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This paper revisits conventional wisdom on US degree premiums for immigrant workers and shows that, despite the benefits of a US degree, migration policies and substandard labor conditions contribute to international student motivations to return home. Using two original datasets, I find that about a third of Indian-born US graduates leave the US, seeking employment opportunities abroad and a respite from US work visa restrictions. I draw on 105 in-depth interviews and 7,177 employment histories constructed from LinkedIn, and the analysis demonstrates the use of digital data to shed new light on under-studied patterns of return migration in institutional perspective. I find that US work visas are related to the underemployment of immigrant workers, and gaps in visa availability are associated with US labor market departure for Indian international students. At the same time, foreign employers reward skills and credentials developed in the US, and the results suggest that US degrees carry a higher premium in foreign labor markets. The paper emphasizes the role of institutions in the skilled migration system and identifies disjunctures in US migration policy. I identify opportunities for policy reform to improve immigrant labor conditions and increase the retention of US-educated migrants in the US labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pandemics refract sociopolitical tensions within societies and highlight how national belonging hinges on informal performances as much as legal status. While return migration has become a common practice and institutionalized strategy of state development, little scholarly work has probed how domestic populations view returnees and their claims to national membership. Using a large-scale, pre-registered online survey experiment deploying a give-or-take Dictator Game, this paper leverages the dynamics of COVID-19 to explore how Chinese nationals envision and treat returnees. First, our results illustrate that the Chinese population imagines returnees as a group of elites with substantial social and financial capital, even though returnees are a socio-economically diverse population. Next, by applying information priming, we demonstrate that Chinese nationals discriminated against overseas returnees during the pandemic and that this behavior was not primarily driven by fears of viral contagion. Finally, using mediation analysis, we show that participants' differential behavior towards returnees can largely be explained by participants' perceptions of returnees' class status and adherence to key markers of national membership. Ultimately, this paper broadens our understanding of the informal dynamics of national membership and intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores and compares the formation of choice-based citizenship between locally-born Hong Kong natives and Chinese immigrants. Unlike the conventional ‘duty-bound’ concept of citizenship, choice-based citizenship emphasises the autonomy of citizens to practice the civic virtues they consider important, rather than merely fulfilling conventional civic duties. It is considered a more progressive norm of citizenship. With results from a population survey (N = 1,066), this paper argues that while the formation of choice-based citizenship among Hong Kong natives is primarily driven by generational change, similar to what most Western societies have experienced, Hong Kong’s domestic factors play a significant role in the formation of choice-based citizenship among Chinese immigrants. Among these immigrants, choice-based citizenship is associated with their attitudes towards mass protests and news consumption through online media. Furthermore, the moderation effect presented in this paper reveals indications of the cultivation of choice-based citizenship through exposure to television news. By examining the formation of choice-based citizenship, this paper contributes to the exploration of how political socialisation occurs among migrants moving from a relatively authoritarian country to a host country with a relatively liberal environment and established democratic norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on research conducted with platform delivery workers in Washington D.C., this paper builds on the work of scholars committed to both describing and challenging the degrading conditions that so often define the gig economy. Acknowledging the importance of both employee classification and citizenship status to understanding the plight of platform-based migrant workers, this paper directs attention to the distinction that platform companies draw between what counts as work and what counts as waiting. This distinction is not only central to understanding the degrading nature of gig work, but to understanding the logic of what we describe as the fulfilment city – a city organized around the promise and potential of one-click, same day, or even same hour, delivery services. We end by arguing that questions of waiting and fulfillment are important for migration scholars concerned with the formation of 'immigrant counterpublics'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration towards the EU has passed for many decades via Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, using Ukraine and Belarus as transit states, yet it adopted new forms under Russia’s intensified ‘hybrid’ warfare, and its 2022 military invasion of Ukraine. This paper seeks to uncover: (1) how formal policies and informal practices were interconnected in the governing of the migration ‘crisis’ on the EU’s eastern border with Belarus (2021–2023); and (2) what different modes of power were used to govern it. The paper advances a polycentric governance perspective. It demonstrates that crisis governance was not simply pursued by the Belarussian government and the EU as direct parties to the conflict. It involved a plethora of other stakeholders including Middle Eastern states, Russia, and travel agencies as non-state actors, all entangled in specific relationships with one another. This paper’s contribution is to show how relational dynamics among these stakeholders governed the crisis via a mixture of formal and informal practices that entailed different levels of coersion. The polycentric perspective advanced here is more useful when studying crisis governance than statist, multilevel governance, or EU-centric approaches emphasising institutional logics, as it emphasises relations among actors, and the power that shapes these relations and the governance system as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a qualitative research project examining the dating narratives of single migrant men residing in Sweden and Italy. The study, analyzing 48 interviews with individuals from Syrian, Polish, Bangladeshi and Romanian backgrounds, along with ethnographic observations, employs a theoretical framework rooted in sexual capital theory and critical studies on men and masculinities. The analysis sheds light on the challenges faced by heterosexual single migrant men in their pursuit of intimate partners, attributing these difficulties to lower levels of social, economic and cultural capital, as well as the influence of their specific masculinities, which may be perceived as less attractive within the host societies. The paper argues that the migrant experience can be viewed as a distinctive sexual field wherein individuals encounter unique dynamics and obstacles in the realm of intimate relationships. The implications of these findings extend beyond the personal experiences of migrant men, offering insights into the broader socio-cultural landscape of host societies and the complex interplay between migration, masculinity and intimate relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on in-depth biographical interviews with foreign scholars in China (hereafter 'FSC'), this paper examines the impact of various infrastructural interruptions on the transnational lives of mobile individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores how the labour of maintenance and resourceful quick-fixes employed by FSC constitute infrastructuring strategies in times of isolation and uncertainty. Specifically, the paper first asks how specific COVID-19-induced infrastructural barriers, such as tightened visa policies, mandatory PCR testing for border crossing, and suspended flights, intersect with the (im)mobility experiences and trajectories of FSC. Second, the paper investigates how these individuals navigate and cope with infrastructural glitches by fashioning a set of infrastructuring strategies to maintain transnational lives within the pandemic context. In doing so, this paper develops a deeper understanding of not only the generative but also destructive capacities of infrastructural processes in terms of their transformative effects on migrant identities, aspirations and lived experiences, further revealing the fragility, incompleteness and situationality embedded in migration infrastructures. More critically, this paper theorises how infrastructural interruptions constitute the necessary social-temporal conditions in which individuals' infrastructuring strategies emerge through acts of waiting, adaptation and maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs data from the 2021 UK census to initially explore sub-state (English, Welsh) national identities among minority ethnic groups. This shows that these identities remain much more exclusive of people in minority groups than is a British identity, and that this exclusion is particularly marked with respect to English identity. The analysis then builds on this observation using similar data to examine English identification among the White British ‘majority’ in a ‘superdiverse’ city – London. Attributes which are typically shared by London boroughs in which identification as English deviates most from the national average, and multi-variable analysis which considers the ethnic structure of the borough in which an individual lives alongside other key factors (age, education, social class) suggest differences in identification between people living in boroughs that are characterised by more established and extensive ethnic diversity and those in boroughs transitioning from a previously more homogeneous (white) ethnic structure. In exploring how the articulation of a specific national identity might relate to ethnically-diverse or ‘superdiverse’ contexts, the paper uniquely contributes to recent research which calls for a stronger focus on how people who do not belong to migrant-minority groups might respond to living in such contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how research on gendered violence among Brazilian migrant women in London has been translated through a range of creative engagements. It argues that these can challenge traditional forms of knowledge production, and advance intersectional feminist struggles through a logic of translocation. Yet it also challenges homogenous artistic encounters through developing 'creative translation pathways' which delineate different configurations of how researchers, artists, and participants using varied art forms. The paper focuses on two 'creative translation pathways' that capture different interpretative framings around the same research project. The first reflects a curatorial perspective through Gaël Le Cornec's verbatim theatre play, Efêmera, which foregrounds her interpretation of Brazilian women's stories adding a metatheatrical dimension to strengthen the narrative and connection with the audience. The second is a co-produced collaborative engagement, We Still Fight in the Dark, with community drama group, Migrants in Action, based around experimental workshops to produce an audio-visual film and installation where survivors' perspectives and well-being are paramount. While both creative translation pathways reflected translocational feminist goals in raising awareness around gendered violence with a view to transform them, each had tensions around the individual, collective, artistic and therapeutic logics in the process of knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017 an exhibition of over 100 craft pieces created by Chilean political prisoners held in concentration camps during the military dictatorship, was launched in the UK along with an accompanying short film, 'Crafting Resistance: the Art of Chilean Political Prisoners'. Drawing on these arts-based interventions, the paper reflects on the use of craft objects both as a symbol of political resistance and a means of initiating difficult conversations around forced political exile, trauma and mental health while creating space for people to 'tell their stories'. Indeed, the paper contends that projects such as Crafting Resistance can 'care for knowledge' through the curation of craftwork while simultaneously creating space for counter memories. The analysis also highlights the changing relationship between the craft makers and the craftwork, argueing that placing the craft objects within the exhibition assigns a new role to the objects as they became part of a display of collective memories and potentially contribute towards collective healing. Finally, the paper advocates for greater recognition of the historical use of craft as a political expression, which to date has been relatively neglected in debates around the use of arts-based research and methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the process of co-producing an animated film about the migration journeys of Colombian women resident in Antofagasta, Chile. It first establishes the relationship between feminist epistemologies and arts-based methodologies, which hinges on embodiment. It then turns to a detailed discussion of using film co-production as a research method for accessing and expressing embodied experiences of migration. This discussion highlights how moments of discomfort (Gokariksel, Hawkins, Neubert, and Smith, 2021) experienced by the researcher motivated the search for a more collaborative methodological approach that was better attuned to lived experience. This included striving towards more inclusive practices with respect to recruitment, anonymity, and confidentiality. Moments of discomfort also revealed how care and caring responsibilities are entangled with research, and how they gender possibilities of participation and production for community co-producers and artists, as well as for researchers. Finally, through discomfort, lessons were learned about the politics of representing experiences of migration, violence, and endurance, as well as joy. The paper concludes that, whilst by no means a panacea, collaborative arts-based research methods can offer an innovative toolset for exploring embodied experience and for navigating the relational and representational complexities attendant to research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the historical antecedents, character and implications of Assam’s National Register of Citizens as a socio-legal instrument. It seeks to understand how dominant nationalisms and the state produce volatile paper citizenship regimes, and use law – as a reified transcendental performance of social will – to construct the ‘minority citizen’ through categories of ‘belonging’ and ‘citizenship’. The paper does this by analysing three typologies of the law-society interaction. First, it examines what/who is a citizen from within law. Second, it critiques the mythology of law by giving an account of belonging and suffering of minority citizens without law. Third, it foregrounds peripheral subjectivities by offering an account of minority citizenship beyond law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyse forms of belonging and un-belonging created in a situation of permanent liminal legality in one’s place of residence. The concept of liminal legality zooms in on spaces of social existence in everyday lives in a context of legal ambiguity. The focus of the paper is Eritrean and Ethiopian migrant communities who resided in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in 2021. The majority had lived in Khartoum for decades, or were even born there, but remain without any hope for full legal status or citizenship in Khartoum. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants, I analyse the complex and ambiguous forms of belonging and un-belonging this liminal legality produces, and how aspirations are created and shaped by it. I argue that in certain aspects of everyday life, liminal legality does not hinder a social existence as quasi-citizens of Khartoum. At the same time, important aspirations are being curtailed by liminal legality. This creates forms of un-belonging that undermine social existence. I conclude that migrants are subject to the enduring power of the nation-state in defining who belongs and who is excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before COVID-19, visitors from China, were a prime target for the European tourism industries. Yet, their mobility was constrained by the Schengen visa requirement for any trip to a European Union (EU)’s Member States. While the literature on Schengen visa policy has highlighted the repressive practices of street-level bureaucrats processing visa applications abroad, this article seeks to understand how Schengen visa policy is implemented when the objective is to attract potential visitors rather than drive them away. The paper argues that the economic imperative to attract Chinese tourists to Europe is turning local consular cooperation from Schengen into local consular competition. To support this claim and using ethnographic methods as well as a relational approach to implementation, the paper develops the concept of visa marketing to analyse the race to attractiveness between French and Italian consulates based in Beijing, the capital of China. Visa marketing refers to the use of visa procedures (receipt conditions, reliability, processing speed, etc.) by consulates as sales arguments to advertise the destination they represent. In essence, the article presents a case of domestic actors appropriating common visa regimes, engaging in competition to entice foreign consumers to their territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article raises two questions: (1) how do formal policies and informal practices intersect in coercing returns of migrants without legal immigration status, refused asylum seekers and those unlikely to get asylum? (2) how do migrants at risk of return navigate the coercion they are exposed to? Focusing on the entanglement of formal and informal practices, we develop a typology of involuntary returns, distinguishing among pushing, imposing, and incentivising policies and practices. This typology invites us to see nuances in the forced and voluntary return dichotomy because coercive practices of implementation are embedded in all these types, but the level of coercion varies in different situations. The paper also investigates how migrants exercise agency by contesting/resisting or complying with the return procedures. The article contributes to the scholarship on returns by unpacking formal and informal policy and practice dynamics and migrant agency. Empirically, the paper is based on observations and documentation of practices derived from field research and 97 interviews conducted with returnees from EU countries and Turkey to Albania, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan between 2018 and 2023. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the issue of institutional discrimination in relation to the welfare access of migrant minorities in Italy, with a specific focus on the subnational level. Adopting a socio-legal approach that is based on a series of lawsuits, it discusses the role of pro bono legal advocacy in identifying and removing bans introduced by territorial administrations against migrant minorities. First, the paper examines what kind of explicit and implicit criteria of exclusion were introduced. Second, it explores the reasons behind, highlighting why and how «Italians first» has become a widespread welfare politics at subnational level as well as to what extent such sentiment has led to an obstinate resistance for the application of anti-discriminatory principles. Third, the paper brings to the attention the series of obstacles that pro bono lawyers encounter in their activity, showing which problems influence their mission against institutional discrimination in Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to the other papers in this special issue, this paper reflects a specific case of co-agency between states and individual migrants, particularly students and alumni networks. Based on a qualitative case study with 29 Georgian students and 14 institutions and organizations, this paper explores the impact of Georgian alumni on polity building in Georgia. Here we can observe two phases: Firstly, the states of Georgia and of Germany act as co-agents by facilitating migration to young Georgian students by financing their studies in Germany (student scholarships) with the objective that the students return and transfer their knowledge to the country of origin. Subsequently, the Georgian alumni who studied law in Germany act as co-agents between different institutions in both countries. In doing so, they transform state institutions by themselves and contribute to the development of the legal and political system in Georgia. They do that particularly in such important legal fields like constitutional law, civic law, and criminal law, but also in the creation of parliamentarism based on a bicameral system or the promotion of separation of church and state in Georgia. That takes place after return migration as well as from Germany through transnational networks and mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potentiality of converting capitals in new national fields following migration has been the focus of a number of studies. Another, much smaller, literature examines experiences of return migration. In this paper, we follow 15 Israeli families (where both mothers and children have been interviewed) who have been globally mobile for professional reasons. We examine cultural capital accumulation strategies for the children and how these facilitate the occupation of advantageous social positions while abroad. Having returned to Israel, partly due to the COVID pandemic, the national cultural capital the families have so actively cultivated in their children is evaluated as not authentic enough. Meanwhile, the cosmopolitan cultural capital that has been so valorised abroad, is not recognised as something the children can draw on to position themselves either. The paper contributes to the study of return migration, with a unique focus on globally mobile families returning ‘home’. We also examine how national cultural capital is conceived and differentially assessed as families move from a more transnational space to that of their home country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the extraterritorial processes of migration governance has developed a strong focus on immigration states’ externalisation management and the diaspora strategies of emigration states. In labour migration, the scholarship on migrant-sending states has largely focused on the systematic processes of recruitment and employment of migrant workers; in contrast, the question of how migrant workers are extraterritorially governed in return has received less attention, despite its importance for understanding migration governance beyond sending country jurisdiction. This paper contributes to this area of research by investigating how migrant workers are repatriated from host countries during disruptions. Using assemblage thinking as analytical lens, I consider repatriation as an extraterritorial, emergent process, shaped by the relations among state and non-state actors, material and technological resources, and the role of street-level actors. Focusing on the case of the Philippines, I draw from over 30 key informant interviews with repatriation actors to examine how the exit stage of the repatriation process is constructed, mobilised and negotiated for Filipino migrant workers, in ways that reveal the possibilities and challenges of migrant protection in host countries. The paper shows how assemblage and street level analysis can illuminate the different ways migration processes emerge amid disturbances in extraterritorial space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number of asylum seekers grew, and flight stories became more complex, many Western governments deployed national research units, tasked with producing reliable Country of Origin Information (COI) to assist officials, judges and policy-makers in decision-making. Building on ethnographic research at Staatendokumentation, the COI unit at the Austrian Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum, the paper argues that country research practices can best be understood as 'tinkering' – e.g. making use of know-how, equipment, material sources at disposal to produce workable COI in conditions of uncertainty. The concept of tinkering is derived from science and technology studies (STS) and brings into view how the research professionals cobble together a workable version of reality with the methodologies and materials at hand. Moreover, it highlights how country research involves continuous modification and adjustments to satisfy the needs of the unwitting case officer as the end-user of COI reports. Finally, using insights from feminist science and technology studies, the paper shows how country experts foster care for some things – i.e. the workload of case officers – at the expense of others – i.e. the experience of the asylum seeker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of migrants and the creation of data identities lies at the core of datafied forms of migration and border control. In recent years, Frontex has made identification to one of its key tasks and conducted so-called screenings in many EU member states. Yet only little is known about the screening materials in use. Based on an ethnographic inquiry of Frontex' data practices, this paper analyses Frontex booklets, dossiers, questionnaires, images, and forms and studies how they structure the situation of identification. Making use of research in science and technology studies and recent research on suspicion and credibility assessment, it argues that those materials not only compile information but work as socio-material devices of suspicion that render migrants into fraudsters and translate peoples' actions, stories, and performances into accounts of truthfulness or deceit. As devices, they frame cases, script interactions, code statements, create stigmata of belonging, and produce purified accounts, and thus enact multiple forms of suspicion. The paper concludes with a critical reflection about the credibility of those materials and speculates about how devices could be designed otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the inconsistent law enforcement which only targets Chinese manufacturing firms active in the Italian fashion industry. Theory building is deeply embedded in rich empirical data and in a dialogue with concepts and theories developed in a wide range of fields and subfields such as urban studies, development studies, studies on local governance, and migration studies. While focusing on dynamics unfolding at the local scale, the paper positions selective law enforcement measures into a wider, multi-layered context which encompasses shifts in the global division of labour, processes of capital investment and disinvestment putting pressure on territories, local policies of migrant inclusion/exclusion, and the trajectory of local production systems. I analyse non-enforcement of the law as an ethnicised battle over economic accumulation, with significant redistributive consequences. At the same time, I point at the role of ethnically selective forced compliance as a tool used by the stakeholders in the territory to counter the potential loss of political authority engendered by the impact of crucial global shifts on the locality. In short, the paper proposes a political economy perspective: it teases out the underlying logic of selective law enforcement disentangling its economic, social, axiological, ethnical, and ultimately political dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary nationalism in the West tends to be understood in ethnic terms and associated with a bottom-up reaction to disliked effects of globalization, in particular migration. But there is also a top-down nationalism that is inherent in states' boundary-policing and – constituting membership policies. This paper draws the contours of a state-level neoliberal nationalism. Its imprint can be found in social policy, citizenship policy, and – the focus of this paper – immigration policy, in particular for the highly-skilled. Neoliberal nationalism combines diversity and meritocracy, and thus a modicum of cultural and economic liberalism. The prefix 'neo' flags the refashioning of political community from solidarity-based to contract-based, conditional on individual contribution and strict reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how agents such as agricultural migrants, agricultural employers and local community representatives apply the dual frame of reference (DFR) to naturalize, rationalize and justify the presence of exploitative labor practices for agricultural migrants. The paper gives a qualitative account of social dynamics in two agricultural-dependent communities located in Northern California and South-Eastern Norway. Qualitative one-on-one interviews with agricultural migrant workers (n = 11), employers (n = 10) and community representatives (n = 12) were conducted in English and Spanish. Our findings demonstrate how DFR is utilized by employers to justify labor strategies that rely on migrant workers, employees to rationalize their participation in exploitive work, and by local community representatives to naturalize the exploitative labor practices of migrant workers in their community. Our research findings further add to the analysis by suggesting that the frames of reference are dynamic based on changes of material conditions in the home country. Lastly, we find a third frame of reference focused on the future of the agricultural worker and the hopes for future generations. Combined, these perspectives add to the understanding of the disempowerment of workers, lack of successful changes and overall, upkeeping of exploitative migrant labor systems in the agricultural industries and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, disability studies have ignored the experiences of people who migrate, while migration studies frequently excluded disabled people. This is a surprising omission from both fields of study given that many disabled people are migrants, and many migrants are disabled people. There is a clear lack of knowledge about disabled people among migrant populations. Most, if not all, studies in this area focus on disabled people among forced migrant populations; this paper focuses on voluntary migrants from the EU living in the UK during the Brexit transition period. We report findings that are part of a larger qualitative study conducted in 2018–2019 in the north of England. This paper is based on four in-depth interviews with disabled EU migrants and three key informant interviews with representatives from organisations that work with migrant and disabled people. The research findings indicate that disabled EU migrants in the context of Brexit represent some of the most invisible and vulnerable people in the contemporary UK. The contradicting stereotypical perceptions of cheap physical migrant labour (highly classed issue) and disability linked to economic unproductivity, lead to the invisibility of disabled migrants in theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper looks at one of the most dynamically evolving migration processes in contemporary Europe – labour migrants in Poland. Poland, until very recently a typical emigration country started receiving large numbers of migrants only after 2014. This process, however, cannot be explained in supply terms only. In fact, it was also a strong structural demand for foreign workers that played at least an equally important role. This newly established migration system has been tested during the pandemic along with policy adjustments and economic changes. We claim that despite the very fact that the 'essential workers' rhetoric was almost absent in the Polish public discourse, foreign workers played a significant role in securing the continuous operation of many sectors of the economy. The paper shows that the role of migration in Poland has changed along with the transition from a net-sending to a net-receiving country, but still it worked as a safety valve during the pandemic. We argue it was possible because of liberal rules regarding international movement and work abroad. By focusing on the role of exogenous shocks and by considering the very specific migration system in Poland, this paper contributes to the growing literature on the labour market-immigration nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dentists, managing highly prevalent oral disease are in demand across the world and hence potentially highly mobile. Both the United Kingdom and Australia, continue to be favourable destinations for migrant dentists. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the professional integration of migrant dentists in the UK and Australia, and health system responses, while explicating implications for future health workforce governance. In doing so, the paper adopts a system-thinking approach to analyse interactions between the migration system and other societal systems. This is the first multi-country study to analyse the professional integration of migrant dentists through the lens of health workforce and migration governance. The study draws on semi-structured qualitative interviews with migrant dentists in both countries, together with national systems registration and examination data and relevant policies, together with data from government and global datasets. Both countries are high-income countries with a relatively large dentist-to-population ratio maintained through reliance on migrant dentists. The health systems and migration governance have responded by increasing the number of local graduates with limited success in the UK, potentially due to organisational demands, and the multifactorial complex mutual influences between higher education systems, labour market, feedback loops and dentist migration systems creating a nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern complex societies with profoundly interlinked sectors and sub-sectors, policymakers and scholars need to adopt systemic thinking as an analytical lens for mapping the intersections and interdependencies between social systems and their related vulnerabilities. This paper argues for an integrated governance approach to manage the risks and opportunities arising from the interactions between human mobility (HM) and disaster risk (DR). The analysis of HM and DR governance frameworks at the international and national levels (including through the case study lens of Bangladesh) shows that some progress has been made in integrating aspects of HM into DR governance and vice versa. Although respective frameworks have been integrated to a certain extent, further points of convergence and overlap still need to be adequately addressed. The policy integration process can be guided and facilitated by combining two conceptual frameworks originating in the HM and DR governance fields: the human mobilities perspective and the systemic risk approach. The paper concludes by proposing an HM-DR governance framework informed by these perspectives and steered by an interagency standing committee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrant families are generally less likely to use nonparental care for their pre-school-age children than native families. The few studies that have systematically examined the determinants of centre-based care (day care) for migrants have often zoomed in on the migrant population and have not made comparisons with natives nor have they decomposed the migrant-native gap. This paper presents a mediation analysis with an elaborate set of measures conceptually categorised into cultural and social support explanations. Using nationally representative survey data on Dutch parents with origins in Muslim countries and a comparison group of parents with Dutch origins (natives), this paper shows large and growing gaps in the enrolment of 0–4-year old's in subsidised day care even after controlling for differences in working hours, income, and education. A substantial part of the gap could be explained by cultural differences, particularly the more traditional attitudes toward marriage and family and the higher levels of religiosity among migrants. Of the cultural effects, a lack of trust in institutions appeared to play no role. Social support explanations that rely on alternative sources of support for child care were less important and differences in neighbourhood cohesion served as a suppressor of the gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares immigration reforms across democratic and autocratic states. Mobilising two large-scale datasets, it first challenges the prevailing notion that political regime types inherently dictate immigration policy outputs. The analysis shows that although immigration is central to political debates worldwide, reforms are not that frequent and, when enacted, their restrictiveness does not consistently differ by regime type. Instead, restrictions focus on border controls and openings on entry and integration policies regardless of the political regime in place. The paper then mobilises case studies from around the globe to delve into the policy dynamics underpinning immigration reforms across regimes. It shows that while all migration states grapple with the multifaceted challenges that immigration raises, autocratic politics offers a broader toolkit to resolve the trade-offs between cultural, rights-based, economic and security issues. This creates unexpected opportunities for open immigration reforms under autocratic politics, a dynamic I call the 'illiberal paradox' as a counterpart to the 'liberal paradox' observed under democratic politics. To advance theory-building across the democracy/autocracy divide, the paper concludes by arguing that the liberal and illiberal paradox concepts are not exclusive to democratic or autocratic regimes, respectively, but are valuable analytical tools to understand immigration politics across the political regime spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EU containment and Tunisian domestic policies have produced a new, Black migrant, urban underclass. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork among Ivorian migrant women in Bhar Lazreg, a Tunis banlieue, this paper explores how the women navigate and negotiate everyday life. On the urban margins of society, forgotten and far from the border, migrants reinvent ways to keep moving. The paper suggests that their stuckness is still all about movement as encapsulated in the emic term bouger – akin to treading water, involving a constant motion to stay afloat, but without ever getting anywhere. Tension operates across many levels, between the physical, the temporal–spatial, and the existential. Embedded in this tension is a second emic term prison à ciel ouvert (open-air prison). Juxtaposing a space that feels carceral and limiting while simultaneously bursting with potential for movement, the paper contributes to the literature on immobility within mobility. But beyond that, the empirical findings show a far more complex reality, complicating the notion of transit. By exploring the tensions and entanglements between the emic terms it becomes clear that to understand spaces of transit it is essential to understand stuckness and movement as fundamentally intertwined, overlapping, and co-constitutive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative dissemination of research findings in the public and media spheres has the potential to reach large audiences, enhance forced migrants' political participation and impact policies. 'Going public' further requires both researchers and forced migrants to engage visibly in a sphere that is often unexpected and less familiar to them. This paper discusses the methodological and ethical challenges and possibilities surrounding joint dissemination, drawing on a case study of public and media co-dissemination that occurred as part of an anti-deportation public campaign. In 2018, the Israeli government initiated a forced deportation plan aimed at deporting refugees to Rwanda. The authors had previously conducted research exploring the journeys of refugees who 'voluntarily' departed Israel to Rwanda, revealing that the deportees were pressured to embark on life-threatening journeys, eventually gaining protection in Europe. The findings were collaboratively shared through various activities, such as media interviews, public events, advocacy and cooperation with civil society organisations in Israel and globally. This paper discusses the three main aspects derived from our experiences: power imbalances and divisions of roles, consent as a process, and re-traumatisation and agency. Finally, ethical and practical recommendations for mitigating some of these challenges are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely acknowledged that immigrants use their social networks (friends, family and colleagues) to find a job upon arrival to their destination country. However, there is little evidence on how return migrants find jobs upon their return to their home country, one of the main pillars of re-integration. This paper examines the role of social networks for returnees finding work. It draws on data from two years of Colombian nationally representative surveys conducted in 2016 and 2017. Colombia has one of the highest numbers of displaced people due to protracted internal conflict. I exploit a mass deportation event of Colombian migrants from Venezuela in 2015 which prompted a wave of return migrants and show that return migrants are more likely to rely on networks in their search than never migrants, and that this is potentially due to inability to find jobs through other means. I also show that jobs found through networks for return migrants may be lower quality than jobs found through other means. This paper contributes to the literature on return migrant integration, and speaks to an important question in the literature: Will friends and family still be there for you after you have left? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most extant research on natives' attitudes toward immigration and immigrants (ATII) pays scant attention to the explanandum: predictors are widely assumed to apply across attitudinal facets regardless of how the dependent was defined and operationalized. This paper employs a sequence of factor and regression analyses to explore the dimensional structure of ATII in Spain, based on survey data collected in 2020 (N = 2,344). The most parsimonious factor solution for our dataset's broad basket of attitude gauges distinguishes impact assessments and migration policy preferences ('attitudes toward immigration') neatly from sentiment toward various immigrant groups ('attitudes toward immigrants'); the ensuing latent variables correlate with differentiated sets of predictors. Predictors based on extant theorizing prove highly pertinent for immigration attitudes, but contribute less to explaining anti-immigrant sentiment. In a more fine-grained factor solution, conceptually coherent ramifications emerge within both of these main dimensions; again, the more nuanced attitude components are associated with differentiated predictor profiles. These findings caution against the widely held notion that any sentiment or appraisal regarding international migration and migrants expresses a general attitude in this realm, instead encouraging researchers to acknowledge the complexity of ATII and pursue facet-specific explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mobilisation of assets from one national field to another is a topic that has attracted significant sociological attention. In this paper, we investigate migrant physicians who obtained their medical degrees outside the EU/EEA and trace the process of validating their degrees in Sweden. The study is inscribed in Bourdieu's sociological tradition and is based on a questionnaire and interviews with physicians. Analysing the mobilisation of cultural capital across national borders, we emphasise the importance of distinguishing its different states in the context of migration. Based on our case, we argue that the time physicians spend in the 'waiting room' challenges their ability to maintain and perform their medical craft. We show that the time it takes to institutionalise assets and accumulate capital in another national context can lead to the risk of losing its embodied state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration for survival is commonly associated with refugees and asylum seekers who flee persecution, wars, and natural calamities. Yet, in Nigeria, university-educated, gainfully employed middle-class youth insist that leaving is a matter of survival and not a choice. This distinction is signalled by japa, a recently popularised term for 'to run' or 'to flee'. Young Nigerians view migration as an escape from intolerable domestic conditions – prolonged university strikes, overturned development progress, and unprecedented currency inflation. In practice, japa follows formal procedures but favours quick departures. But by framing migration as fleeing, youth emphasise their refusal to cope. Foremost, they emphasise urgent respite over rationalised projects of social reproduction or status maintenance. Scholars, however, tend to overlook emotional or existential motives for voluntary migration and essentialise survival drives to forced migration. Drawing on 21 interviews with Nigerian youths, this paper shows a need to rethink survival migration, particularly how we value destinations compared to departures, conflate urgent desires with immediate exits, and privilege social functions over individual sentiments. By analysing youth's interpretations of what survival means, we enrich our understanding of African migration beyond the binary of elite strategies for social reproduction or fateful journeys of forced migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guest worker programs entail an intrinsic tension between control over workers' mobility and workers' agency. By drawing on the qualitative data from Chinese construction workers in Japan's Technical Intern Training Program (TITP), I illuminate the dialectical nature of the tension between control and agency. My findings suggest that labor recruiters and employers implement labor control, but their practices have the opposite effect of pressing workers to abscond or to do irregular jobs. Staying in the program is not an outcome of effective control, but a response to circumstances wherein revisions to Japan's immigration policy bring rewards while China's surveillance policies incur potential punishments. The control-agency dialectic suggests that the regulative focus should be shifted from workers to employers and recruiters. Incorporating approaches of spatiotemporality and relationality, I analyze how workers sustain relations with various actors through three interconnected temporal stages, and how the relational dynamics shape workers' varied mobility choices. Two features of the construction industry shape workers' circumstances and occasionally facilitate their mobility: the stratification of the labor force according to legal status and the subcontract system. The paper thus highlights the need to contextualise labor agency in changing state policies, relations with co-ethnics, and industry-specific features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wage effects of immigration have been widely studied, yet much of the research has focused on competitive threats to low-skilled native-born men. In contrast, this paper applies a gender lens to explore possible complementary relationships between immigration-induced outsourcing of domestic work and the earnings of native-born women, while recognizing the classed and racialized nature of domestic labor. Empirically, this article examines subgroup variations in earnings among full-time employed native-born women by education and race/ethnicity in relation to the state share of immigrants in the domestic service sector. The analysis combines data from the 2012 American Community Survey with state-level work-family policy data collected for 2010, accounting for compositional differences and selection into the labor force. Likely due to increased availability of affordable domestic services, the results show a higher immigrant share is associated with greater earnings for native-born women overall. However, education and race/ethnicity moderate this association, indicating that highly educated non-Hispanic white women benefit more than other women because the labor process and outsourcing of household production are classed and racialized. Hence, states with a higher share of immigrants filling domestic services exhibit wage dispersion patterns that reinforce intersectional inequality among native-born women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intersection of migrant labour and the gig economy is a field of growing interest. Although there is no comprehensive public data on the topic, current studies show that platform labour in urban gig economies is often carried out by migrants. While uberised work has been quite extensively analysed, the dimensions of everyday life and time are still little studied. This paper aims to fill this gap, looking at the convergence of migrant labour, the gig economy, everyday life, and time. The authors present a time-space-energy nexus to illustrate the constant assembling of working and non-working times by workers and the potential tensions arising from the algorithmic managerial model of work. Specific attention is given to how migrant couriers organise the times and spaces of their everyday lives within platform-mediated food delivery in Venice. To explore this topic, a qualitative-ethnographic investigation was carried out in the historic centre of Venice from January to June 2022. This article highlights the features and tendencies of the food delivery sector in Venice, in order to show how the particular forms that migrant worker/runners' living and working conditions take contradict the supposed flexibility proposed by digital platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, researchers working on the nexus between migration and politics in countries of origin have started to pay more attention to the local level, but important empirical and theoretical gaps remain. By drawing upon semi-structured interviews, field observation and documentary research, this paper presents the exploratory case study of the 2012 local elections in Borșa, Romania, when an emigrant became mayor due to the mass mobilisation of the diaspora. Our analysis makes a three-fold contribution to the emerging literature on the impact of migration on local politics. First, it provides fresh empirical evidence from the largely underexplored context of intra-EU mobility. Second, it proposes an inductive classification of the factors and mechanisms at micro-, meso- and macro-level that allowed for the political change in Borșa in 2012, thus providing the basis for a framework of the prerequisites for migrant-led political change at the local level. This includes recognising ad hoc transnational mobility as a distinct mechanism of migrant political mobilisation. Third, by identifying also some of the post-election challenges faced by the migrant political actors, we extend Danielson’s (2017) framework of ‘acceptance’, ‘rejection’ and ‘integration' by proposing the category of ‘negotiated political integration’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration studies often focus on the socio-political and economic factors that drive people to migrate, overlooking the fantasies and processes involved in actualising the journey. This paper examines unaccompanied Ethiopian child migrants in South Africa, using the concept of fantasy to understand the preparatory processes of migration and their realisation. It argues that fantasies of future expectations and self-enhancement propel individuals into virtual fantasy worlds that can lead to physical migration. This study contributes to the migration literature by exploring the fruitful yet limited role of fantasies and expectations in the complex and multi-phased phenomenon of migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines transitions between legal statuses as an ongoing negotiated process between undocumented embodiments and legal realities. Rather than viewing legal statuses as mutually exclusive states of existence, I contend that transitioning through statuses leaves behind what I call remnants of illegality – lingering effects of previous legal designations that continue to shape a person’s behavior and worldview even after the person is no longer in that status. Interviews with 20 formerly undocumented/DACA Californians reveal that the remnants of illegality alter participants’ understanding of legal status, everyday behaviors, and understandings of self. Although participants struggle to bridge the gap between their remnants of illegality and legal realities, their stories suggest that they actively work to unlearn these remnants, indicating their potential impermanence. Broadly, these findings propose a new concept for understanding the impacts of illegality and also challenge assumptions about legal status as an idealistic end-goal solution to the condition of illegality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws upon the perspectives of newcomer Filipino families who have migrated through the global domestic work industry, specifically through Canada's Live-in/Caregiver Program (L/CP), and the perspectives of Filipino social service providers in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I examine how newcomer Filipino families make meaning of, and negotiate, the impact of family separation and reunification through the L/CP on their mental health and well-being. Moreover, I look at how Filipino social service providers center the experiences of newcomer Filipino families within service provision through an anti-racist and anti-oppressive framework, which has implications for policies and praxis in community-based agencies. The paper moves from deficit-focused experiences of ‘trauma’ to centring the voices of newcomer Filipino families as agents of change, in collaboration with Filipino social service providers. This shift illuminates how newcomer Filipino families and their lived experiences are sites of transformation in the policy and practices that impact their mental health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon semi-structured interviews of Chinese entrepreneurs in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, this paper demonstrates the commonly marginal influence of kinship, townspeople attachment, and ethnic identity on Chinese entrepreneurs’ interpretive framework on their social networks and business activities. Instead, their narratives were dominated by individualistic reasoning based on rational judgments and pragmatic considerations. Meanwhile, Chinese entrepreneurs found ethnic market in Ikebukuro accessible and competitiveness and the policy support from the Japanese state friendly to business operations. However, they were not keen on interacting with local civic organizations and kept themselves aloof from local communities. These features could be concluded as networked individualism with superficial integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is ample evidence that foreigners suffer from discrimination when trying to integrate. Extreme situations, however, can alter the population's attitude towards foreigners. One example of such an extreme situation is the position of Ukrainians in Poland since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It drastically changed the composition and share of the foreign-born population in Poland. In this paper, we examined the attitude towards people with Ukrainian-sounding and other foreign-sounding names in Poland, and whether it has changed. We used an experimental approach, within which we contacted amateur football coaches asking to join a trial training session using typical native- and Belarussian-, German-, and Ukrainian-sounding names. Half of the clubs received an additional signal showing support for Ukraine. Furthermore, a limited subset of participants completed post-experiment surveys. The survey gave us an opportunity to understand why the respondents discriminate. The results show that people with foreign-sounding names receive fewer responses. Surprisingly, people with Ukrainian names are the exception. They received more responses than natives. Signaling support for Ukraine had a positive but not statistically significant effect on the response rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the experiences of displaced Ukrainians who arrived in Austria following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. We draw on the concept of 'arrival' as proposed by Ludger Pries, to delve into the multifaceted process of arrival that extends beyond mere physical relocation. By conducting group discussions and employing the documentary method, we reveal the challenges associated with 'arriving' at the individual, the interactive, and the institutional level. The findings show that the displaced persons' conjunctive experiences are characterised by a pervasive sense of loss – of their everyday certainties, past lives, future prospects, social recognition, and established social positions. This study not only contributes to the understanding of displaced Ukrainians in Europe, but also enriches the emerging field of the sociology of loss within the context of forced migration, emphasising the importance of focusing on people's experiences in addition to arrival societies' responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the stories of women migrants from Latin America who found themselves living precarious lives and struggling to sustain former idealised notions of their racial and class identities in London. Dispossessed of previous class membership due to an onward feminised precarity, a diminished social capital, undocumented legal statuses, and menial stigmatised jobs, women clung to an idealised perception of social status (shaped by white Eurocentric aspirations) to negotiate and reconfigure class and racial anxieties in London. They engage in various strategies that include processes of whitening through marriage and children, performances of taste and beauty, and negotiating their racialisation at work. These cases reflect the relevance of the coloniality of power, its influence in the subsistence of racial and class ideologies in Latin America, and in a global economy of care that produces and reproduces postcolonial forms of intersectional racialised and gendered exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Canadian spousal reunification process and its specific bureaucratic temporality, in relation to citizenship and mechanisms of social control. Based on ethnographic research in a Facebook support group of Canadian women married to a non-Canadian man, I examine the role of online communities in reinforcing compliance to immigration slow temporalities at the expense of group members' urgent love temporalities. Spousal reunification applicants were recommended not to intervene as long as their file was still within official processing times. Those who acted too soon showed low compliance with government regulations and were called back to order by other applicants. The promotion of discourses that valorise both patience and proactivity deployed at the 'right time' – when delays are expired – constitute mechanisms of social control and contribute to shaping 'good', 'informed' and thus deserving citizens, in the context of marriage fraud suspicion. This article builds on the literature on waiting in immigration processes and articulates it with concepts of good citizenship. It reflects on how online immigration support groups become spaces in which applicants police and discipline each other along gendered lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the dynamics of migration in the growing prominence of German in Nigeria, and the ways self-perception of language competence shapes ethnolingual belonging and future trajectories of transmigrant Nigerians residing in Germany. Drawing on promotional texts of German language schools and migration-themed discourses on Nairaland, I show that while German is mainly espoused for migration purposes back at home, most Nigerians in Germany conceptualise belonging and otherness through the lens of language proficiency—a perspective that rationalises their inclination towards relocating to Anglophone destinations for greater linguistic capital and social inclusion. I argue that the narrowed view of German as a migration asset impedes its wider adoption and mainstreaming in the Nigerian linguistic market, and illuminate the complex nexus between language, racialisation, migration, and belonging, as well as the tenuous link between language learning and acculturation. The paper offers insights into the ways language competence shapes ethnolingual membership and migration patterns in a globalised world and suggests a nuanced understanding of new language acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine how migrant women make sense of their new positions in the labour market while drawing on and negotiating past meanings and experiences. I explore the individual biographies of legally privileged co-ethnic women repatriates from the former Soviet Union to Germany through a gendered perspective of work. These women found that the ethnic promise of being 'real' Germans given to them proved insufficient to access the labour market on equal terms, while their past Soviet socialisation led to struggles for recognition and marginalisation into low-status jobs. Although their labour-power is oftentimes devalorised, these women actively operationalise different memories of socialist work to reinvent themselves in a new context as worthy, resilient, and adaptable members of a capitalist society. Their stories of work reflect their present- and future-oriented life strategies and demonstrate how they relate different ideologies and systems of value, distant spaces and times in an attempt to challenge dominant discourses on human worth. By exploring individualised life strategies and gendered invocations of the past, this paper contributes to the discussion on post-socialist subjectivities, how they intersect with ambiguous socialist experiences and dilute the neoliberal project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]