This research note examines the politics of refugee belonging in Germany, Sweden, Austria, United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Specifically, it explores how migrant belonging is impacted by ...integration policies and national political debates on immigration in these countries. Prior research suggests that refugees have little knowledge of policy, but that national political or media debates strongly impact a feeling of inclusion. Our research shows that both policy and national/media debates affect belonging. Despite widely differing legal and national contexts, the countries studied largely base integration on principles of cultural assimilation that can be hostile to “outsiders” and lead to insecure and contradictory belonging. The article also examines the strategies migrants adopt to forge belonging, depending on the national context. We find that in some contexts, migrants emphasize that they take individual responsibility for integrating and in others they build belonging on cultural and religious similarities with the host community. Thus, this research shows that the national policy environment not only impacts belonging, but also shapes the strategies migrants adopt to achieve it. The research is based on a long-term study conducted as a part of an EU Horizon 2020 project, RESPOND.
Multilateral resistance to migration Bertoli, Simone; Fernández-Huertas Moraga, Jesús
Journal of development economics,
05/2013, Volume:
102, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The rate of migration observed between two countries does not depend solely on their relative attractiveness, but also on the one of alternative destinations. Following the trade literature, we term ...the influence exerted by other destinations on bilateral flows as Multilateral Resistance to Migration, and we show how it can be accounted for when estimating the determinants of migration rates in the context of a general individual random utility maximization model. We propose the use of the Common Correlated Effects estimator (Pesaran, 2006) and apply it to high-frequency data on the Spanish immigration boom between 1997 and 2009. Compared to more restrictive estimation strategies developed in the literature, the bias goes in the expected direction: we find a smaller effect of GDP per capita and a larger effect of migration policies on bilateral rates.
Building upon the concept of migration regime, this open access book brings together the works of scholars who have investigated logics and routines of action in the field of immigration control ...within a single and innovative theoretical framework. The chapters cover a wide range of policy domains, from visa policy to the externalisation of controls, labour migration to asylum, internal controls towards irregular migration to restrictions for intra-EU mobility. By unravelling organisational strategies and practices across Europe, the book does not only contribute to dismantling the very idea of the European North-South divide in migration but also shows how Europe really works in the field of migration in times of deep economic, asylum and health crises. In this perspective, the book questions the widespread understanding of migration control outcomes as simply the result of more or less effective state policies without considering the embeddedness of the national policy goals and strategies in the dynamic interplay of different economies, institutional cultures and geopolitical positions.
Network function virtualization foresees the virtualization of service functions and their execution on virtual machines. Any service is represented by a service function chain (SFC) that is a set of ...VNFs to be executed according to a given order. The running of VNFs needs the instantiation of VNF Instances (VNFIs) that in general are software modules executed on virtual machines. The virtualization challenges include: 1) where to instantiate VNFIs; ii) how many resources to allocate to each VNFI; iii) how to route SFC requests to the appropriate VNFIs in the right sequence; and iv) when and how to migrate VNFIs in response to changes to SFC request intensity and location. We develop an approach that uses three algorithms that are used back-to-back resulting in VNFI placement, SFC routing, and VNFI migration in response to changing workload. The objective is to first minimize the rejection of SFC bandwidth and second to consolidate VNFIs in as few servers as possible so as to reduce the energy consumed. The proposed consolidation algorithm is based on a migration policy of VNFIs that considers the revenue loss due to QoS degradation that a user suffers due to information loss occurring during the migrations. The objective is to minimize the total cost given by the energy consumption and the revenue loss due to QoS degradation. We evaluate our suite of algorithms on a test network and show performance gains that can be achieved over using other alternative naive algorithms.
Drivers can be understood as forces leading to the inception of migration and the perpetuation of movement. This article considers key drivers of migration and explores different ways that they may ...be configured. We modify existing explanations of migration to generate a framework which we call push-pull plus. To understand migration flows better, analysts could usefully distinguish between predisposing, proximate, precipitating and mediating drivers. Combinations of such drivers shape the conditions, circumstances and environment within which people choose to move or stay put, or have that decision thrust upon them. In any one migration flow, several driver complexes may interconnect to shape the eventual direction and nature of movement. The challenge is to establish when and why some drivers are more important than others, which combinations are more potent than others, and which are more susceptible to change through external intervention. Drawing on Afghan and Somali movements featuring 'mixed migration', the article concludes that proximate and mediating drivers, rather than those in the structural and precipitating spheres, appear to offer greater potential for intervention. To be effective, though, migration policy should be understood not simply as a stand-alone lever, but within the wider political economy.
Given that research into forced migration is looking at processes of enormous human suffering and often involves working with people who are extremely vulnerable to exploitation and physical harm, it ...seems difficult to justify if it has no relevance for policy. This article argues that the search for policy relevance has encouraged researchers to take the categories, concepts and priorities of policy makers and practitioners as their initial frame of reference for identifying their areas of study and formulating research questions. This privileges the worldview of the policy makers in constructing the research, constraining the questions asked, the objects of study and the methodologies and analysis adopted. In particular, it leaves large groups of forced migrants invisible in both research and policy. Drawing on a case study of self-settled refugees, the article explores how these limitations affect the research process, despite the efforts of the researcher to move beyond policy categories. In order to bring such ‘invisible’ forced migrants into view, the conclusion calls for more oblique approaches to research, which recognize the ‘normality’ within their situation rather than privileging their position as forced migrants as the primary explanatory factor. Such studies may help to bridge the gap between refugee studies and broader social scientific theories of social transformation and human mobility. By breaking away from policy relevance, it will be possible to challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions that underpins much practice and in due course bring much more significant changes to the lives of forced migrants.
Growing alarm has been expressed about populism in mainstream political parties, yet the vast majority of scholarship investigating populism has documented the role of radical right populist parties ...rather than that of mainstream parties. This article draws on non-essentialist understandings of populism—the idea that populism is a central aspect of democracy and not restricted to the realm of radical political parties and “populist” leaders—to examine how mainstream political leaders discursively articulate the antagonism between “the people” and the institutional order. We also examine how mainstream party leaders, who are likely to be deeply embedded in the institutional order, negotiate tensions between the institutionalized system and populist articulation. We study this in the Australian context, which is appropriate for examining populism in mainstream political parties given that far-right and far-left parties have gained much smaller shares of electoral support in Australia than elsewhere. Our findings indicate that mainstream party leaders discursively construct the idea of “the people” by homogenizing disparate social demands and claiming their right to represent the community as a whole. In doing so, these leaders must negotiate pressures from the institutionalized order in the form of clientelism and accountability. This article contributes insights on the reconciliation of contemporary populism with institutionalized settings and processes.
High-skilled immigration (HSI) policy has become of increasing interest among immigrant destination countries, but success in establishing liberal policies has varied considerably across countries. ...Focusing on two reluctant immigration states, Germany and Austria, this article explains why HSI policy reforms in these two countries have led to starkly diverging outcomes. Whereas previous studies have concentrated on the politics of organized labor market actors and the market-institutional context in which they are embedded, this article contends that variation in HSI policy liberalization also reflects increasing politicization through issue linkage to adjacent immigration domains, in this case, immigrant integration policy. The findings challenge the predominant interest-group–centric work on HSI and show how arguments for and against liberalization can traverse immigration policy domains.
The purpose of this article is to present the most important legal regulations in the field of Austrian migration policy, taking into account the changes in this field, the nature of these changes ...and their conditions. The research question is whether the successive legal regulations were the result of clearly defined goals (and if so, whether these goals were achieved) or rather a result of pas sive adaptation to changing conditions. In the context of the slogan of integration advocated in recent years, it also seems essential to ask whether the legal solutions adopted in Austria strengthen integration or constitute an assimilationist tool. The article discusses such issues as the development of the system for the recruitment of foreign workers, changes in the perception of the phenomenon of migration and the reform of legislation in the field of migration policy in Austria. Moreover, attention is drawn to the most important determinants underlying this reform.