This paper synthesizes insights from new global data on the effeaiveness of migration policies. It investigates the complex links between migration policies and migration trends to disentangle policy ...effects from structural migration determinants. The analysis challenges two central assumptions underpinning the popular idea that migration restrictions have failed to curb migration. First, post-WWII global migration levels have not accelerated, but remained relatively stable while most shifts in migration patterns have been directional. Second, post-WWII migration policies have generally liberalized despite political rhetoric suggesting the contrary. While migration policies are generally effective, "substitution effects" can limit their effeaiveness, or even make them counterproduaive, by geographically diverting migration, interrupting circulation, encouraging unauthorized migration, or prompting "now or never" migration surges. These effeas expose fundamental policy dilemmas and highlight the importance of understanding the economic, social, and political trends that shape migration in sometimes counterintuitive, but powerful, ways that largely lie beyond the reach of migration policies.
This article assesses recent developments in the research and practice of migrant entrepreneurship by examining the powerful contribution that the perspective of ‘mixed embeddedness’ has provided to ...this field. We identify key themes emerging from mixed embeddedness, particularly in relation to the role of the institutional and market contexts, and highlight areas that could strengthen the perspective, such as (1) the role of regulation, (2) the incorporation of racist exclusion and (3) gendered structures of migration and labour market processes, (4) market ghettoisation and (5) greater sensitivity to historical context. We also consider the extent to which growing interest among practitioners in supporting migrant enterprise has been influenced by developments in the academic domain.
The Global Evolution of Travel Visa Regimes Czaika, Mathias; de Haas, Hein; Villares-Varela, María
Population and development review,
September 2018, Letnik:
44, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Drawing on the new DEMIG VISA database, which covers global bilateral travel regulations from 1973 to 2013, this paper explores patterns and trends in international travel visa regimes. The analysis ...challenges the idea of a growing global mobility divide between "North" and "South," yielding a more complex image reflecting the multi-polar and multi-layered nature of international relations. While predominantly European and North American OECD countries have maintained relatively high but not increasing levels of entry visa restrictiveness for Africa and Asia, the latter regions maintain the highest global levels of overall entry restrictions. While citizens of wealthy (mainly OECD) countries generally enjoy the greatest visa-free travel opportunities, this primarily reflects their freedom to travel to other OECD countries. Visa-free travel is mostly realized between geographically proximate countries of integrated regional blocs such as ECOWAS, the EU, the GCC, and MERCOSUR. Analyses of global dynamics in visa reciprocity show that around 20 percent of the country dyads have asymmetrical visa rules, but also show that levels of reciprocity have increased since the mid-1990s. Our analysis shows that visas are not just instruments regulating entry of visitors and exit of citizens but are manifestations of broader political economic trends and inequalities in international power relations.
This article analyses how the gendered and classed positions of migrant women explain the meanings of becoming an entrepreneur and the role of their spouses in their occupational trajectories. Using ...a translocational positionality approach, the article challenges the claim that women escape patriarchal domination by establishing their own businesses. The narratives of 35 Latin American women entrepreneurs in Spain reveal that becoming an entrepreneur is conditioned by class‐based ideas of masculinity and femininity. I argue that middle‐class Latin American immigrant women become entrepreneurs to promote their spouse's career advancement while conforming to class‐based norms of femininity. In contrast, lower class Latin American women view the business as a space of autonomy and occupational upward mobility that nevertheless also complies with working‐class definitions of femininity. The policy implications of these findings relate to making class aspirations central to the support of labour market integration and empowerment of migrant women.
This article draws on biographical interviews with migrants to assess their aspirations and capabilities to become entrepreneurs. By augmenting mixed embeddedness emphasis on contextual factors with ...Sen’s capabilities framework, we contribute to extant sociological debates on the interaction of structure and agency, the conceptualisation of aspirations, the non-pecuniary aspects of entrepreneurship and the role of institutions in neoliberal Britain. We argue that structural barriers drive the formation of aspirations to become entrepreneurs while at the same time limit their capabilities to do so. Entrepreneurial agency must be seen as relative autonomy, effective in strategic decision making but limited to the weak financial position in which migrant entrepreneurs operate.
Drawing on the life histories of migrant women entrepreneurs in the Netherlands and Spain, this article explores the influence of transnational trajectories on their social positions and business ...strategies. A translocational positional approach enables us to research the transnational strategies of women entrepreneurs more effectively in addition to examining the changes in social positions and gendered identities between the country of origin and the country of destination. This approach contributes to scholarship on 'context' by offering a transnational gendered dimension in relation to the effects of social, spatial and institutional factors. Our findings demonstrate how female migrant entrepreneurs redefine their social status in different contexts by establishing a business and challenge, contest or comply with gender relations in their transnational entrepreneurial journeys.
This article examines the patch-working strategies of migrant entrepreneurs as a form of social agency. ‘Patch-working’ – the reliance on supplementary forms of income to support business activity – ...is often seen as a means of cushioning the financial vulnerability of small firms. However, the mechanisms and forms that patch-working takes tend to be overlooked. Evidence from 42 West Midlands’ firms shows that, despite the highly constrained operating environment, the exercise of social agency can help to cushion against disadvantage and to rework their current conditions through patch-working. This allows for business growth, and even transformational growth in some cases, rather than sheer survival. Even so, our findings show that the agency of migrant entrepreneurs brings about only minor improvements in revenue and is certainly not capable of fundamentally changing either the nature of the sector or the structure of the labour market in which they are embedded.
Governments are increasingly implementing policies aimed at attracting or retaining highly skilled migrants. While a growing number of studies examine the effectiveness of these efforts, the actual ...mechanisms through which migration policies may operate have not been questioned. Drawing on an aspirations-capability framework for mobility, this article explores the role of migration policies in the geographic mobility decisions of researchers, a highly skilled group that has been specifically targeted by such policies. Focusing on Indian researchers and using qualitative methodology (N = 40), we examine their decisions to study and/or work abroad, to stay or move elsewhere. The article shows that while migration policies do not seem to be influential in the attraction of students and researchers, they do play a role in the retention and subsequent moves of international talent.
This article analyses the role of immigrant entrepreneurs' class positions in understanding the participation of children in business activities. Immigrant entrepreneurship scholarship has ...highlighted how the participation of children depends on relations of reciprocity as well as on the lack of opportunities in paid employment. I argue that the (non) contribution of children has to do with the social mobility strategies that migrant families put in place. Drawing on the narratives of fifty-five Latin American entrepreneurs and family members in Spain, I explain (i) the role of the small firm in trajectories of social mobility, (ii) how class positions explain the (non) participation of children, and (iii) the mechanisms by which downward mobility is cushioned through practices of distinction for middle-class entrepreneurs. The article contributes to nuance our understanding of the role of family ties in migrant firms by integrating the impact of class on the lives of migrants' children.
PurposeTo critically analyse how Latin American migrant women entrepreneurs living in Ireland and the UK negotiate their entrepreneurial and motherhood identities in transnational settings. The paper ...explores (1) how motherhood influences the choices of becoming entrepreneurs; (2) how women reconcile the social imaginaries of motherhood from their country of origin in the new contexts of settlement; and (3) the impact of these transformations on their businesses.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on six biographical case studies (three in Ireland and three in the UK) and employs the theoretical lens of translocational positionality to analyse entrepreneurship as context-specific and relational processes that bring together a multiplicity of social and geographical locales.FindingsLatin American women entrepreneurs navigate their roles as “good mothers” and “good businesswomen” by simultaneously (1) complying with core values of marianismo that confine them to traditional gender roles and (2) renegotiating these values in ways that empower them through entrepreneurship. Finally, juxtaposing these two contexts (Ireland and the UK), this study (3) illuminates the similarities of the ever-continuing gender power struggles of egalitarianism for Latin American migrant women in both contexts.Originality/valueDespite the agreed need for exploring motherhood as one of the critical aspects shaping family and business cycles, this area needs to be sufficiently analysed in its intersection with ethnicity or migratory status, particularly with participants from the global South. This article aims at bridging that gap.
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