Migration Infrastructure Xiang, Biao; Lindquist, Johan
The International migration review,
09/2014, Letnik:
48, Številka:
s1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Based on the authors’ long‐term field research on low‐skilled labor migration from China and Indonesia, this article establishes that more than ever labor migration is intensively mediated. Migration ...infrastructure – the systematically interlinked technologies, institutions, and actors that facilitate and condition mobility – serves as a concept to unpack the process of mediation. Migration can be more clearly conceptualized through a focus on infrastructure rather than on state policies, the labor market, or migrant social networks alone. The article also points to a trend of “infrastructural involution,” in which the interplay between different dimensions of migration infrastructure make it self‐perpetuating and self‐serving, and impedes rather than enhances people's migratory capability. This explains why labor migration has become both more accessible and more cumbersome in many parts of Asia since the late 1990s. The notion of migration infrastructure calls for research that is less fixated on migration as behavior or migrants as the primary subject, and more concerned with broader societal transformations.
Through establishing a spatial equilibrium model including regional productivity differences, fiscal policy, and labour migration costs, this article discusses the effects and interaction of ...place-based policies and space-neutral policies. This article finds that there are differences in the impacts and mechanisms of the two types of policies on the spatial distribution of industry and labour force, regional income gap, and overall economic productivity and shows the application situation of the two types of policies and the interactions between them. Therefore, policymakers should choose a differentiated policy portfolio to narrow the regional income gap and improve the overall economic productivity.
Agrarian industries in rural areas are increasingly relying on seasonal migrant workers, who arrive in transnationally organised settings. This paper focuses on the concept of transnational ...simultaneity in order to further analyse the dynamics that are sustaining low-wage, seasonal labour migration in transnational social fields. It is suggested that the concepts of seasonal livelihood diversification and biographical simultaneity contribute to explain this process, which is highlighted in relation to the empirical case of Thai wild berry pickers in Sweden. The ability of the workers to co-arrange life in the homeland with work overseas, together with a firmly institutionalised, transnational social network, lay the ground for the Thai-Swedish migration process. It is characterised by high circularity and frequency among the migrant workers, who oscillate on a seasonal basis between multi-sited work places, despite relatively low economic return. It is argued that simultaneity within the transnational social field, which is embedded in seasonal livelihood diversification and prospects of improved futures for their children, lowers the threshold for accepting exploitative work conditions, thus paving the way for precarious migrant work.
•The concept of transnational simultaneity adds crucial explanatory value to seasonal agricultural labour migration through a range of spatio-temporal practices.•Rural livelihood diversification and a biographical understanding of migration enhance the understanding of simultaneity in seasonal agricultural labour migration.•The example of Thai wild berry picking in Sweden is characterised by high circularity and short periods of work, with workers co-arranging their lives in multi-sited space.•Simultaneous practices and images across space and time sustain labour migration despite low earnings and unfavourable working conditions, and enhances precarious work.
Temporary labour migration is becoming intellectually topical once again. Following renewed government interest in temporary labour migration on a global level, migration scholars are now also ...showing renewed interest in the area. In this essay, we seek to explore the potential of these two movements, by states and by scholars, to yield different outcomes than earlier dialogues surrounding guest-worker programmes in the 1970s and 1980s. By looking at key ideological elements of temporary labour migration, we assess the potential for an alternative trajectory for understanding and reframing the discussion in terms that are capable of responding in a more emancipatory way to the lived experiences of migrant workers. We identify three concepts central to most analyses of temporary migration policies and programmes: temporariness, the labour market and rights. Our central contention is that these concepts function ideologically, and as such they constrain innovation with regard to temporary migrant labour programmes. We draw on Hannah Arendt's work in The Human Condition to work towards an alternative conception of what is at stake in temporary migration programmes.
In the field of comparative immigration politics, Japan has been described as a 'negative case': despite structural shortages in the domestic labour supply, scholars have commonly pointed to the ...nation's extremely restrictive, ethno-nationalist policies as an antithetical case against which traditional migration states can be compared. Applying an approach focused on the viewpoint of the state, I argue that in response to market pressures, Japan simultaneously implemented two schemes: an ethnic return migration programme centred on the discourse of rekindling ancestral ties, and a de facto guest worker programme officially represented as an internship initiative to disseminate Japanese technical knowledge. The perceived failure of co-ethnic migrants to integrate themselves on Japanese terms led to the expansion of the latter programme. Juxtaposing the two, I examine the processes through which the Japanese state 'learned' and reacted to differing policy outcomes. In doing so, I argue that policy revisions since the early 2000s have signalled the birth of a Japanese 'developmental migration state', in which restrictive immigration policies that uphold a narrow view of a homogenous nation are repeatedly reoriented to accommodate economic and development goals.
Many of the ‘essential workers’ during the Covid-19 pandemic are migrants, playing an important role for the continued functioning of basic services – notably health services, social care, and food ...supply chains. We argue that this role should be taken into account when assessing the impacts of migrant workers and in the design of labour migration and related public policies. Existing studies highlight how the employment of migrant workers in essential services is shaped by interests of employers, sectoral policies, and national institutions. Considerations of how migrants may affect the systemic resilience of essential services – in a pandemic or similar crises – are pervasively absent, not only in policy-making but also in research. Drawing on several disciplines, we outline the concept of systemic resilience and develop implications for the analysis and regulation of labour migration. We call for shifting the focus from the role of migrants in specific occupations and sectors in particular countries to transnational systems of production and service provision. To study how migrant workers affect systemic resilience, we propose an agenda for comparative research along three lines: comparing migrants to citizens within the same system, comparing migrants’ roles across systems, and comparing strategies for resilience adopted in different systems.
Globalised labour migration and remittances can help alleviate household poverty and provide supplemental income in many countries. Kyrgyzstan, like other Central Asian countries, has experienced ...dramatic geopolitical changes, economic reform, and rapid demographic shifts in the post-Soviet-Union era. Based on measurements of GDP, it is one of the most remittance-dependent countries in the world. This study uses data from the Life in Kyrgyzstan Study collected from 2011 to 2013 to break down household budgets into eight consumption categories as part of a detailed analysis of how varying remittance receipt is related to household spending. We address two methodological concerns: (1) the endogeneity of remittances and (2) population heterogeneity. In so doing, we find remittances have limited effects on household spending - while changes in remittances do yield small changes on the budget shares of food and medical expenses, no effects were found on other consumption shares. These results suggest that households in Kyrgyzstan may take remittances as permanent income and proportionally alter consumption shares along with changes in remittances. By focusing on a country whose GDP relies heavily on remittances, the findings increase our understanding of how remittances affect spending at the household level.
Abstract
Spain's berry industry relies on the agricultural labour of both local and seasonal migrant workers. A significant part of this migrant workforce comprises Moroccan mothers who leave their ...children with relatives in order to perform this wage labour. The bilateral recruitment regime favours the employment of Moroccan women with children for this labour to ensure that workers return home at the end of the harvesting season. Drawing on multi‐site ethnographic research in Spain and Morocco, this study revealed the effects of this bilateral labour regime on the intimate lives of migrant workers. We argue that the geopolitical prescriptions of this labour migration regime, along with the working and living conditions of migrant workers in Huelva, result in experiences of intimate liminality. We examined these experiences by exploring: (1) how the role of female workers as mothers becomes liminal as transnational labour agreements marginalise and outsource care obligations, (2) how governmental neglect of migrant workers' occupational health exposes them to reproductive health risks and (3) how this neglect places them in a liminal space in terms of access to healthcare, and (4) how, despite their liminality, migrant workers contest precarious conditions through everyday solidarity practices. We advance a feminist approach to liminality, emphasising the importance of an embodied, intersectional, and multiscalar perspective.
Background
In China, there are approximately 70 million children, nearly 25% of the child population, who are left behind in the care of other family members when their parents migrate to urban ...areas, for increased economic opportunities. This paper presents a systematic review and a meta‐analysis of studies that have examined the phenomenon of depression among these left‐behind children (LBC).
Methods
Six hundred three papers published between 2000 and 2017 were retrieved from five databases (China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang, Weipu, PubMed, and Web of Science).
Results
Twenty‐one studies (18 in Chinese and 3 in English) met the criteria for inclusion in this meta‐analysis. The pooled estimate of depression among LBC was 26.4%. A significant heterogeneity has been found in reported findings, and this heterogeneity was associated with three types of study characteristics, including using an unclear definition of LBC and using invalidated depression instruments, and the geographic location.
Conclusions
The risk of mental health problems among this large number of LBC suggests the need to quantify the extent and distribution of their mental health state. Implications for methodological improvements for future research have been discussed.
In this article we develop an empirically grounded typology of labour migration patterns among migrants from Central and Eastern Europe, based on two dimensions: attachment to the destination country ...and attachment to the country of origin. We conducted a survey (N=654) among labour migrants in the Netherlands from Poland, Bulgaria and Romania. We found four migration patterns in our data: (i) circular migrants (mostly seasonal workers) with weak attachments to the country of destination, (ii) bi-nationals with strong attachments to both the home country and that of destination, (iii) footloose migrants with weak attachments to both the home and the destination country, and (iv) settlers with weak attachments to the home country. Our findings demonstrate the relevance to the debate on transnationalism and integration of distinguishing different migration patterns. Successful integration in Dutch society can go hand-in-hand with 'strong' as well as with 'weak' forms of transnationalism. The bi-national pattern shows a tendency to strong transnationalism, while the settlement pattern demonstrates less transnational involvement with the country of origin.
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