Human capital has been long an exceedingly important concept in migration research. Over time there have been attempts to provide more nuanced, and less economistic interpretations of human capital. ...Based on outputs from the EU Horizon 2020 project YMOBILITY (2015-2018) and two additional papers, this Special Issue seeks to advance this agenda further by addressing the complexities of the mobility of human capital. Migration problematises human capital assumptions due to challenges in transferring human capital across national borders. In this introductory paper we propose rethinking the human capital of migrants in a three-fold way. Firstly, we question the interpretation of skills and competences beyond the conventional divide of 'higher-skilled' and 'lower-skilled' through the concept of a 'knowledgeable migrant'. Secondly, we probe deeper into an understanding of the transferability of skills in relation to 'location', exploring the possibilities and constraints to the transfer of human capital in different spatial contexts. Thirdly, we theorise human capital in terms of new temporalities of migration and the role these play in skill acquisition. We illustrate our novel theoretical thinking with selected empirical data, both quantitative and qualitative, on youth mobility in Europe.
In this introductory article to the special issue on ‘Agricultural Regimes and Migrant Labour’, we first propose the analytical concept of the ‘agriculture–migration nexus’. This is made up of a ...series of causal and co-constructive links between specialised agriculture, on the one hand, and seasonal and temporary regimes of migrant labour on the other. In the second part of the paper we identify a number of cross-cutting themes which resonate across the papers that make up the special issue. These include new geographical patterns of agricultural labour migration, especially in Europe; a focus on specialised agricultural districts involving the intensive production of crops such as tomatoes and strawberries; the disciplining function of time, inscribed into regimes of seasonal migrant labour and daily work rhythms; and moral questions surrounding the justification for agricultural labour exploitation and how it can be challenged. The final section of the article presents highlights from the eight substantive papers that follow, demonstrating how they are logically sequenced and integrated as a whole.
•The agriculture–migration nexus is an effective analytical device for studying the links between farming and migrant labour.•The increased capitalisation and intensification of agriculture produces new geographies of labour migration.•Migrant agricultural workers' vulnerability is exacerbated by their invisibility, temporariness and often undocumented status.•Agriculture migrants enact agency; to understand their lives, we need to listen attentively to their own voices.
This paper proposes a critical comparative reflection on migration as a factor of peripheralization processes in the Western Balkan and Baltic regions. In their respective geographical positions, the ...Western Balkans and the Baltics stand at different ends of the European map: south-east and north-east. Regarding their historical and political positions, however, these are very diverse: the Western Balkans were part of Yugoslavia (except Albania) while the Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) were annexed to the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Currently, Croatia is already a member of the European Union, as the three Baltic countries are, while the rest of the Western Balkans are not. The article argues that apart from economic and geographical factors, usually taken into account in describing peripheries and cores, migration processes and discourses powerfully construct some places as dynamically moving towards a 'core' while others remain confined to a 'periphery'. By paying special attention to 'scientific discourses', the aim is to broaden our understanding of theories and practices of peripheralization, where migration tends to be under-theorized.
This paper investigates the potential rupture that the United Kingdom's “Brexit” referendum of June 23, 2016, might bring about in intra‐European Union youth mobilities, with a specific focus on the ...London region. In many respects, and counter‐intuitively given the Brexit result, London has already become a “Eurocity”: a magnet for young people, both highly educated and less educated, from all over Europe who, especially since the turn of the millennium, have flocked to the city and its wider region to work, study, and play. Now, these erstwhile open‐ended migration trajectories have been potentially disrupted by a referendum result that few anticipated, and whose consequential results are still unclear. The main theoretical props for our analysis are the notions of “liquid migration,” “tactics of belonging,” “whiteness,” “privilege,” and “affect.” Data are drawn from 60 in‐depth interviews with Irish, Italian, and Romanian young‐adult students and higher and lower skilled workers, carried out in late 2015 and early 2016, plus 27 reinterviews carried out in late 2016, post‐Brexit. Results indicate participants' profound and generally negative reaction to Brexit and, as a consequence, a diversity of uncertainties and of plans over their future mobility: either to stay put using “tactics of belonging,” or to return home earlier than planned, or to move on to another country. Finally, we find evidence that new hierarchies and boundaries are drawn between intra‐European Union migrants as a result of Brexit.
In this paper we analyse emerging discourses of fear on the one hand and safety and security on the other. In the context of rupture - sudden, unprecedented asylum flows as well as the historical ...context of the fear and experience of losing the state’s freedom, we pose the following research question: Where do insecurities and fear come from and how are spaces of security and safety carved out through public discourses? We argue that, instead of singling out political discourses in Eastern European as filled with hatred towards other ethnicities and races or an inability to show solidarity with human suffering, we have to open up a far more deep reaching debate on the interplay of fear and the willingness to create safer, more secure futures. We illustrate this with examples from media debates in Latvia, in late 2015.
In this article I analyse how socioeconomic constraints structure the geographical mobility of Latvian migrant women working on the island of Guernsey. A shifting notion of gendered care is revealed ...through a time-geographic investigation of distant emplacements of workplace and home, and through the neoliberal-informed evaluations by the mothers themselves. Their justifications emphasise the belief that care from a distance should be prioritised over physical proximity to those in need of care. With examples from interviews with mothers who have provided care during their movements between Latvia and Guernsey, I demonstrate how the outcomes of shifting notions of gendered care are placed within a wider context of the gender regime in a transforming Latvia. A specific version of a neoliberal mother, shaped by gender regimes in post-socialist Latvia and a demand for female labour in Western Europe, emerges among women with care responsibilities.
The nexus between ageing and migration throws up a variety of situations. In this paper, we map out the various circumstances in which ageing and migration fuse together as entwined trajectories to ...produce situations of vulnerability, coping, active ageing and variable well-being. The ageing process is seen to be socially constructed and culturally embedded; hence, place - at 'home' or 'abroad', or some transnational mix - becomes a paramount structuring variable. Different models of successful ageing compete as migrants move and age in different countries and different cultures; the Western model of individual self-reliance should not necessarily be imposed on ageing migrant populations. In the final part of the article we challenge the prevailing trope of vulnerability applied to the perceived double disadvantage of being both an older person and a migrant, and present four case-studies in which older migrants enact agency and independence to achieve a greater level of material and subjective well-being.
In this article, we explore the relationships between ageing, place and migration based on life history interviews with 37 female Latvian migrants in the UK. Reflecting an approach that sees ...migration as both embodied and emplaced, we conceptualise ageing and migration as entwined becomings that reconfigure the possibilities of a 'better life' in different time-spaces. Our approach combines time-geography with a well-being-based approach to migration constraints and outcomes. Our stress is on vitality - the ways in which migrants are able to mobilise resources and enact agency even in an environment where some aspects of life and working conditions are restrictive and exploitative. Hence, older Latvian women are able to transgress negative perceptions of ageing in their home country and achieve a measure of empowerment, both economic and psychosocial by moving to the UK.
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