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Transnational family living refers to the situation of maintaining relationships across national borders. It is dependent on a certain degree of flexibility from the state. As part of the crisis response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this flexibility was revoked. As a result, existing mobility inequalities became more visible than ever: while travel restrictions came as a shock to many, they created an additional challenge to those who had been struggling in the past. All persons engaged in transnational family living had to find ways to navigate the new situation. Our project is based on policy review and online ethnography taking Norway as a case. We discuss how individuals tried to maintain cross-border and mixed-status family lives during the first year of the pandemic, reacted to the borders closing, and found solace and advice from others in similar situations. The COVID-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions that followed have exposed vulnerabilities associated with transnational living and revealed to those involved that their arrangements were conditioned by the non-interference of the state. Our article engages in the discussion on the complexity of transnational family living and uses the case of the pandemic and the sudden state intervention in mobility regulations to expose the hidden parts of the puzzle that sustain the contemporary attributes of transnationalism.

BackgroundMigrant populations are particularly at risk of not receiving the care for mental ill-health that they require for a range of reasons, including language and other barriers to health service access. This record linkage study compares, for migrant and settled communities, the likelihood that a person in Northern Ireland with poor mental health will receive psychotropic medication.MethodsA cohort of 78 267 people aged 16–64 years (including 1736 migrants) who reported chronic poor mental health in the 2011 Census records was followed for 15 months by linkage to a centralised prescribing data set to determine the rates of pharmacological treatment. Logistic regression analyses quantified the relationship between psychotropic medication uptake and migrant status, while accounting for relevant demographic and socioeconomic factors.ResultsOverall, 67% of the migrants with chronic poor mental health received at least one psychotropic medication during the study period, compared to 86% for the settled population; this equates to an OR of 0.32 (95% CI 0.29 to 0.36) in the fully adjusted models. Adjustment for English proficiency did not significantly alter these models. There was also considerable variation between individual migrant groups.ConclusionAlthough this study suggests substantial unmet need for treatment of poor mental health among the migrant population of Northern Ireland, further qualitative studies are required to better understand how different migrant groups respond to mental ill-health.

Purpose: This article engages with the framework of performativity to unpack ethical challenges of interviewing migrants in the setting of shared ethnic background of researchers and participants. From a temporal perspective of shifting contexts from a shared space of the research process, to the post-research reciprocity management, it focusses on the particular aspect of disclosure. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on several qualitative studies performed by the authors as Polish migrant researchers with Polish migrant communities in Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom, the article documents the ethical challenges that come from a shifting “audience” of the research performance. Findings: Specifically, it discusses how the researchers perform their roles in the field with the focus on rapport building (relational disclosure), to then addressing how this performance changes when the dissemination of findings (representational disclosure) begins and continues over time. Practical implications: This article contributes to the long-standing anthropological debate on self-reflection in the field. Also, demythologizing the relations between a researcher and participants, as well as cautioning research by reporting difficulties at different stages of the research process, will likely make it easier for future researchers who may now be better prepared and anticipate the complexities of doing fieldwork. From a temporal perspective, it can also help a broader scientific community avoid pitfalls from presenting unfavourable results prematurely. Thus, the authors hope that this paper may sensitize migration scholars to the possible predicaments in the process of interviewing their co-ethnics. Originality/value: A methodological innovation lies in a clear focus on the cluster of ethical disclosure dilemmas and the article contributes to a lively debate on ethics of “insider research” in migration studies.

This article addresses methodological issues related to the consequences of researchers’ range of insider identities that emerge over the course of completing subsequent stages of qualitative migration research projects. Taking on a temporal approach to the insider status evolving over the course of field entry, data collection, data analysis, and dissemination, this article engages with nuanced insider positionalities. These range from apparent, to trespassing, to distanced, and to ambassadorial insiderness. Exploring a specific case of Polish mobility, this article assumes a methodological focus and argues that being “on the inside” of the migration research field may go beyond gender, ethnicity, and social status when it is linked to a project’s life cycle.

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the negotiation and re-shaping of multiple mobile masculinities among recent Polish intra-European migrants. It explores the impact of family and cross border relationships with other family members and friends on men’s identities and the enactment of masculinities. Drawing on the data collected for five thematically linked qualitative research studies, we consider voices of men, as well as juxtapose them with the reflections shared by their partners. One of the questions leading the analysis is whether the hegemonic masculinitystill holds for the Polish men abroad. While we suggest that it dominates the men’s narratives, we seek to highlight its limitations and the emergence of stories pointing to divergent and plural masculinities. We explore how the alternative non-worker roles of migrant men as husbands, fathers, sons and friends figure into the picture.