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DOI: 10.14515/monitoring.2018.6.13 Правильная ссылка на статью:
Тавровский А. В. Миграционные исследования на XIX Конгрессе Международной социологической ассоциации. Актуальные темы и исследовательские программы //Мониторинг общественного мнения: Экономические и социальные перемены. 2018. № 6. С. 251—268. https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2018.6.13. For citation:
Tavrovskiy A. V. (2018) Migration Studies at the XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology: Selected Topics and Research Agendas. Monitoring of Public Opinion-.Economic and Social Changes. No. 6. P. 251—268. https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2018.6.13.
A. V. Tavrovskiy
MIGRATION STUDIES AT THE XIX ISA WORLD CONGRESS OF SOCIOLOGY: SELECTED TOPICS AND RESEARCH AGENDAS
МИГРАЦИОННЫЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ НА XIX КОНГРЕССЕ МЕЖДУНАРОДНОЙ СОЦИОЛОГИЧЕСКОЙ АССОЦИАЦИИ. АКТУАЛЬНЫЕ ТЕМЫ И ИССЛЕДОВАТЕЛЬСКИЕ ПРОГРАММЫ
ТАВРОВСКИЙ Александр Владимирович — ассистент кафедры культурной антропологии и этнической социологии, факультет социологии, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет E-MAIL: alextavr@mail.ru http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6918-1116
Аннотация. Дается краткий обзор актуальных тем и исследовательских программ в исследованиях миграции, представленных на XIX Конгрессе международной социологической ассоциа-
MIGRATION STUDIES AT THE XIX ISA WORLD CONGRESS OF SOCIOLOGY: SELECTED TOPICS AND RESEARCH AGENDAS
Alexander V. TAVROVSKIY1 — Teaching Assistant, Chair of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnic Sociology, Faculty of Sociology E-MAIL: alextavr@mail.ru http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6918-1116
1 Saint Petersburg State University, St Petersburg, Russia
Аbstract. This is a brief overview of selected topics and research agendas in migration studies presented at the XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15—21, 2018, Toronto, Canada).
ции (15—21 июля 2018 года, Торонто, Канада). Миграционные исследования занимали важное место на Конгрессе в Торонто: более 100 сессий (из 1000) с более чем 500 презентациями были непосредственно связаны с проблемами миграции. Они в подавляющем большинстве касались транснациональной миграции во всем ее многообразии. Обеспечить даже беглый обзор столь богатого материала практически невозможно, поэтому представлены только наиболее актуальные темы и научно-исследовательские программы. В этом обзоре основное внимание уделяется новым концепциям и исследовательским программам в изучении миграции, а также вынужденной и привилегированной миграции.
ключевые слова: глобальные неравенства, транснациональная социальная защита, капиталы мигрантов, «обретение дома», вынужденная миграция, привилегированная миграция
Благодарность. This publication was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Project No 16-18-10092 "Social risks of the international youth migration in contemporary Russia".
Migration studies occupied a prominent place at the Toronto Congress: More than 100 sessions (out of app. 1000) with more than 500 presentations were directly related to the issues of migration. They overwhelmingly concerned transnational migration in all its diversity. To provide even a cursory overview of this rich material is practically impossible. However, an attempt at presenting several salient topics and research agendas is worth making. This overview will focus on new concepts and research agendas in migration studies, on forced displacement, and on privileged migration.
Keywords: global inequalities, transnational social protection, migrant capitals, homing, forced displacement, privileged migration
Acknowledgments. Данная публикация поддержана Российским научным фондом (проект № 16-18-10092).
NEW CONCEPTS AND RESEARCH AGENDAS IN MIGRATION STUDIES Sociology of Global Inequalities: Theorizing Migrants' Place
In an attempt to theorize migrants' 'class' position in a multidimensional theory of social inequalities, Anja Weiss (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany) offers a sociological theory of global inequalities [Weiss, 2017]. Instead of placing persons in one national welfare-state and thereby turning migrants into an exception, the proposed theory argues that all humans are situated in a plurality of functionally differentiated (Luhmann, Walby), politically contested (Bourdieu, Wallerstein), and territorially segmented (action settings) contexts. Functionally differentiated systems and organizations consider «properties» of persons, partially including them and creating unequal outcome; politically segmented, symbolically contested spaces such as the nation state ascribe characteristics to persons, creating hierarchies of symbolic
in- and exclusion, while embodied actors matter for territorially segmented contexts which offer a specific infrastructure and specific action settings. For some people the nation-state succeeds in conflating these contexts but for migrants, elites, and those living in dysfunctional states contexts are plural, in part deterritorialized, and/ or extending beyond national borders.
After distinguishing three types of person-context relations, Anja Weiss proceeds to construct a model of social structure in a situation in which the social and territorial boundedness of social position blurs (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Social layers in the world [Weiss, 2014].
She differentiates between three social layers according to available resources and the ability of their substitution. For the upper layers, one primary dimension of inequality such as money or formal power can completely substitute for a lack in other dimensions; for the middle layers, multiple dimensions are significant and can substitute only partially while the lower layers are characterized by inequality in many dimensions and cumulative deprivation.
The second important dimension of the global inequalities model is a socio-spatial autonomy offered by context relations. Those who enjoy a high degree of socio-spatial autonomy may well advance their capabilities, e. g. move to contexts that are most favorable to them. Socio-spatial autonomy depends on both the kind of resources a person owns and group identities. If persons are physically or symbolically bound to contexts or if a person's resources do not transport well, their capabilities will depend on the quality of the contexts to which the person and her resources are bound. Socio-spatial autonomy can also mean an access to enabling contexts and the ability to choose contexts. The migrants, as all other people, strive to enhance their capabilities but they do so by changing their political and territorial contexts. Thus, in the political
context, migrants try to get residence status and citizenship, to pass as «white», to get access to closed labor markets; in the territorial domain, it is an embodied action, climbing the fence or moving clandestinely between territories.
In her concluding remarks, Anna Weiss highlights the significance of the human endeavor to enhance their context relations and socio-spatial autonomy. This struggle does not concern only migrants: her comprehensive theory takes it as a fundamental element of a global social structure.
Transnational Social Protection
Peggy Levitt (Wellesley College, USA) proposed a transnational social protection (TSP) research agenda designed to map the kinds of protection that exist for people on the move, determine how these protections travel across borders, and analyze variations in access. The analysis includes four sources of protection: the state, the market, third sector actors, and individuals' personal networks. States provide social protection through a number of institutions, operating at multiple levels of government, from supranational to subnational. Markets provide social protection like private health insurance or contracted childcare to those who can afford them. Third sector organizations, including NGOs, church groups, and labor unions, often provide low-cost protection to a defined group, including healthcare, employment training, education, housing, and more. And individual social ties include networks of family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and others upon whom an individual can call for a wide variety of supports, including housing, childcare, cash transfers, or employment opportunities.
The author defines 'transnational social protection' as the policies, programs, people, organizations, and institutions that provide for and protect individuals in the above areas in a transnational manner. She argues that migrants move between spaces with varying state capacity, where the scope of formal social protection may be far-reaching or quite limited. They are protected through their access to formal and informal institutions in both the sending and receiving countries.
The author suggests that the concept of a 'resource environment' can help scholars map and analyze the rapidly transforming world of transnational social protection, and how access to TSP varies over time, through space, and across individuals and groups. An individual's resource environment is constituted by a combination of all the possible protections available to them from four potential sources (states, markets, third sector, and social networks). The cluster of protections that is ultimately available depends on the nature of the market, the strength and capacity of sending and receiving states, the third sector (i. e. the number and types of organizations, what they do, and their capacity to provide), and the characteristics of individual migrants and their families. These characteristics include the migrant's nation of origin, place of residence, and the breadth and depth of his or her social networks, in addition to the individual's gender, race, ethnicity, religion, wealth, income, and education. An individual's resource environment may change as they move across different sub-state or state environments as their legal or economic status changes and as their social networks transform. Resource providers will also, undoubtedly, change over time, leaving some groups well protected and others increasingly vulnerable.
To exemplify this concept, Peggy Levitt draws a map of a resource environment of a primary-educated, undocumented, Mexican migrant living in California and working in the informal sector (see Fig. 2).
Figure2. Resource environment of a primary-educated, undocumented, Mexican migrant living in California and working in the informal sector [Levitt et al. 2017: 10].
Peggy Levitt's innovative research agenda invites scholars to uncover the patterns in individuals' resource environments, make clear how they change over space and time, develop methods for measuring their size and substance, and identify patterns of exclusion — who gets left out and what kinds of services they are excluded from.
Analyzing Migrant Capitals: A Multi-Level Spatio-Temporal Framework
Umut Erel (Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom) and Louise Ryan (University of Sheffield, United Kingdom) explore migrants' opportunities and strategies in generating cultural, economic and social capital [Erel, Ryan, 2018]. Following a Bourdieusian approach to capital, they conceptualize capitals as resources that can be converted into advantageous positions in social fields. They argue that migrants routinely experience a mismatch between the spatial contexts where their resources were formed and the new contexts where they look to validate them as capitals. The processes of capital formation depend on migrants' social position, including their gender, class, and
ethnic and national position as well as their citizenship status, and how this is articulated in relation to different fields in different spatial and temporal contexts.
Combining the macro-level factors of economic and political structures, the meso-level of networks and the micro-level of personal narratives, the authors propose a multi-level analytic framework, useful for highlighting the fractures, hierarchies and exclusions in specific fields. What makes their approach truly innovative is the focus on the temporal and spatial dynamics of how migrants use different capital. The spatio-temporal approach challenges the idea that migrants' integration and accumulation of capital follow linear trajectories. By paying attention to a spatial dimension in researching mobility, they think of place as an ongoing production based on a particular constellation of social relations at a specific locus. The authors emphasize that, in contrast to the foregrounding of the spatial in migration studies, the temporal aspects of migration have received less attention; it is particularly true for gender and time issues and use of longitudinal research methodology. The authors highlight the «synchronicity» of time across different dimensions. Thus, whether and to what extent migrants' biographical time synchronizes with the requirements and opportunities of meso (networks) and macro (labor markets, political systems) time scales makes an important difference to how well they can use their social, cultural and economic capital.
Cautioning against the idea that migration follows a linear trajectory of loss or accumulation of capitals, the authors argue that it is necessary to look at how gains, losses and reorientations of capitals are connected across different social fields. They look at the interrelation of migrants' positioning across different fields of work, family and citizenship, showing that gains in one field may be accompanied by losses in others. In addition, migrants can also attempt to compensate for losses in one field by investing more heavily in another. The authors provide a visualization of their multi-level spatio-temporal framework for analyzing migrant capitals (Fig. 3).
The proposed framework draws upon a large corpus of qualitative data on migration to the UK, and, to a lesser extent, Germany, by third country nationals and EU citizens, generated over several decades by both of the authors separately. For this paper they use the biographical approach to migrant women's life stories and individual case studies.
Figure 3. Multi-level spatio-temporal framework for analyzing migrant capitals [Erel, Ryan, 2018].
«Homing»: A Research Agenda for Migration Studies
Paolo Boccagni (University of Trento, Trento, Italy) proposed a new concept of «homing» as a bridge between migration studies and social theory on belonging and place-making 1 [Boccagni, 2016]. He starts with the concept of «home» as a socio-material setting, a special social relationship with place, based on an attribution of security, familiarity and control of one's living circumstances, and a value-laden category for the discursive production of identity, belonging and the insider/outsider boundary. Taking one step further, he defines «homing» as an assemblage of social practices through which people — including migrants—try to make themselves at home in their life circumstances. Homing depicts the ongoing ways in which home is conceived, felt and enacted in the everyday, by individual or collective actors, in interaction with their external environments. It is people's evolving potential and a disposition to attach a sense of home to their life circumstances in light of their assets and the external structure of opportunities.
The author distinguishes three analytical dimensions of homing: 1) cognitive and normative — what home is expected to be like given one's social milieus, value orientations and cultural backgrounds; 2) emotional — how it is that certain material and social arrangements are perceived and sensed as more or less «feeling like home»; 3) practical — how, under what conditions and why people struggle to make their life milieus home-like, and what the material and relational accomplishments of this effort are.
Homing is a life-long, relational, appropriative, and future-oriented process. It is affected by three variables: the gap between the «real» and the «ideal» side of home, the latent but systematic tension individuals feel to bridge it, and the resources available for them to do so.
Paolo Boccagni provides a visual image of homing as a way of managing the distance between real and aspired homes in the biographical field (Fig. 4). The dotted lines stand for three analytical dimensions of home: as a material and/or immaterial entity; as a proximity-based condition and/or one reconstructed over a distance (for instance, through migrants' transnational ties with the countries of origin); as a private/domestic and/or a public/extra-domestic experience. During the life course, a shifting position (home experience) can be traced; it signifies an individual's everyday experience as a situated way of managing the distance between the real and ideal home. This position reflects the more or less effective attribution of an evolving sense of home to one's life circumstances. The position is affected by a number of external variables: agency-related vs structure-related ones.
At the end of his presentation, Paolo Boccagni suggested several research questions for studying migrant homing: 1) How is home conceived, felt, reproduced, negotiated, enacted under circumstances of migration?; 2) What factors affect individual/group variable potential and interest, and the impact in doing so?; 3) How does migrant home-making interact with trajectories of «integration» and/or transnational engagement.. .and even diasporic retention?; 4) And with majority/minority relations at large (social cohesion, everyday multiculturalism etc.)?
1 New call: a postdoc for quantitative research on home and migration. URL: https://homing.soc.unitn.it.
Material H
Figure 4. Homing as a way of managing the distance between real and aspired homes in the biographical field [Boccagni, 2016: 24—25].
This research agenda provided the framework for the session «Migrant home-making in the era of fortified borders: Reproducing the past, resisting the present, redefining the future?» organized by Paolo Boccagni and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo (University of Southern California, USA). As a counterpoint to recent emphasis on transnational flows, circuits and networks, the organizers drew attention to place-based activities and practices. How are the cognitive, emotional and practical dimensions of past «homelands» and «homes» recreated under the harsh circumstances of this new world order of border fortification? What social practices and sensory experiences enable the grassroots reproduction of home(land) memories and emotions? To what extent do these home-making practices sustain immigrant communities? And finally, how do these accumulated practices transform social life, institutions and the built environment in the new locales?
Bubbles BeverlyAsor (De La Salle University Manila, Philippines) examines migrant home-making as a process of not only forging communities and expressing ethnic identities but also as an (in)visibilizing and (re)politicizing strategy of the presence of migrants in the public sphere of a host society. She conducted a multi-sited ethnographic study on Filipino migrant communities in South Korea, where she explores how migrants employ religious resources and Catholic affiliation to carve ethnic identity, new subjectivities and migrant collectivities through various home-making strategies both in the sacred and secular spaces. These home-making strategies have the performative power to challenge spatial and integration regimes through which the Korean
state manages the migrant population in the public sphere. The author looks at two of the creative strategies of recreating 'imagined' Filipino communities and 'homes' in South Korea: (1) how Filipino migrant communities observe calendrical religious rituals such as Santacruzan and processions as an embodied performance of Filipino identity and collectivity in public spaces; and (2) how Filipino migrants replicate and restage their 'homeland' through the most mundane and quotidian activities such as buying and selling Filipino products at Filipino stores and markets, sending remittances and meeting co-ethnics. The author identifies two domains of home-making: the inner domain of co-ethnic Filipinos in the (re)creation of an idealized notion of home through collective memory, nostalgia and the continuity of religious and cultural practices and beliefs, and the outer domain when home-making is performed for non-Filipino spectators to assert social and cultural identities which Filipino migrants perceive as 'unique' from Korean culture. She argues that although migrant home-making strategies enable migrants to 'survive and thrive' in the host society, they are also powerful tools to negotiate and resist migrant invisibility and marginal positionality.
Drawing on the life experiences of conflict-induced displaced people in Colombia, Luis Eduardo Perez Murcia (The University of Manchester, United Kingdom) explores the extent to which and in which these people remake home. He argues that despite displacement consistently resulting in a significant loss of home, home can be remade on the move. A study based on in-depth interviews shows that following conflict and displacement, the process of remaking home not only entails the reconstruction of a material shelter but also a social world, a familiar landscape, and the emotional and existential feeling of being at 'home'. The empirical evidence suggests that the reconstruction of home tends to take years, decades or even generations and it is in part shaped by experiences of violence, the extent and persistence of persecution, and the ethnic identity and life stage of those compelled to move. Many of those who fled after being raped or witnessing relatives being killed consistently struggle to remake a home. The same appears to be true for those who belong to the black and indigenous communities and those who tend to root home in their 'ancestral land' and the elderly, who aspire to die 'at home'. The author highlights the significance of the interplay over time and space between social constraints and individual decisions and aspirations in the process of remaking a home.
Chrysanthi Zachou (American College of Greece-Deree, Greece) focuses on the home-making practices of female refugees in Greece. She carried out participant observation and in-depth interviewing of female refugees in different reception facilities in Athens and the surrounding areas. Having experienced violence, multiple losses, separation from family, and the destruction of their social and communal networks, they face multiple challenges in the host society associated with their transient status as asylum seekers and their racialization and exclusion due to their ethnicity or religion and their uncertainty about the future. Using various home-making practices, they try to turn controlled and surveilled refugee shelters and camps into homes for themselves and their families. Through their daily routines and material artifacts, they try to instill a sense of normality into their lives, renegotiate identity and belonging and symbolically recreate home away from home to counter their feelings of homelessness and uprootedness.
FORCED DISPLACEMENT
According to the UNHCR's Global Trends 2 2017, 68.5 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict or generalized violence. This includes 25.4 million refugees, 40 million internally displaced people, and 3.1 million asylum seekers. An estimated 16.2 million people were newly displaced in 2017. Asylum-seekers submitted 1.7 million new asylum claims. The United States of America was the world's largest recipient of new individual applications (331.700), followed by Germany (198.300), Italy (126.500), and Turkey (126.100). During 2017, 102,800 refugees were admitted for resettlement and only 667.400 returned to their countries of origin.
The main countries of asylum for refugees were Turkey (3.5 m), Pakistan (1.4 m), Uganda (1.4 m), Lebanon (998,900; it hosts the largest number of refugees relative to its national population; in 2017, 1 in 6 people was a refugee), Iran (979,400), Germany (970,400), Bangladesh (932,200), and Sudan (906,600). Altogether, more than two-thirds (68 %) of all refugees worldwide came from just five countries: Syria (6.3 m), Afghanistan (2.6 m), South Sudan (2.4 m), Myanmar (1.2 m), and Somalia (986,400). Children below 18 years of age constituted about half of the refugee population in 2017; among them, 173,800 were unaccompanied and separated children (UNHCR, 2017).
Keeping this dramatic situation in mind, it is no wonder that the major topic of discussion in many sessions of the congress was related to forced displacement. Following a gendered approach to refugee and asylum studies [Freedman, 2015], Manashi Ray (West Virginia State University), the organizer of the «Refugees and Gender» panel, argues that while refugees claim much global attention today, women refugees do not. She deplores that this systemic lack of gender sensitivity has gravely affected the framing of research concerning refugees. Although women are over-represented among refugee and displaced populations, they are a minority among asylum claimants, reflecting gender barriers in the process for seeking refuge and resettlement, that favor men.
Keltouma Guerch (Ministry of Education, Morocco) discusses Sub-Saharan women migrants' stories where they share their migration experiences and aspirations for a better life in Morocco as a destination or transit country on their way to Europe. Some narratives were gathered in vivo in Oujda, North-East of Morocco; others were posted on the Internet. Women migrants' narratives may take the form of stories, songs or dances. Through these stories the author considers women's lives in public and private spheres, identifies the problems they endure, including violence, exclusion — or inclusion — based on their gender, marital status, cultural and religious backgrounds, and their capacity to transform oral stories into texts.
Susanne Willers (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) describes the new challenges for Central American women fleeing violence. After the humanitarian crisis of 2015, the mobility regime in Central America is changing. Due to strengthening of migration enforcement policies, traditional migration routes to the USA have become too dangerous for women, especially those traveling with children and lacking the financial resources to migrate up north. One survival strategy is to look for access to
2 UNHCR (2017) Global Trends. Forced Displacement In 2017. URL: https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2017.
formal rights through the refugee protection status in Mexico. However, despite the efforts made by the UNHCR and regional NGOs, the Mexican refugee system and the particular local contexts in refugee-receiving communities contribute to the re-victimization of migrant women and their children. During her fieldwork in the southern Mexican town of Tapachula, Susanne Willers focused on the particular experiences of refugee claimants, the strategies they put into practice to manage the situation and the role of the extended family network. She analyzed how processes of re-victimization due to segmented labor markets and other aspects of structural and gender-based violence impact women's agency during this process.
A new perspective on gender and vulnerability is offered by Gerda Heck (AUC Egypt, Egypt). For many years, scholars and especially feminist activists have been demanding that international humanitarian agencies and nation states particularly ensure the protection of women, children and other vulnerable migrant groups. Referring to recent critical debate on the dangers of the discursive logic of vulnerability in the field of migration politics (Didier Fassin, Miriam Ticktin), she discusses the question of gender and vulnerability in the context of the current international refugee regime in Turkey. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in the spring and summer of 2016, she shows how the introduction of the categories «gender and vulnerability» in UNHCR politics in Turkey has restricted access to asylum and resettlement only to vulnerable cases that by definition exclude certain profiles like young male refugees.
Franziska Schreyer and Tanja Fendel (Institute for Employment Research, Germany) explore the chances of upward social mobility of women refugees within activating integration policies in Germany. According to The Integration Act for forced migrants, introduced in Germany in 2016, a permanent residence permit is only granted if refugees have sufficient German language skills and are able to secure most of their own livelihood. Using a mixed-methods strategy, the authors provide empirical evidence about gender differences in educational and employment participation and in language skills. They argue that female refugees have lower chances to achieve upward social mobility, are less likely to fulfill the new requirements for a permanent residence permit and need special support in the integration process.
A different perspective on European integration policies is given by Johanna Hiitola (University of Jyvaskyla, Finland), who carried out a multi-sited ethnographic study on how resistance and belonging are embodied by Afghan refugees in Finland. Their «embodied citizenship» is particularly manifested in struggles over gaining residency or asylum. It depends on refugees' social positions and life experiences before fleeing, their experiences while traveling and waiting for residence permits, and, finally, on the local community and integration practices. The author argues that all these experiences are intersectionally inscribed into the body along the lines of gender, race, class, and age. However, the integration policies do not fully recognize the complex issues involved in refugees' «embodied citizenship».
Irene Tuzi (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy) and Mireille Al-Rahi (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy; Migration Institute of Finland, Finland) carried out multi-sited fieldwork in Lebanon and Finland to examine the push and pull factors of the Iraqi refugees' decision to return home. On the one hand, it is the wish to reconnect with left-behind families, friends and with the land of origin; on the other hand, the host
government policies, civil society attitudes and integration failure can motivate them to go back to the country of origin. In addition, they add an interesting symbolic dimension to their research. Drawing on Peter Kivisto and Vanja La Vecchia-Mikkola's ideas [Kivisto, La Vecchia-Mikkola, 2013], the authors investigate the process of redefining the refugees' relationship with their country of origin and their ambivalence towards this decision. In their imagination they view their return as a visit or a temporary sojourn not in a country of violence and suffering but in an idealized, mythic place at odds with reality on the ground.
Djordje Stefanovic (Saint Mary's University, Canada) and Neophytos Loizides (University of Kent, United Kingdom) pursued their research on post-war refugee returns to communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Using a representative survey, they had established that older Bosnians with positive memories of pre-conflict inter-ethnic relations are more likely to return than younger persons or those with negative memories; women and those experiencing wartime victimization are less likely to return, and the rural displaced are more inclined to return than urban dwellers. Going a step further and bringing in new data sources, they now focus on the impact of the local war-time violence (killing and property destruction) on the likelihood of returning to places of pain.
To explore the integration experiences of recent Syrian refugees who have been displaced since 2011, Aysegul Balta Ozgen (University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA) suggests a comparative qualitative research design. She conducts in-depth interviews with Syrian refugees and representatives of the NGOs who work with refugees in four cities from four countries: Toronto, Canada; Buffalo, New York; Istanbul, Turkey; and Berlin, Germany. The central question is how do refugees perceive their life chances depending on different policy contexts? In the author's opinion, when refugees think that their future in one place is uncertain, when they perceive a loss of economic and cultural status, and when they feel negative public attitude toward themselves, their perceived prospects of integration seem worse. The comparative study allows developing a typology of different countries' reactions to refugees as they are experienced by refugees themselves, as well as identifying similarities and differences in the mechanisms of integration.
Ibrahim Soysuren (University of Neuchatel, Switzerland) and Mihaela Nedelcu (University of Neuchatel, Institute of Sociology, Switzerland) study the deportation of foreigners (so-called «voluntary return») in France, Switzerland and Turkey. They bring forward a Foucauldian notion of governmentality to explain a concomitant use of incitement and coercion to pressure unwanted foreigners out of the country. This comparative qualitative research shows that despite the use of some incentives to leave, direct and indirect coercion remain central to the deportation process.
A special session was dedicated to the inclusion of skilled refugees in the labor market. The organizers, Oliver Schmidtke (University of Victoria, Canada) and Anja Weiss (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany), pointed to a paradox between labor and humanitarian migration: while skilled economic migrants are regularly targeted as 'assets' for the economy, refugees are primarily perceived as being in need of assistance and contributing to the unskilled sector of the economy. Nevertheless, the policy makers realize that the long-term social and, particularly, the labor market integration of refugees is a necessary condition for society's well-being. In this respect
the organizers invited to reflect on the main obstacles and opportunities that refugees face in their attempts to enter the skilled labor market.
Helen Schwenken (University of Osnabrück, Germany) addresses the question of exploring the normative foundations of labor market inclusion projects for skilled female refugees in Germany. Currently there are many gender-specific projects of integration in Germany. This indicates that state and non-state actors are well aware that gender-specific efforts are necessary to promote equal opportunities for female refugees. However, skilled female refugees and mothers are placed in low-skill and feminized sectors and experience a devaluation of their skills. Drawing on expert and participant interviews, the author explains this paradoxical situation not by a traditional understanding of gender roles amongst refugees but rather by the unintentional effects of traditional gender knowledge that implicitly drive counseling and placement processes.
Jannes Jacobsen (German Institute for Economic Research, Germany) casts the question of the economic integration of skilled refugees in Germany in terms of institutional framework. The author argues that labor market access and outcomes are shaped by two key dimensions: 1) the residence title the humanitarian migrant is granted; and 2) the recognition of professional and academic qualifications. He uses data from the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Refugee Survey, which is representative of all people that applied for asylum between January 1, 2013 and January 31,2016 in Germany. Indeed, the analysis suggests that the institutional framework is crucial for labor market integration. Those that are granted a safe status invest in the recognition of certificates. Recognized certificates increase the chances of employment in general and reduce an education-occupation mismatch. This in turn provides a higher income.
Karolina Lukasiewicz (New York University, USA), Tanzilya Oren (Fordham University, USA) and Saumya Tripathi (Social Worker, India) provide an answer to a session's problematics coming from the different context of the New York City area. The authors indicate that in the United States, refugees are eligible to participate in federally funded programs that aim «to achieve economic self-sufficiency as quickly as possible after arrival in the United States» (The Refugee Act of 1980). This goal is reached with the help of case management, employment services, language training, cultural orientation classes, and direct cash allowances. Past research suggests that although the overall employment rate among refugees is higher than among the native population, employment is often low paid and includes jobs at the bottom of the labor market structure since refugees have no time to learn English and increase their long-term opportunities. Grounding their study on in-depth interviews with refugees, case workers and participant observations in three non-profit organizations assisting refugees, the authors argue that despite some positive outcomes, in the long run the integration programs can be counterproductive to their objectives by exacerbating inequalities. They should consider the long-term employment situation of clients, i. e. the quality of the jobs they perform and the adjustment of the employment to their skills and education level.
PRIVILEGED MIGRATION Expatriation and Lifestyle Migration
The organizer of the panel on expatriation in the field of migration studies Sylvain Beck (University of Paris IV-Sorbonne, France) urged participants to unravel the mean-
ing of expatriation as a specific form of displacement. One of the panelists, Caroline Schöpf (Hong Kong Baptist University, Max Weber Foundation, Hong Kong), rightfully remarked that even though the term «expatriate» or «expat» enjoys frequent popular usage, there is a lack of sociological research on the groups identified by it, and an ever-greater scarcity of attempts to critically investigate and deconstruct what this term signifies. Expatriation is associated with lifestyle migration, transnational elites, skilled professionals, and cosmopolitanism and tourism; but it is also connected to whiteness and postcolonialism. Considering rather negative connotations of labor migration and rather positive connotations of mobility, Sylvain Beck invited presenters to think about the categorization of expatriates.
Caroline Schöpf used in-depth interviews and fieldwork to analyze how the terms «expat» and «expatriate» are adopted, assigned and negotiated in Hong Kong by receiving society members as well as highly educated migrants of various ethnic groups from Western and South Asians countries. She found that informants claim to use the term in color-blind, meritocratic ways to signify attributes such as professional employment, high levels of education and expertise, temporary mobility, positive and enriching impacts to receiving societies, and an absence of associated social problems. However, she adds, race and nationality, along with class, tend to strongly pattern categorizations. The author noticed that individuals associated with the Global South are frequently categorized as «ethnic minorities» or «immigrants» while those linked to the Global North are viewed as «expats». White migrants, even those who are low-skilled, unemployed or come from a society with a lower level of development than Hong Kong, report being automatically categorized as «expats». Highly skilled, professionally employed, non-white migrants from Western and non-Western societies tell of shifting, situational categorizations that depend on factors such as their perceived social class or enactment of Western cultural capital, the individuals they are accompanied by, and the venue or even city quarter they happen to be in. Caroline Schöpf argues that a conceptual division and separate study of «immigrants» and «expatriates», or «migration» and «mobility», may obscure and reify deep inequalities based on racialization and nationality, and that there is much to gain from a systematic comparison of the migration experiences of those labeled «expatriates» with those labeled «(im)migrants».
Michaela Benson (Goldsmiths, United Kingdom) critically reflects on how our understandings of what counts as migration should take into account what current global economic structures do to population movements. She starts from her experience of studying relatively privileged populations that have moved to and settled in other parts of the world, primarily searching for better lifestyles. Initiating a decade ago with Karen O'Reilly the study on lifestyle migration, they defined it as the spatial mobility of relatively affluent individuals of all ages, moving either part-time or full-time to places that are meaningful because, for various reasons, they offer the potential of a better quality of life [Benson, O'Reilly, 2009: 2].
She argues that such movements are often positioned as a case apart from migration studies; however, careful observation reveals how neoliberalism articulates with post coloniality in the practice of privileged migration. Michaela Benson illustrates this through her research into North American migration to Panama, outlining the structural and material conditions that support such migrations alongside their agency in this
process [Benson, O'Reilly, 2018]. While the process of economic industrialization generated labor migration, the process of financialization in contemporary capitalist economies generates lifestyle migrants. The difference is that these migrants are drawn as consumers, attracted to relocating their finances to other economies through individual property and business investments. She demonstrates how state-led promotion of property investment in international markets is a significant feature of the structures that support and facilitate lifestyle migration. The explicit pursuit of migrant capital through property investment is embraced by nation-states as a channel for foreign direct investment (FDI). With many countries involved in courting FDI through such mechanisms, there is a competitive arena for such investments, an international and global market in international property investment. A vast industry has grown up around international property investment, including the myriad smaller property fairs, magazines, investment seminars and workshops, and broadcast media.
The emerging body of work on transnational gentrification highlights how (middle-class) migrant capital is being courted in the service of neoliberal economic development strategies. Exploring the case of lifestyle migration to Panama, Michaela Benson points to the development of the lifestyle industry that supports the place-making and marketing through which Panama was made one of the best places in the world to retire to. This understanding of Panama becomes part of the cultural logic of lifestyle migrants, translating into their everyday lives in the destination. The author notes that income distribution in Panama is one of the most unequal in central and south America, widening as neoliber-alism penetrates further into the economy, and concludes that such foreign investment through property is part of the problem in ways migrants themselves are unaware.
Matthew Hayes (Canada Research Chair, Global and International Studies, Canada) carried out his interpretive qualitative research by drawing on in-depth interviews with North American transnational retirement migrants in Cuenca, Ecuador, who seek out a lower income community in which to pursue culturally specific forms of 'successful' and 'active' aging. He argues that achieving these cultural forms of aging require time and money, leading a growing number of financially vulnerable North American 'baby boomers' to pursue their later life course in low-income countries — many in Latin America. In the author's opinion, the pursuit of these cultural ideals is increasingly dependent on coloniality and global inequalities. Moving to 'a different culture' is a crucial aspect of North Americans' sense of risk-taking and adventure in Ecuador, and is tightly tied up with notions of successful aging.
Paying attention to the gender differences in narratives of adventure and cultural integration, Matthew Hayes emphasizes that both men and women seek new, more 'expansive' horizons in Ecuador as a way to 'stay young,' and avoid aging in North American societies that devalue aging bodies and the experience and expertise of older workers, especially women. He stresses the ambivalent situation of North American lifestyle migrants: While they often report positive experiences related to their relocation, their uprootedness is evident both in the risks of isolation to which they are exposed and in their striving for ever-more transnational destinations. Moreover, their condition in Latin American communities like Cuenca are marked by relative economic privilege and the symbolic power of their racialized whiteness, which shapes how their aging bodies are received and read in transnational contexts.
One more fieldwork conducted by Matthew Hayes focused on cosmopolitan narratives as cultural codes that justify and give meaning to the transnational experiences of French European (France, Belgium, Switzerland) and Italian migrants who have relocated to Morocco. He argues that cosmopolitan openness, a specific type of moral disposition towards the receiving community, helps migrants narrate their transnationalism in terms that emphasize their acquisition of appropriate cosmopolitan cultural dispositions, as opposed to others, who do it wrong. His fieldwork illustrates the importance that European lifestyle migrants place on openness to cultural difference and avoiding ethnocentric comportment as ways of making sense of and justifying their transnational relocations. However, he points out that these narratives contrast with other dispositions and narratives that present important continuities with colonial emplacement, and that contradict their stated cosmopolitan aims.
The case of Karlovy Vary, a spa town in Western Bohemia, Czech Republic, was chosen by Ludek Sykora and Klara Fiedlerova (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic) to discuss the patterns and politics of migrant investment, gentrification and place-making. A fragmented privatization of spa and hotel complexes attracted Russian investors, entrepreneurs, and lifestyle immigrants. The authors note that the cultural proximity provided a secure environment for families while keeping business operations in Russia. Contracts with Russian partners and direct flights from Russia produced a massive inflow of spa guests and tourists from post-soviet spaces, thus making Russian the most heard language in the spa zone. It further enhanced business opportunities as well as increased jobs for lower paid labor drawn from post-soviet republics. The superiority of foreign over domestic finance capitalized in the spa zone residential sector led to the wholesale gentrification and displacement of locals by wealthier Russian lifestyle immigrants. This rapid place-(re)making provoked negative media representations of a socially polarized town counterbalanced by functioning multiethnic partnerships in everyday business life. The authors build their research on interviews with Russian-speaking immigrants as well as the original local population, managers, employees, and residents as well as political representatives.
The ethnography of Japanese lifestyle migrants in Denpasar, Bali by Kosuke Hishiyama (Kindai University, Japan) focuses on their mobility patterns and social activities in the context of gated communities. In the 2000s the neoliberal policy encouraged Japanese lifestyle migration to Southeast Asian countries. This trend was further accelerated by a thriving real estate promotion culture leading to the marketization of the traditional housing sector in Bali and the emergence of gated communities. Most Japanese lifestyle migrants are middle class, with strong transnational connections, and prefer to live in gated communities; they are either retired couples or younger people married to locals. The author identifies several clusters of Japanese migrants who differ in terms of their lifestyles and mobilities. While in one case high mobility facilitates social activities (clubs, environmental circles etc.), reinforces cultural enclosure and generates a critical attitude to the local people, in another it promotes an individualized lifestyle, a positive evaluation of local culture and «urban diversity» (in contrast to traditional Balinese «pluralistic collectivity»).
Highly-skilled Migration
Highly-skilled migration is also understudied in comparison to other types of transnational movements. However, in recent years this situation is changing, as exemplified by several contributions to this topic. Thus, the research by Annie Chan (Lingnan University, Hong Kong) focuses on female, non-single (i. e. married, partnered, and/ or with dependent children) transnational professionals in Hong Kong who initiate the migration. This qualitative study explores how transnational contexts shape the subjectivities and everyday lives of these transient professionals.
Caroline Pluss (University of Liverpool in Singapore, Singapore) challenges the assumed cosmopolitanism of highly-skilled migrants who live in global cities. The research focuses on the transnational lives of middle-class Chinese-Singaporean migrants in Hong Kong, London, New York, and Singapore («the returnees»), considering several transnational contexts: education, work, family, and/or friendships/lifestyle. The author shows that rather than experiencing these different transnational contexts as cosmopolitan, the Chinese Singaporeans often experienced these contexts as incongruous, characterized by multiple displacements, and develop ambiguous views of self, others, places, and societies. The strong methodological side of this qualitative research is its comparative, multi-sited character.
The paper by Abdul-Bari Abdul-Karim (University of Manitoba, Canada) deals with the important topic of foreign qualification recognition in the Canadian context. It examines the job-skills match rates among immigrants working in one of the self-regulated professions in Manitoba. Despite their higher educational background, immigrants experience long-term downward social and economic mobility, receiving comparatively lower rates of return to foreign educational credentials. The author uses Critical Race Theory to identify the challenges immigrants face in the foreign credential evaluation process.
Drawing on the results of the Bradramo project (brain drain and academic mobility from Portugal to Europe), a group of Portuguese researchers deal with highly skilled emigration related to academic mobility. Rui Gomes et al. argue that the profile of Portuguese skilled emigration dramatically changed from the crisis of 2008 onwards, and nowadays reveals a trend towards a permanent and a long-term mobility, an insertion in the primary segment of the labor market of the destination countries, and a latent mobility (after a period of study in the country of destination) rather than direct mobility flows (after having entered the Portuguese labor market).
This overview emphasizes new concepts and research agendas in migration studies, forced displacement and privileged migration. It had to leave behind many significant topics discussed at the congress. This is the case of migrant solidarities and mobilization, comparative migration policies, immigration and populist policies, transnational care, migration and quality of life, migration and language issues, sexual migration, trafficking in persons, immigration detention and many others, to name only those that were submitted to the Research Committee «Sociology of Migration». Conceptually, the contemporary migration research presented at the congress follows the transnational paradigm, in many cases focusing on inequalities and categorizations; methodologically, qualitative research strategies remain very popular. Many studies use the mixed-methods approach and are multi-sited and multi-scalar. These social science
trajectories translate the increasing significance of transnational migration in a global unequal world.
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