant workers are mostly from Ukraine, we regard the entire system as a type of ethnic economy. This system has two hierarchic levels, the first of which deals with the procurement of irregular migrant labour. The second level is based on the relations between middlemen and organised crime. The paper tries to explain the causes for the establishment of the middleman system of labour organisation, to describe its operation, and the roles and mutual links among individual actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the construction of international students as objects of security in the United States during the period surrounding 11 September, 2001. Competing perceptions of international student migration as threatening or beneficial contributed to policy discourses that sought to mitigate the risk inherent in migration. The events of 9/11 prompted new evaluations of migration risk, and in particular, foreign students were securitised – that is, incorporated into policy dialogues as national security threats requiring immediate and strict controls. We examine the securitisation of international students through the evolutionary processes of risk perception and risk management, which are articulated in the construction and contesting of geopolitical storylines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the political and social transformation set in motion by the collapse of apartheid and the advent of democracy in 1994, South Africa's migration policy remained mired in the past. The Aliens Control Act of 1991 continued to govern the country's policy until the passage of the Immigration Act of 2002. After amendment in 2004, the Act finally came into force in July 2005. This paper focuses on the implications for South Africa and the SADC region of persisting with a policy framework devised in the apartheid period. First, the mine migrant labour system has remained intact despite a prolonged economic crisis in the mining industry. Second, the national introspection of the first democratic government led to a major decline in legal migration and immigration to South Africa. Third, apartheid-era tactics of migration enforcement intensified through a process of ‘violent othering’. Fourth, the old framework was sexist as well as racist, and while the new policy is gender neutral in language, it is not gender equal in effect. Finally, for a decade, South Africa successfully resisted SADC attempts to develop a regionally harmonised approach to cross-border migration. Recent changes in South African Government policy, particularly the new JIPSA initiative, suggest that the ‘lost decade’ may finally be over. However, without major policy transformation, the unseemly history of post-apartheid migration policy will continue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that home ownership has an impeding effect on migration. However, the strong increase in home ownership in the Netherlands since the Second World War has not led to a decrease in migration. In this paper three factors are identified which may counterbalance the expected negative effect of increasing home ownership on migration. First, the composition of the population of homeowners has changed towards younger, more mobile households. Second, home ownership has become more common, possibly leading to greater dynamics within the owner-occupied segment of the housing market. And third, macro factors such as economic growth may have led to more migration. Using the Housing Demand Surveys and logistic regression analysis, we investigated to what extent the effect of home ownership on migration changed in the Netherlands during the 1980s and 1990s. We find – contrary to what we expected – that during the research period the negative effect of home ownership on migration seems to have strengthened somewhat. Within the research period, however, this negative effect was compensated by a general rise in migration for both owning and renting households, possibly attributable to macro factors affecting migration, such as economic growth and changes in the housing market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a brief background on Singapore's development from a product of overlapping diasporas to a multiracial nation, this paper gives attention to the dynamics of renewed streams of transnational labour flows in the current decade in the shaping of the global city. It examines the bifurcated nature of Singapore's foreign labour policies and how the transience/permanence divide is predicated on ‘skill’. On the one hand, structural (non)incorporation of contract workers as they are inscribed into (and simultaneously proscribed by) the host society results in vulnerability among what are already heavily marginalised and ‘flexibilised’ workers with little job security and no opportunities for social advancement within the host society. On the other hand, building a nation in the image of globalisation also requires selectively inclusionist projects to entice foreign talent – highly skilled professional workers, technopreneurs, entrepreneurs and investors – in order to keep Singapore in the global race. These differential politics of inclusion and exclusion lock transmigrants into two structurally determined sectors of society and the economy, with, currently, no possibility of interpenetration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that migration studies are too parochial, focusing exclusively on ostensible immigration and incorporation policies and failing to take into account the ‘structuring’ effects of the overall institutional framework. The need for more comparative and more economically-oriented research is presented through a reflection upon the recent Dutch debate on the causes of the lagging performance of Turks in the Netherlands compared to those in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of inhabitants of the four largest Dutch cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, has stabilised since the mid-1980s. This stability in population size, however, hides considerable dynamics in population composition, especially regarding ethnicity, household type and socio-economic status. In this paper, we focus on the influence of international migration and residential migration flows on changing ethnic population structure. A selective residential outflow of natives and influx of foreigners, together with higher natural growth of ethnic minority groups, have contributed to very fast changes in ethnic composition of the four largest Dutch cities. The latest national population forecasts of Statistics Netherlands in December 2004 indicate an ongoing influx of foreign population groups into the Netherlands for the decades to come, despite the recent more restrictive immigration policy. One can expect from this a continuous international migration towards the large Dutch cities in particular. If the observed trend in native outflow continues, the foreign city population will soon cross the 50 per cent mark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In multi-ethnic Malaysia, the Malays are the politically dominant group, although they lag behind the Chinese and Indians in terms of the average income. Their dominant position explains why the question of Malay identity is an issue of national importance. This paper argues that the meaning of being Malay has gradually been changed, stressing Islamic religion more than language and customs. It implies that the Malays are more conscious of being part of the ummah, the worldwide Islamic community, and that Indonesians are increasingly seen as foreign Islamic nationals, just as Bangladeshi and Moro-Filipinos, and not so much as Malay co-ethnics. Being part of the ummah, however, does not mean that the national borders are open for co-believers. In fact, Malaysian public opinion and policies concerning immigration has undergone a shift in emphasis and rhetoric. During the first decades after Independence, the government at the time welcomed Indonesian immigrants, who were considered as strengthening the position of the Malay. This led to a relatively unrestricted policy towards Indonesian immigration. However, due to massive clandestine immigration, intensifying popular dissent towards immigrant labour, the Asian economic crisis of 1997/98, and the less privileged position of the Indonesians in terms of identity identification, public discourse has changed. The Government now stresses nationality or Malaysianess in its migration policy. Fuelled by economic pressures, rising xenophobia and the stigmatisation of immigrants, Malaysia’s policy now emphasises nationality in its official rhetoric, translating it into a greater assertion of the sovereign nation-state and national borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social and political transitions that have come about in Russia since the mid 1980s, in particular the legal recognition of the right to free movement in the Migration Law of 1993/96, have resulted in an increase in labour out-migration from the country. This increase is, however, not nearly as large as one would expect given the poor economic conditions in Russia. This paper presents the results of two surveys that were carried out to assess the migration intentions of Russian workers, the methods they employ to effectuate these intentions, and the obstacles they encounter. The population sample of the first survey represented the totality of active men and women in Moscow. The second survey was aimed at a specific sector of the Russian population for whom the possibility of labour migration is particularly relevant, i.e. highly qualified specialists. On the basis of the survey results, conclusions are drawn with respect to the potentials of permanent or temporary labour out-migration from Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]