Abstract: The concept of ‘transnational family’ coalesced in the context of neo-liberal globalisation during the late 1990s and 2000s. This article traces the social, economic and political forces that have influenced the spread of transnational families throughout the world during the 21st century. Meanwhile, the digital revolution in social media communication and cheapening international travel costs has facilitated transnational family members communication with one another. Examining material exchanges between transnational family members in sending and receiving countries, childcare support for migrants’ left-behind children provided by home-based family members has been a critical enabler of women’s out-migration. In turn, migrants’ remittance payments have been a basic lifeline or a source of improved standards of living for family members in sending countries. Overtime, global neo-liberal policies have generated the context for the expansion of transnational family migration through promotion of international travel and internet communication. However, neo-liberalism has inadvertently paved the way for the growth of national precariats and one-state populism resting on segments of Western national populations’ resentment of international migration. Collapsing neo-liberalism as well as the intensification of global warming and the onset of the COVID pandemic are likely to influence the future of global migration and transnational familyhood in, as yet, indeterminant ways. Published on 2022-06-01 11:17:12
Abstract: This article examines the ways in which Finnish courts co-construct families and the legality of immigration in their decisions over the facilitation of ‘illegal immigration’. Building on scholarship that stresses the central role of migrant social networks and family ties in cross-border mobility, it challenges the placing of transnational organised crime at the centre of debates concerning irregular migration. Analysing how the Finnish courts engage with hegemonic family ideals and the notion of lived family relations in their decisions, this study aims to reveal the shifting criteria that appears in the background of the courts’ decision-making yet highlights an overall receptive approach to diverse facilitator–traveller family ties demonstrated by different judges. The conclusion reached is that Finnish judges are prepared to push the boundaries of what is legal in the context of irregular migration and challenge the ‘national order of things’ in order to account for motives that relate to family ties between the facilitators and the travellers. In the climate of increased regulation of cross-border mobility, highlighting the law courts’ receptive approach to diverse facilitator–traveller family ties reveals a more complex role of the state in managing migration and challenges the prominence of the migration-security nexus. Published on 2022-06-01 11:11:20
Abstract: Migration is traditionally categorised into migration for work or family. However, utilising interviews with both immigrant families and publically employed care managers, this study documents the existence of a hybrid type, involving migrant wives who arrive to care for substantially older husbands – an arrangement about which Danish care managers use the term ‘fetched wives’. Register data also document that the relatively infrequent remarriages among older immigrants primarily involve men finding much younger wives abroad. We term some such women ‘migrant carer-wives’. From a marriage market perspective, the demand for such marriages indicates that care needs of the men involved are not presently met. For various reasons, including linguistic and cultural ones, such men cannot or will not rely on either state-sponsored eldercare or aid from adult children. Instead, they (or their children) seek wives abroad. Women who are virtually ‘unmarriable’ locally due to unfortunate circumstances may accept such ‘carer-wife’ marriage proposals. While these marriages may provide such women with a livelihood, they also lead to not only isolated and strenuous lives with many care duties but also a precarious dependency on the adult children of husbands, who do not necessarily regard their fathers’ new wives as kin. Published on 2022-06-01 11:05:22
Abstract: This article explores the EU free movers’ experience of borders and describes how they experience borders as complicated and complex. Although some variation exists in terms of the place of the free movers in the labor market, the advantage gained by being a corporate transferee is easily lost when individuals cease to be useful to their employers. The ambivalence – which is highlighted in past literature and experienced by Estonian migrants in Sweden also – is exploited by employers who create and also negotiate borders when they feel the need to. The article concurs with the suggestion of Wagner (2015) that free mobility within the EU functions as a sieve – i.e., there is free mobility for services, but workers’ rights are often disregarded. Furthermore, due to the complex nature of borders, EU free movers themselves are often either unaware of or confused about their legal status and their rights. Published on 2022-06-01 11:00:06
Abstract: Many children of immigrants have low socioeconomic backgrounds and yet attain high levels of education. What guides members of this group to this educational success is, however, a matter of theoretical dispute. While some have argued that immigrant families establish norms that promote positive school behaviour, others have highlighted the educational selectivity of immigrants. Based on interviews with 28 children of immigrants to Norway enrolled in prestigious tracks of higher education, I ask how these children have experienced their parents’ involvement in their everyday lives. Drawing on detailed information about their families’ status both before and after migration, I show that parental involvement can be understood as linked to their social class. However, instead of juxtaposing class and immigrant status, I argue that children of immigrants with ‘high status’ in their country of origin might experience a double drive to succeed: the middle-class drive and the immigrant drive. Published on 2022-06-01 10:27:15
Abstract: Through thematic analysis, this article examines how career counsellors working in an integration training programme for adult immigrants use power in their work with their counselees by influencing the content of career counselling discussions. The theoretical framework applied in this article is the non-decision-making theory by Bachrach and Baratz. This article draws on empirical data collected by video-recording career counselling discussions between counsellors and students. The findings show how career counsellors tend to limit discussion topics to those belonging to their pre-formulated structure and how the topics suggested by students tend to be dismissed, treated with less depth and accuracy, or ignored. The focus of the discussion is primarily on which educational or employment choices would best suit the student instead of worries or interests that the students also find relevant. This work discusses how the counsellor’s values appear to direct the discussions and what implications this may have for career counselling practices with migrants. Published on 2022-06-01 10:20:58
Abstract: An increasing concern in European politics is the potential tension between immigration and inclusive welfare states, suggesting that policy actors must choose one or the other. This is known as ‘the progressive dilemma’, which in Scandinavia becomes the social democratic dilemma. This article analyses how Scandinavian social democratic parties frame immigration and welfare policies to diffuse the dilemma in their party programs. Building on a review of the sociological, political and economic arguments underpinning the notion of a progressive dilemma, I undertake a qualitative analysis of the most recent party programs, as well as targeted documents on immigration, produced by the party organisations. Six social democratic and socialist parties in Norway, Sweden and Denmark are included. The analysis identifies a variety of ways to weave welfare state issues and immigration together. Abstracting from the empirical findings, I distil three key frames that dissolve the progressive dilemma, all drawing on established social democratic traditions: the social investment frame (the third way), the redistribution frame (Marxist tradition) and the social cohesion frame (social democrats as the voice of ‘ordinary people’). Published on 2022-06-01 10:13:39
Abstract: Book review of the book: Cohen, Robin & Van Hear, Nicholas (2020) Refugia. Radical Solutions to Mass Displacement. Oxon & Routledge. 148pp. Published on 2022-06-01 09:48:02
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