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Urban Studies and Practices Vol.2 #1, 2017, 11-24 https://doi.org/10.17323/usp21201711-24
The nexus between migration and urban studies is dynamic, and one that produces new research on a daily basis. And yet Little is providing us with a general picture that allows us to see the main regular patterns in the field, as well as the gaps and methodological hindrances requiring attention.
So what's been done? And what needs to be done? To facilitate a discussion, we formulated three broad questions that we then asked eight prominent scholars. Their responses in turn give us the perspectives of varied disciplines, geographical vantage points (North America, Western Europe, and Russia), and points of view. In what follows, each scholar addresses these three questions:
Question 1. More than a century ago, Ernst Georg Ravenstein formulated a set of "laws" about migration. Created within the social and economic context of nineteenth-century Europe and inspired by the positivist spirit of the time, they were abandoned, however, in the twentieth century. But since Ravenstein's times, thousands of studies on migration and integration have been produced within academia, and it is likely that the time for new generalizations has come. Are there any patterns or laws that can be inferred from the existing body of research on migration and integration?
Question 2. Research on migration and integration is embedded in institutions that produce their own rules and norms to structure topics, approaches, and methodologies used by researchers.Are you generally satisfied with how the research on migration and integration is currently carried out? What are the most promising topics, approaches, and methodologies? Are there any that should be treated more cautiously? What topics, approaches, and methodologies would you recommend to young scholars in the field who are now considering their paths for researching migration and integration?
Question 3. Research on migration and integration is generally conducted within the urban context, which is taken for granted and seldom reflected upon. However, urban structures are not stable and cities have substantially changed since the beginning of the twentieth century. Should the knot binding migration and the urban processes be untied? And if yes, what are the ways to do it in terms of both theoretical agendas and empirical research?
Rainer Baubock,
Professor of Social and Political Theory, European University Institute
Question 1
Ravenstein's laws were about internal migration in a borderless space. In the twentieth century, the attention shifted towards international migration, which by definition is about crossing state borders. One way of distinguishing between the two phenomena is to call what Ravenstein was concerned with mobility and reserve the term migration for human movement across territorial borders. While mobility is a social phenomenon that can be measured in the dimensions of space and time, migration is constituted via the borders that define a territory.
A general law that describes the relation between both phenomena claims that, with any given level of mobility, there will be more migration the smaller a territory is. For this reason, Europe's smaller countries have generally higher shares of international migrants in their population. This law is as valid as those of Ravenstein, but it relies on two background assumptions that do not always hold up. The first is that territorial borders are stable. If they change, then people who had at some point exercised mobility rights within a larger state will be reclassified as migrants once the state breaks apart — as happened in the breakups of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovenia registered a sudden rise in their "immigrant populations," defined as foreign citizens from other origins, though without these people actually moving during the periods in question.
The second assumption is that political borders only affect the categorization of people as internal or international migrants, but not their mobility patterns. However, international migration is of course heavily regulated and this impacts how many people move, how often they move, and the origins and destinations of their movements. In this context, it is much more difficult to come up with quasi-natural laws because we are then concerned with the interaction between micro-level human behavior and macro-level political institutions and political decisions that aim to exercise control. The kind of "laws" that have been formulated somewhat tongue-in-cheek for international migration are often about unintended consequences of policies. Think of the famous quip that "there is nothing so permanent as temporary foreign workers" or the fact that state efforts to stop an ongoing migration flow may speed up immigrant settlement and family reunification as migrants can no longer risk traveling back home.
Question 2
I believe that the conceptual distinction between migration and mobility creates a promising research topic: the recent "mobility turn" in human geography and sociology should also be considered from the macro and institutionalist perspectives of political science and political theory. All our political institutions are based on the assumption of stable territorial jurisdictions (which by and large still holds true empirically) and relatively sedentary populations within these. As stated above, the smaller the territory, the more mobility will be registered as migration. But what happens if mobility actually increases to such an extent that sedentary populations become minorities? Can we still maintain political legitimacy for democratic decisions in contexts in which there is such a rapid change in composition among mobile populations that the people represented at the time when elections were held or decisions taken no longer are the same ones to whom these decisions now apply? And what about the rules for determining membership itself? Can democracies still maintain the institution of birthright citizenship if the majority of those who are citizens by birth live abroad and the majority of their residents are foreign citizens? For the time being, these are hypothetical questions, as most states are sufficiently large to contain most of the mobility within their territory. But at the city level, where the numbers of "majority-minority cities" is growing, the question is already pertinent and urges us, as I have argued, to develop new models of "urban citizenship" based on residence rather than birthright that are disconnected from national citizenship.
At the state level the relevant questions are different from those arising at the local level. How, for example, can mobile migrants who move back-and-forth between a country of origin and several destination states ever be fully equal citizens, and how can they be represented in a democratic
Rainer Baubock, Professor of Social and Political Theory, European University Institute
decision process? Is there an emerging mobility cleavage between mobile and sedentary populations that is increasingly articulated in support or opposition to European integration and in political antagonism between centrist and radical populist parties?
Also for migration sociologists, the mobility turn suggests a new research perspective focusing on life-course studies. Past migration studies have been dominated, on the one hand, by qualitative methods for studying micro-level phenomena of individual adaptation or meso-level community formation, and on the other, quantitative methods for macro-level questions, such as the impact of migration on wages and unemployment. Yet there is now a wealth of individual-level panel data on life courses. This finally makes it possible to combine the dominant state perspective, from which migrants are seen to enter or leave a territory and stable population, with the migrant perspective, from which entering and leaving a state or acquiring a new residence title and citizenship are life events that structure their biography and opportunity spaces.
Question 3
A focus on urban contexts in migration studies has surely not become less relevant than it was in the past. It is important because cities rather than countries are in many ways the primary destinations of migrants, and also often the primary locus of identification. This is the case especially for second generations in socially marginalized groups for whom a country-of-origin identity is no longer based on their socialization experience, while the country of settlement often does not provide the frame for either their self-identification or externally-ascribed identities. It is also important for migration studies as a corrective against methodological nationalism. "Seeing migration like a city" opens our eyes to phenomena that "seeing migration like a state" hides from view.
This urban context is also changing, however. One way in which it changes and evolves, as I have already mentioned, is through the emergence of "majority-minority cities" in northern countries that receive immigrants. As a political theorist, I find equally important the tendency of city governments to challenge central governments through acts of resistance, such as the declaration of sanctuary cities to protect migrants from deportation, and more indirect challenges involving transnational city networks engaging not only in exchanging experiences on immigrant integration issues, but also claiming a say in external migration policies.
To my mind, this development makes it possible to reclaim the birthplace of citizenship, the politically autonomous city republic, as a space for residence-based citizenship inside the modern nation-state. This is not just symbolic politics, but also concerns the core legal right of democratic citizenship, the right to vote. In a recent comparison of European and American states, we have found a significant tendency on both sides of the Atlantic to disconnect the franchise in national elections from residence by extending it to expatriates while at the same time disconnecting the local franchise from national citizenship by extending it to all legal residents.1 This observation lends empirical support to the idea that national and local citizenship are coming apart. Fleshing out the institutional possibilities and implications of urban citizenship in migration contexts seems to me another research topic with great relevance and potential.
Caroline Brettell,
Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and the Ruth Collins Altshuler Director of the Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute at Southern Methodist University
Question 1
I do not think that we are in pursuit of laws. Every situation is different and emerges from specific cultural and historical contexts. Furthermore, so-called host societies have varying policies of "integration" that will impact outcomes. There are broad theories of migration (many of which are well covered by scholars from different disciplines in the book I co-edited with James F. Hollified, entitled Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines [Routledge, third edition 2015]) that help to explain why people move, why they choose to move, where they move to, and what happens to them after movement in terms of social, political, and economic incorporation. Societies have different ideologies of inclusion and exclusion regarding incorporation/integration that impact the immigrant experience. And over time, nations change their attitudes and these are often codified into policy. The United States today, alas, is in a period of heightened anti-immigrant sentiment based on irrational fears. But we have seen the scapegoating of immigrants before.
Question 2
I would suggest mixed methods and interdisciplinary research teams. By mixed methods, I mean both qualitative and quantitative, from the bottom-up to the top-down. That way you understand how policies shape people's lives, but you also understand how people are reacting to, and sometimes working around, policies. And you understand that people do not always move for economic reasons — that is, that often social networks and family ties are most important. Further we need to seriously evaluate the differences and similarities between immigrants and refugees, particularly in today's world.
I also think we could be clearer on what we mean by integration. This word is used more in the European context. In the U.S. we talk more about incorporation, and some people still talk about assimilation — especially the lay public. We also probably need more work on the relationship between immigration and national identity. This issue has reached crisis proportions.
1 Arrighi, Jean-Thomas, and Rainer Baubock. 2016. "A multilevel puzzle. Migrants' voting rights in national and local elections." European Journal of Political Research, early view. doi: 10.1111/1475-6765.12176.
Caroline Brettell, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and the Ruth Collins Altshuler Director of the Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute at Southern Methodist University
Question 3
There is already abundant research on the urban context of migration. I wrote an essay over a decade ago on "bringing the city back in" (in a book edited by Nancy Foner, entitled American Arrivals). We also have a book called Twenty-first Century Suburban Gateways (co-edited by Audrey Singer, Susan Hargrave, and Caroline Brettell and published by the Brookings Institution in 2008) that looks at nine urban contexts in the U.S. Also see Nina Glick Schiller and Ayse Caglar's book Locating Migration. There are many more examples. This is a topic that has garnered serious interest since I first published my 2003 essay. Students interested in this should start there and continue.
Maurice Crul,
Professor of Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam and the VU University Amsterdam
Question 1
I think this is the most challenging topic in the field of migration at the moment. Authors that have developed classical assimilation theory and the newer brands of assimilation theory like segmented-assimilation and neo-assimilation theory tried to formulate laws about assimilation and integration. In all these theories there is either a linear trend upward for groups, or in the case of segmented assimilation, also a downward-mobility trend for certain ethnic groups. In the last case it is predicted that some ethnic groups will assimilate into the underclass. But the empirical evidence for these theories has always been rather weak.
What we often empirically observe nowadays, especially in Europe, is not a linear trend up or down for whole groups, but polarization within ethnic groups. A case in point is the religious identification of the second generation in several Western European countries. Classical and neo-assimilation theories would predict that the second generation is less religious than its parents and would, for instance, visit the mosque less often and would hold more liberal views in relation to its religion. This is true for part of the second generation. There is even a considerable group that does not identify as Muslim anymore, something that is hardly observed in the first generation. However, there is also a considerable group that is more religious than its parents and that also advocates for a political Islam. Its parents in general do not advocate for a political Islam. Also in socio-economic aspects, we see a polarization within the second generation that seems to grow even further in the third generation. This phenomenon needs deeper explanation and new integration laws should be formulated as a result.
A second point is that we should find new theories as a result of demographic developments in many North American and Western European cities. Many of these cities have become what has been referred to as majority-minority cities: cities where the people of native descent have become a numerical minority themselves. What does this mean for assimilation theories? Our classical idea of assimilation is that an immigrant assimilates into the majority through contact with that group. Over time they will take over the norms and values of the majority group. But many newcomers in
Photo © Reiner Gerritsen
Maurice Crul, Professor of Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam and the VU University Amsterdam
majority-minority cities grow up in neighborhoods where people of native descent are only a small minority. They largely grow up with other migrants of the first, second, or third generation. This poses new questions about their integration.
Question 2
I think what is most urgently needed is that we study the support for anti-immigrant populist parties beyond what political scientists are already doing on this topic. I think that researchers in the field of migration and ethnic studies have ignored the ground rule of integration as a two-way process. Over the last forty years, the emphasis has been on studying immigrant groups through an ethnic lens. The population at the receiving end of migration has been neglected. We did not look empirically at how the growing diversity in cities has affected the people of native descent. Why is that in some cities there is such a huge backlash among the native population? The economy does not seem to explain everything. In countries like Spain and Portugal, which have been hit very hard by financial crises, we hardly see a backlash against immigrants; while in countries like the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands — countries that have already recovered from economic crises — antiimmigrant parties haves seen huge increases in their popularity. The failed integration of people of native descent in what I and others have called super-diverse cities is an important new field of studies. This calls for interdisciplinary research involving sociologists and anthropologists, as well as social psychologists. We need to study what drives inter-ethnic relations or social demographers and to look at neighborhoods as the places of interactions.
Question 3
Researchers have become more and more aware of the importance of urban contexts. This has partly come about because of EU funding that almost requires an internationally comparative perspective. A lot of the big EU-funded projects compare different European cities or neighborhoods. This has put the spotlight increasingly on local policies and institutional arrangements. This includes examining welcoming policies, citizenship programs, and, also, the ways schools incorporate children of immigrants — and now refugee children. Researchers have also argued that the socio-economic history of a city is important. Harbor cities in economic decline have different dynamics than booming global cities or cities that have a growing creative class. Cities as a result also attract different kinds of new migrants and offer different chances to the children of migrants. These urban differences can best be studied in an internationally comparative way. This approach best brings out the specificities of the cities, and it shows us how urban effects and migration are linked to each other.
Marco Martiniello,
Director of the Centre d'Etudes de l'Ethnicite et des Migrations (CEDEM)
Question 1
Questions about the cumulative character of knowledge and the consensus within the academic community in the field of ethnic and migration research should not be raised in the same way as in the "hard" sciences. On the one hand, there is a temptation to reinvent the wheel, as in the recurring debates about immigrant integration, for example. On the other hand, migration and integration being two essentially contested issues, consensus among scholars is often impossible.
Without talking about "laws" in a pure positivistic perspective, however, there is general agreement among scholars on certain regularities concerning migration, integration, and ethnic relations. Let me briefly sketch these out:
1. Migrations and human mobility are not new or solely characteristic of the twenty-first century. Human beings have always moved across the planet, and they will continue to do so in the future.
2. There is not a single cause that explains migration. Usually, migrations are to be explained by a set of various, different, and interacting causes (economic, demographic, political, cultural, and environmental, for example).
3. Migration policies often produce unintended effects because one cannot simply move people like goods or capital. Let me mention a few examples. First, restrictive policies may reduce immigration but very rarely stop it. On the contrary, they allow for the growth of irregular migration often organized by smugglers and traffickers. Second, closing borders does not lead to return migration: On the contrary, it encourages migrants to stay in the country of immigration (fearing that they will not be able to re-enter the country of immigration if they return to the country of origin).
4. The distinction between temporary migration and permanent migration is by no means absolute. Migration conceived of as temporary often becomes permanent; and migration seen as permanent often becomes temporary and circular.
5. Immigrants integrate in the country of immigration to a variable extent.
6. Immigration is a factor of change for both the countries of residence and the countries of origin.
7. Almost all societies are touched by migration, though in different ways.
8. Most societies are multicultural, even though many don't want to recognize their multicultural character.
This list is by no means exhaustive, though unfortunately, it seems to be largely ignored by policymakers.
Ouestion 2
Conducting research on immigration and integration in a political climate characterized by the rise of populist-nationalist movements and entry into a post-truth era is difficult. Politicians and policymakers are often more interested in policy-driven expertise that justifies their policies than independent, academic researchers who attempts to reveal the complexities of the migration and integration processes. Young scholars may have to decide which way they want to go.
In my view, we need more theoretically sound and empirically rich, independent research with an international perspective and within the framework of multi-sided partnerships. Research today has become too bureaucratized and too dependent on shortsighted political interests.
We should explore topics that have been relatively neglected — like the relationships between migration and the arts, for example. We can diversify instead of doing the same type of research over and over again, as we do with integration and security. We should also try to be more innovative with research methods. Traditional quantitative and qualitative methods can be combined with visual methods and the use of new digital resources, and the possibilities are almost limitless.
Photo © Georges Kostenjak
Marco Martiniello, Director of the Centre d'Etudes de l'Ethnicité et des Migrations (CEDEM)
Question 3
Historically, it's clear that the impact of migration is more noticeable at the urban level in the country of destination, and more conspicuous in rural areas in the country of origin. It's also evident that the urban phenomenon is constantly changing because of migration, though rural areas have also become areas of destination for migrants.
Urbanization continues at a rapid pace: A large majority of the world's population now lives in urbanized communities. It is therefore crucial to keep the changing city as a focus of analysis. But it is also interesting to look at what's going on in rural and less populated regions and to produce migration figures on a global level.
Vladimir Mukomel,
Chief Research Fellow, Head of Department, Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences
Question 1
Ravenstein's "laws" were formulated under a specific historical context, and as such, were applicable to specific social, economic, and geographical settings. These "laws" were still in effect fifty years ago. However, since then the world has witnessed drastic changes. Firstly, distance is no longer as important as the speed and cost of travel; step-by-step migration is ceasing to exist; rural-urban migration, which prevailed in Ravenstein's times and was at the bottom of his "laws," has taken a backseat to other types of migration; and there is less disparity in the economic development of localities. Secondly, lifestyles have experienced drastic changes, resulting in new types and forms of migration — transnational, circular, long-term, etc. (On the other hand, such changes have shattered some of Ravenstein's main conclusions, which were based on nineteenth-century lifestyles. For instance, his idea that short-distance migration is more typical of women than men relied on the common practice whereby women were supposed to move from their home village to their husband's house after marriage). Thirdly, social institutions, both stimulating and "de-stimulating" migration, have been transformed. There have been major changes on the labor market, as well as in child-rearing, education, and healthcare; and now certain issues can be handled remotely, within families. Fourthly, it seems that economic drivers for migration, on which Ravenstein placed so much emphasis, are giving way to social factors. Classical approaches to migration, including Ravenstein's laws, are falling out of line with new migration determinants. Therefore, scholars have begun to question the very paradigm of relying on economic factors, which used to be the core of all migration theories. It is curious that the upsurge of migration studies in Russia has been driven by their major role in sociological and political science research projects.2
I find the very idea that new migration patterns may be uncovered through ongoing research on migration and integration somewhat perverse. We do know more about migration now, but only as much as we know more about our present day society/societies. All patterns and trends derived from ongoing research projects are only true for the present and may be seen as anachronistic tomorrow. This is especially true for those that rely on present day communications, such as migration networks, employment sectors, and transnational migrations.
Question 2
I wouldn't overestimate the limitations and restrictions imposed on research concerning migration and integration by various institutions. A researcher can always bypass any restriction formulating a research strategy in a way that fits the Procrustean bed of the force-fed approaches and methods. Nevertheless, it is true that certain areas of research are more fashionable than others, and such
2 Savoskul M.E. Emergence and Development of Russian Migration Studies: Interdisciplinary Research Experience. Regional Research, no. 4 (46), p. 33. (Савоскул М.Е. Становление и развитие миграциологии в России: опыт междициплинарного исследования // Региональные исследования. 2014. № 4 (46). C. 33).
Vladimir Mukomel, Chief research fellow, Head of Department, Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences
trends may set priorities among grantors. A herd mentality is often adopted by many researchers as well. However, those who are not afraid of becoming pioneers and asking questions that hadn't occurred to anyone else usually see the best results. (This is not meant to undermine in any way the importance of research aimed at enriching our current knowledge on the subject.)
I suppose that the most interesting and promising areas of research are, first of all, those that have to do with the transformation of institutions for sending and especially receiving societies connected with migration. This is true not only for social institutions (e.g., education, law, family, culture, religion, etc.), which is obvious, but also for political ones (e.g., court systems, political parties, law enforcement agencies, etc.) and economic institutions (e.g., banks, management, etc.). A second important area of research is focused on how the institutions of sending and receiving societies can influence an individual migrant's behavior and lifestyle. Another possible area of research seeks to answer the question: To what extent do a migrant's (or potential migrant's, potential repatriate's, etc.) behavior, identity, and interactions with local communities in the sending and receiving states depend on their individual and personal characteristics? Obviously, this research will require a greater focus on various social and psychological aspects during analysis. Finally, we are clearly lacking research projects on migration modeling due to the unavailability of data in general, and information on specific processes and practices in particular.
Question 3
The major focus on the urban context in ongoing research projects is rooted not only in the fact that migration to cities (from rural areas, first of all) is currently prevalent, but also based on the emerging awareness that cities are fast changing social structures with immense complexity. In the twentieth century, urban-migration researchers were mainly engaged in studies of urbanization and suburbanization. That said, today scholars tend to concentrate on the special features of social organization in the urban context and migrants' adjustment to the urban environment. For this agenda, special emphasis should be laid on empirical research projects, which can help uncover the extent, speed, and selectivity of changes in migrants' perception of urban environments.
Madeleine Reeves,
Senior lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester
Question 1
As a critical social scientist interested in the forms of knowledge production about migration, my questions would be: What does the search for "laws" about migration tell us about the conditions of knowledge production about migration? Who is interested in reducing migration to a question of laws and for what ends? And what potentially gets lost from such a perspective? Certainly it is possible to mine data to find interesting, generalizable statements about the "what" or "when" or "who" of migration. We can find tendencies and note shifts and patterns (e.g. the rise of female or family migration over time); or we can detect interesting correlations (like the correlation that exists between the global price of crude oil and the variation in remittance transfers between Russia and Tajikistan over time). One of the things that tends to result from a search for laws, however, is a rather reductive approach to understanding the "whys" of migration, partly because the methods that are used to identify these patterns (standardized surveys or questionnaires) tend to reduce the complexity of human experience and motivations to a series of tick-box options; partly because they assume that there is a stable category of "migrant" that constitutes an unproblematic category of analysis. Yet even if we think for a moment about contemporary Russia, the category of migrant is extremely unstable. Citizens of the RF from the North Caucasus are often treated as "migrants" in contemporary Moscow for social and administrative purposes, whereas an ethnic Russian "repatriate" is not. Likewise, many of my informants — Kyrgyz self-identifying gastarbaitery who were in possession of Russian passports — would insist that they were "migrants" even though they were technically Russian citizens, because they were seen and treated as migrants. This is of course a much more profound philosophical question: When does any of us stop being a migrant? Is the fact of citizenship enough? I think a more interesting question to ask is: What are the social and political conditions that constitute the "migrant" as a particular social, administrative and academic category of analysis — and what is the contrastive other (the "citizen"? the "nation"?) that is being constituted in that move?
Question 2
This is a big question! In fact, a big set of questions. I think that there is a lot interesting work going on right now around aspects of migrant experience — at least in the field of social anthropology, which is the discipline with which I am most familiar. Some of the more interesting work in the last couple of years has been seeking to open up the "black box" of migration: by looking at infrastructures of migration and removal/deportation, for instance; looking at the moral economies of remittance transfer; looking at the dynamics of family-hood and the way that these are being reconfigured by new forms of long-distance intimacy and new technologies; or looking at the agencies and brokers who mediate migrants' legibility to the state. There has been a cluster of interesting work seeking to challenge the kind of methodological nationalism that has tended to dominate in migration studies, by drawing attention to the level of the city or community and its significance in mediating migrant experience, or focusing on particular aspects of migrants' ability to access housing, education,
Madeleine Reeves, Senior lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester
and health facilities. There has been some really fascinating work recently, for instance, looking at the political economy of migrants' access to healthcare and the rise of private "national" medical clinics. There has also been some really interesting work looking at the effect of the re-entry ban or so-called "black list" and the way that this is reconfiguring migrant aspirations in sending communities. For me personally, some of the more interesting recent work has been inspired by phenomenological or broadly existential approaches — concerning what we might call migratory horizons and asking about meanings of migration beyond the economic or instrumental. A lot of this work has brought debates out about migration into conversations within literature on time, hope, agency, boredom, waiting, affect, infrastructure, the digital, and so on.
Question 3
I think that the two categories can be used to unsettle each other. Much of the literature on migrant "integration and adaptation" assumes that there is a stable, homogenous, taken-for-granted social environment ("the city") into which "the migrant" has to adapt. This is also the assumption that is implicit in many of those well-intentioned, but deeply patronizing guidebooks for migrants: They assume that "the city" that the migrant encounters is intrinsically legible and singular. Yet the figure of the migrant can and should encourage us to think about the multiplicity of the city — the city is constantly being made and remade — there is no single, stable starting point. I am reminded always of the late Doreen Massey's work on space: Space is never singular and never stable — even the rocks are moving! Still more so a city that is being made and remade every single day by the people and things that pass through it. Massey calls this the "thrown-togetherness" of place. Approached from this angle, the migrant is just one more aspect of the city's continued making and remaking: Such an approach can enable us to think in a very different way about what "integration" might look like epistemologically, but in also profoundly material and mundane ways.
Olga Tkach,
Senior Researcher at the Centre for Independent Social Research (CISR) St. Petersburg, Russia
Question 1
I would speak of some migratory trends, rather than of laws, or even patterns. They seem to be substantiated by abundant research on migration and integration all over the world. The following trends have been discerned though qualitative research dealing with life stories, rather than demographic perspectives and big numbers:
Migration has come to be understood as a biographical project, rather than a purely economic one undertaken by a rational agent. Migration always has amalgamated motives and unanticipated outcomes. An economic view alone is insufficient to explain why people move and how their lifestyles do not always correspond to the one of a guest worker.
Migration is not an individual project: a family is usually involved, no matter if it migrates together or by leaving some relatives behind. Migratory aspirations, decision-making processes, and subsequent migratory steps are very much interconnected to generational, marital, parental, and other familial relationships.
Olga Tkach, Senior Researcher at the Centre for Independent Social Research (CISR) St. Petersburg, Russia
Migration is a process, rather than a singular event. It has a certain nonlinear dynamic in a person's life, with its ups and downs, successes and failures, as the migrant views them. And the question remains, how long should a person be considered a "migrant" once he or she has moved? The length of stay in another country or location matters.
Contemporary migration makes a person's life translocal by default. This is no longer simply a movement from Point A to Point B: Migration also means living in various worlds or with life's hybridization. This is especially significant for the so-called "serial migrants" [Ossman, 2013], whose number has been currently increasing.
Almost all migrants, from the highly qualified to the unskilled, have to go through certain upheavals by moving to a new place. The lack of social capital and social vacuums are major aspects of these hardships, and affect the lack of belonging to a new place. Overall, migration can be recognized as the reconfiguration and rebuilding of social networks, both new and those left behind, and within a new context.
As a rule, female migrants experience a more significant professional downgrading and tend to occupy positions beneath their qualifications, at least at the first stages of their migration. Still, within family migrations, a woman performs as the key person earning the social capital that becomes significant for the future integration of the whole family.
Question 2
The first question states that academia has produced thousands of papers on migration and integration. The topics that gain researchers' attention are extremely diverse. Many of them, however, have been investigated within very narrow and particular case studies, while comparative research would allow studying the same migratory phenomena in different contexts and for making wider generalizations. It's no wonder that contemporary migration studies are politically biased, so researchers should carefully reflect on the categories they use and the questions they raise. The category of migrant integration particularly requires a critical approach, for its political and analytical (academic) meanings differ. While the former presumes universal, top-down programs and measurable outcomes, the latter is more sensitive to biographical situations, migrant voices, and the complex character of everyday lives. Also, research that reduces migration solely to an economic strategy should be treated cautiously. Such an approach might be relevant to macro-studies regarding economic contributions to the GDP of sending countries, but it does not consider the many nuances of migratory processes at the micro-level. The ethnization of migration also stifles possibilities for greater understanding and analysis: By assigning ethnic and religious identities by default, we limit the analytic potential for research of the everyday lives of migrants.
I suggest that we draw inspiration from intellectual resources that enrich contemporary migration studies.
Feminist and gender approaches in migration studies: Feminist research critiques purely economic views on migration and considers issues in a broader manner. It acknowledges the complexity of migratory decisions and that these decisions are gender-related and made within the family and broader social networks, both within the sending and receiving countries. Also, this school of research sees migration, particularly among women, in terms of emancipation, greater opportunities, and a transformation of subjectivity. I consider this approach fruitful for men's studies in migration as well. Issues of masculinity in migration can now be overshadowed because of an overcorrection and the recognition that past migration research focused almost exclusively on the male experience. Migrating males should also be understood as gendered within their work and family responsibilities, intimate lives, physical experiences, the fears and traumas related to migration, etc.
Another methodological approach that allows us to reconsider migration is the biographical approach. Migration is a dynamic process with an ambiguous beginning and open ending, and it cannot be analytically cut from the rest of the lived experience. Migration can be studied as a trajectory of movement from one culture to another and the human experience of living between two or several cultures.
The study of mobility and tourism within the social sciences also influences migration research. As John Urry wrote in 2007, flows of people can relate to their different desires — "the desire to get a job, housing, access to some type of leisure, to profess a particular faith, to build family relation-
ships, to get richer illegally, to get asylum etc." Tourism studies enrich migration research. They criticize "migrant" as an analytical concept from a class perspective and claim that regardless of the occupation, sending country, social class, and opportunities, a migrant should be understood as a "working traveler" [Agustin, 2008], discovering a new world.
As a qualitative researcher, I recommend participant observation, in-depth biographical interviews, and more recurrent forms of "go-alongs" [Kusenbach, 2003]. The current state of migration research definitely requires more comparative projects, as well as a translocal research design in which migrants' lives have been studied from the perspectives of both receiving and sending countries/communities. Some of the research topics that I think haven't been explored adequately are migration-tourism nexus, migrant home and leisure life, well-being and social security, emotional experiences and intimate lives, and the transformations of migrant physical habits, such as their adaptation to local temperatures and climates.
Question 3
Even if the knot binding migration and urban effects seems strong, I have doubts that everything is done within a migration-city nexus. There are still serious gaps in migrant city-exploration topics, urban leisure-time studies, and the examination of the creation of migrant places, migrant relationships with "local" residents, etc. Migrants are active participants in the change of a cityscape. On one hand, they appropriate already created urban infrastructure and spaces. On the other, they are able to alter the urban space with new "ethnic" or "migrant" places, such as shops, cafes, barbershops, markets, clinics etc. Some places are open to everyone, while others are available only for migrants and their acquaintances, therefore signifying a hidden, parallel city as a migrants' comfort zone within a receiving society. The former means that migrants are integrated enough to offer services to the native population; the latter can be a sign of a lack of their integration and even of social deprivation.
Rural areas remain on the periphery of current mainstream migration studies and are still represented mainly as sending communities when it comes to transnational and translocal migration research. I assume that in contemporary global mobility, urban societies are viewed as more advanced, so rural-urban relocation is considered as an improvement in terms of opportunities. Still, if we turn to the concept of "social remittances" proposed by Peggy Lewitt, migrants change both sending and receiving communities in a variety of ways, with both communities loosing and gaining something. Therefore, translocal research will contribute significantly to the unraveling of the knot binding migration and urban effects. Additionally, de-urbanized areas don't always perform as sending societies, if we take a look at the global south and south-south migrations. North-south and west-east migrations also offer interesting cases, when the relocation to less urbanized areas is often considered desirable. An example of this is recreational and retirement migration to southern resorts from wealthy countries and/or global cities.
Frank van Tubergen,
Professor at the Department of Sociology at Utrecht University
Question 1
I think so. In the European context, there are some "stylized findings" or "general patterns" that have been found repeatedly. One relates to the immigration generation: it has become evident that, generally speaking, the foreign-born generation is at a disadvantage, and that this disadvantage becomes smaller with each successive generation. First-generation immigrants have difficulties in speaking the host-country language; their educational qualifications obtained in the origin country are valued less in their new country of residence; and their social networks are limited to same-ethnics. Their children, however, acquire the host language at a young age, obtain their education in the host society, and mix with ethnic-majority members more often. Another stylized finding concerns group size. Generally speaking, larger ethnic minority groups face more difficulties in integrating in the host country. One reason for this is that members of larger ethnic minority groups
Frank van Tubergen, Professor at the Department of Sociology at Utrecht University
have more incentives to retain their mother tongue and make fewer investments in learning the host language, which in turn limits their labor market prospects. Furthermore, larger groups are seen as more threatening by ethnic majority members, resulting in the higher salience of the "bigger" ethnic groups in media, ultimately resulting in stronger discrimination by ethnic-majority members. Smaller ethnic-minority groups learn the official language faster, mix with majority members more often, and hence "integrate" more easily.
Question 2
I think that a mixture of methodologies is most helpful in studying such a complex phenomenon as immigration and integration. I agree with what Glenn Firebaugh writes in his great book Seven Rules for Social Research: "Let the method be the servant, never the master". In other words, start with interesting questions, puzzles, and only then select the method of research, instead of vice versa. It seems helpful to me to become familiar with a variety of methodologies, which make you more flexible as a researcher. So, my advice to young scholars would be: Learn how to do experiments in the field and lab, to analyze longitudinal data, to do social-network analysis, and to analyze online (big) data. Familiarize yourself with as many different methodologies as possible, and then you can research anything in the best way. For example, to study the existence of discrimination in the labor market, the best method is to use field experiments. Yet for questions about trajectories and developments, observational-longitudinal data are needed. One of the most pressing issues in integration, in my view, concerns the integration trajectories of children of immigrants. Until a few years ago, such data were missing in Europe. With colleagues from the Netherlands, Germany, England and Sweden, we set up a large-scale, comparative CILS4EU study panel in 2010. This research began by following ethnic minority and majority adolescents aged 14-15, and then interviewing them annually about a wide variety of topics.
Question 3
Good question, I have to think about that!
