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Paper short abstract:

The study focuses on the ways educated female immigrants seek information about jobs and about working life in Finland. It is an Information Studies doctoral thesis. The purpose of the study is to investigate the ways in which the supply of working life information meet the needs of immigrants.

Paper long abstract:

The topic of my doctoral thesis is the everyday information needs and seeking of female immigrants who have acquired an occupational or academic education in their home country. The topic is narrowed down to the context of employment.

I explore what kind of information do these women need to enter the Finnish job market and how and where they search for this information? I also investigate how the supply of work life information meet the needs of immigrants. The empirical part of the study consists of twenty interviews.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses Bosnian refugee families in Sweden. It focuses on women, and food and shopping, cooking and dining as a means of keeping the family together, negotiating old and new, and gradually becoming part of Swedish society. Ethnicity emerges as a potential difference later on.

Paper long abstract:

Not yet ethnic. Bosnian frontier families in Sweden

Ass. prof. Helene Brembeck

Center for Consumer Science (CFK), Göteborg university, Sweden

The data for this presentation is gathered from a Swedish study of values and behaviour in relation to food among consumers 55+. Three groups have been followed during 6 months. The respondents have been interviewed individually and in groups, they have been asked to fill in food dairies, to take snapshots of their cupboards, dinner tables, favourite grocery stores etc. A life course approach has been used focusing memories of yesterday, activities today and dreams for the future. One of these groups consisted of 24 households (represented by the woman) from former Yugoslavia, most of them Bosnian Muslims from the Banja Luka area. In analysing the results, the group of researchers felt uneasy with concepts like "diasporic space" and "transnational processes", that only seemed to capture part the families' stories. The emphasis on boundaries and space blurred aspects of agency and everyday practise, that seemed central to understanding the mobility, future orientations and dynamics of everyday life, found in the study. Instead we applied the term "frontiering families" introduced by Bryceson & Vuorela (2002), defining frontiering as agency at the interface between two (or more) contrasting ways of life. The image that comes to mind is of European migrants at the Western frontier in America one century ago. The same way they were searching for prosperity and democratic freedom, the Bosnian families in our study are forging new cultural, economic and social frontiers to benefit their families. They do not look upon themselves as "ethnic", but as individuals trying to survive in a new surrounding. What emerges is a picture of families trying their best to handle their lives, sometimes optimistic and empowered, sometimes reluctant and disappointed. Ethnicity only emerges as potential difference (Hall 1996/1989:446) later on, a potential identity that might be constructed and developed in the future depending on circumstances and the willingness of the Swedish society to embrace the newcomers.

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Paper short abstract:

The study addresses the effects of Romanian temporary migration to Italy on the young people in one of the major rural sending communities. I focused on their projected life trajectories, in terms of education and occupation, in the context of cultural and economic changes brought about by migration.

Paper long abstract:

In the last years, due to the diffusion and contagion effects, temporary migration was the main strategy adopted by entire rural communities in Romania. I was led in this research by the following question: What is the future of a rural community with a consistent flow of international migration? I sought the answer by studying the young people (between 14 and 18 years old) who lived in a community with a high migration rate towards Italy.

I was interested in studying the changes of younger generation's future choices, due to the migration culture, which structured their opportunities: the way the young people projected their future and the objective dimension of educational performances. I also considered the differences between migrant and non-migrant families in this respect. I identified three dominant types of young people regarding their future trajectories: the careerists, the conformists and the disoriented.

My field research also looked at the context which influenced these paths: a tendency towards the permanent migration, legalization of the migrants' status and diversification of the purposes for migrating (not only for labour, but also for holidays and for medical care). This change has developed a migration culture among all the villagers, evidenced by the "normality" of migration in every day life and the positive ideologies of migration. Also, transnational links have developed between the Romanian village and those living in Italy, even if these are either diffuse - the ties are weak and unstable- or selective - the network are kin-based and do not include others than close relatives.

Summarizing I argue that my research spreads a new light in the studies of migration's effect over sending societies, as it presents not only what is changing now in the social and cultural structure of that community, but it attempts to forecast what may change in the future as well.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper on migration from Greece to Denmark explores the way in which gender intertwines with experiences of geographical and social mobility in forging a sense of self and belongingness. Narrative life-story data of female migrants forms the empirical basis of the discussion.

Paper long abstract:

This paper reflects on my recent postdoctoral research on first and second-generation Greek migrants in Denmark. This research project had three major aims:

1. To develop an ethnographic profile of the Greek migration phenomenon to Denmark, encompassing migration processes, experiences, community structures and networks.

2. To examine and to attempt to theorize processes of integration and interaction/conflict between generations and within the wider Nordic space (social and cultural) but also in relation to the country of origin.

3. To present the theoretical and empirical issues in relation to how identification processes unfold and how individual and collective identities of Greek migrants in Denmark are envisioned, negotiated, constructed and performed.

The new waves of migration, the different types of mobility, and new diaspora communities redefine the very concepts of identities and belonging; they also re-shape the traditional boundaries between inclusion and exclusion. The discussion will focus on the transformations and transitions of multi-layered institutions and frameworks, be that the family, the sense of self and other, the sense of 'home' and belonging. The general issue here is:

Ψ How do migrant identities or the sense of belonging and group solidarity influence role performance, integration and settlement?

Ψ And, vice versa, what are the varying kinds of impact that the state of migrancy and migrant role performances have on individual and group identities in relation to Nordic spatial constructs?

The specific paper aims to deal with a relatively narrower area: the agencies/actors of migrant culture(s) and their patterns of discursive and practical behavior (including the reflexive acts of self-identification).

Further questions include:

Ψ Is it possible to envision European integration as a public process supported by the various societies, groups, and their cultures?

Ψ How is it possible to develop a European public space and reconcile the conflicting articulation of multiple identities?

Ψ What is the relation of these identities and the various cultural "legacies" with respect to the implementation of institutional practices of integration?

Ψ What is the impact of the conceptualization of these processes within a Nordic socio-cultural and historical space?

Ψ What is the relationship between 'host' and 'home' constructions? Are boundaries clearly demarcated between "one's own" and the "alien" spatial context or do blurred and hybrid images and imaginations of 'home' and belongingness exist?

Ψ To what extent have some specific normative characteristics of institutional, social, cultural and political behavior been integrated (i.e., accepted as "one's own") in the negotiation of self-national-ethnic-social identity?

Ψ To what extent have they triggered spaces of estrangement, alienation or competing identities?

Ψ To what extent have integration processes been seen as "threatening" to national and collective identities?

By pursuing these questions, the paper will address the way identities and acts of identification in ethnic life writing and life stories occur in relation to social and cultural space and in response to the ethnic place of origin and destination.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates legal cultures of immigrants from Eastern Europe in the United Kingdom from the perspective of commonly adopted inclusion strategies. The main aim is to explore how legal cultures inherited by immigrants influence their economic and social performance within the host society.

Paper long abstract:

In my paper I will investigate the legal cultures of immigrants from CEE in the UK, which, I believe, fit squarely within the main thesis that migration triggers or accelerates cultural change in both receiving and sending societies/communities. As far as sociological variables are concerned (age, gender, education, etc.) immigrants from CEE, do not constitute a homogeneous group. In the UK since the last EU Enlargement, one can distinguish two major groups of immigrants - (1) graduates, whose decision to migrate is generally motivated by the fear of unemployment in the home country and (2) the so called 'older' workers, who have become unemployed due to the side effects of economic transformation in the 1990s.

The cultures of 'connections and shortcuts', or 'going around the law' which I plan to investigate are deeply rooted in the consciousness of especially older immigrants (in their late 40s). The working hypothesis states that these specific, half-legal inclusion strategies have been inspired by their human capital, which has partly been established during the socialism. Thus some very characteristics features of homo sovieticus can still be tracked down in the way they act as rational actors on the economic market. The main aim of the research is to investigate how legal cultures, inherited by immigrants from Central Eastern Europe, influence their economic and social performance within the receiving society. What impact does it have on immigrants themselves, including their employment, political and social participation in the host civil society? Does the fact of working and living in a new environment inspire changes in the attitude to work/co-workers, changes in work ethics?

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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to show how migrant workers cope with the peculiarities of working in the tourism sector in southern Europe and how their practices challenge concepts which are based on the assumption of immobile locals on the one hand and mobile tourists or migrants on the other hand.

Paper long abstract:

Greece and Cyprus, which were for a long time considered as countries of emigration have in between become also attractive as immigration or transit countries for migrants from the global East and South. With the beginning of the 1990s the number of immigrants increased rapidly in both countries. Moreover, in the last decades Greece and Cyprus have become popular tourist destinations.

Whereas tourism research, tourism policies and tourist practices in the Mediterranean are mostly based on the concept of travelling tourists versus sedentary locals, I would like to stress that tourism and migration are very much connected, so that we do not only have travellers on the one hand and locals on the other hand but also different kinds of mobile people interacting in tourism, all of them being subjected to the European mobility regime in one way or another.

The presence of all these mobile groups contradicts the dominant notion of authentic, immobile, traditional cultures in the South of Europe, which still shapes tourist expectations and the representation of the Mediterranean in guidebooks and brochures. This dominant representation of Mediterranean countries has consequences for the every day life of migrants who are working in tourism related businesses where the promotion of authenticity and tradition may be part of the job.

On the basis of fieldwork conducted in Crete and Cyprus I would like to show how migrant workers cope with the peculiarities of working in the tourism sector in Southern Europe and how their practices challenge conventional concepts of tourism and migration studies which are based on the assumption of immobile locals on the one hand and mobile tourists or migrants on the other hand.

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Paper short abstract:

Cameroonian gender patterns underwent a major change twenty years ago. These new social roles for both genders have been reinforced after diaspora in European countries. The case of a small community in Italy shows us how diaspora further modifies gender patterns without rejecting tradition.

Paper long abstract:

Cameroonian gender patterns underwent a significant change almost twenty years ago. A great political and socio-economical crisis has brought new social roles for both men and women. These roles have been reinforced after Cameroonian diaspora in European countries. In the small Cameroonian community around Varese (Italy) I found a different way of conceiving manhood and womanhood. Traditionally African women's gender pattern is to produce and re-produce goods and children, as Meillasoux pointed out. Male gender pattern is to redistribute goods that women produced. Women work for the nuclear family whereas men for the extended one. In diaspora communities women propose their womanhood not just through childbearing but through taking care of the whole community. In this context men can not afford to fit in their role of great redistributors, so they find new strategies to reduce their networks. On the contrary women work to expand them. Gender patterns of dispora communities are not completely new but they promote new social spaces for women.

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Paper short abstract:

This report explores the process of (re)constructing new social, cultural and gender identities among second generation Moroccans living in Catalonia (Spain). It highlights how minority and majority community forces are mobilised and make contact to remove barriers to belonging and social integration.

Paper long abstract:

The intensification of population movements of extra communitarian nature in South Europe and specifically in Catalonia has meant to recontextualize the meanings attributed to the own migratory processes and the building of legitimacies and membership in the new relational society scenarios. This report explores the process of (re)constructing new social, cultural and gender identities among second generation Moroccans living in Catalonia (Spain). From a transnational point of view and on the basis of the fieldwork carried out in the original and final destinations, respectively Beni Ahmed Charkia (Morocco) and l'Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona), the report tries to highlight the ethnic, class and gender barriers, which prevent multiple identities among second generation Moroccans, settled in Catalonia. It also highlights how and under what integration conditions, the minority and majority community forces are mobilised and come into contact to lift limits to belonging and social integration. Family strategies and minority behaviour cannot be fully understood without considering how in these transnational areas, the power roles and the group's internal structures are modified, and how all this has a bearing on the majority's relationships in the final destination.

One of the areas where these barriers are lifted and identity strategies and social integration conditions are put to the test, is at school. Therefore the report also shows how the minority's family and community dynamics, immersed in a transnational strategy, make up this area of compulsory contact with the majority, and how the majority's educational and social influences interact with these second generation Moroccan children and their own interrelationships, modify or reproduce structures and hierarchies in an unequal social area and dilute or extend the limits and barriers to social integration.

Catalonia is becoming a leading experimentation area, in a unique case where, in the contact area with its southern border, previous experiences from other countries with a greater Moroccan immigration tradition are being put to the test. As anthropologists we can contribute to the research applied so as to prevent the reoccurrence of those previous errors, which have lead to the social fragmentation of second and third generation, Moroccan immigrants settled in Europe.

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Paper short abstract:

The transformation of Greece into a multicultural society has not so far been examined with respect to identity politics, probably because the significance that official discourse attributes to the integrity of the nation obscures the flexible means with which such discourse is reconstituted.

Paper long abstract:

Conceptualising Cultural Change in Modern Greece

Marina Petronoti

The so-called transformation of Greece into a "multicultural" society has not so far been fully examined with respect to identity politics, probably because the significance that the official discourse attributes to the integrity of the nation obscures the flexible means with which such discourse is reconstituted to suit arising situations. This paper focuses on the notions of cultural diversity and change as these emanate in narratives of multiculturalism and ethno-nationalism. By focusing on the contexts which support, while simultaneously circumscribe, acceptance of cultural change, I discuss the paradoxical co-existence of voices discriminating immigrants with the rhetoric on the country's "multiculturalisation". And I argue that these rhetorical positions are not opposed to, but interdependent with the nationalist logic. To account for this point, I look at two sources of data. First, at the ways in which daily press demarcates generalized thoughts about immigrants' contribution to the disintegration of national values and second, at the ambiguous relationships Greeks establish with Eritrean refugees in the domestic and school environment. As will be shown, the variety of linkages set up between them is empowering rather than shifting cultural boundaries. By projecting democratic and humanitarian principles as national virtues, Greeks aspire to substantiate their superiority against culturally "inferior" Others. In essence, however, even when they rigorously defend their openness to unfamiliar customs and modes of thinking, they do not engage in cultural exchanges with Eritreans: instead, they introduce subtle lines of distinction in order to safeguard the development of collective identity and economic interests.

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Paper short abstract:

I will focus on the Ethno-Cultural Festival organised by the Municipality of Chania, Crete. Two points will be raised, the first is the significance of transnational identity construction practices instead of multiculturalism or assimilation practices, while the second is the discursive aspect of locality. Through the presentation of the festival metaphors of locality, home and migrating will be discussed.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation is about "de-territorialisation" of locales and the role played by transnational communities to this end. I am interested in the way migrants use objects, foods and places to establish themselves in a place that it is more an imaginative "home" than a real one. Migration is not only about moving to places, but it is a cognitive experience with people engaged in physical and metaphorical movement in place and time. As Dawson and Johnson recently suggested "place and identity are rarely made or inhabited in a singular manner but are most often constructed and experienced as a variety of both literal and metaphorical roots and routes" (2001:320).

Such metaphorical "roots and routes" (ibid) is the Multicultural Festival organised by the municipality of Chania in Crete, Greece from 1997-2001. The Festival gave the opportunity to a number of ethnic groups which were living and working in Chania to create for a week their own space of activity and a sense of "home" away from home as well as to accustom locals to the cultural history of each participant country. The aim of the presentation is to challenge the notion of fixicity and rootedness that it is often raised in the local and national discourse and to call into question propositions that connect people with a locale by using shared history and tradition as a connection link. In this presentation I will demonstrate the way people "on the move" find the opportunity to create their own "roots" in a unfamiliar territory challenging the sense of locality which the people of the small provincial town of Chania in Greece experience. Two points will be raised, the first will be the significance on maintaining cultural diversity as opposed to multiculturalism or assimilation practices, while the second will be the discursive aspect of locality.

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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on a study of Italians in the UK, this paper focuses on the experience of growing old in a transnational social field. It examines ideas of home and belonging and the implications that changes that are occurring within migrant families are having on older people.

Paper long abstract:

In research on transnationalism increasing attention is paid to the experiences of the so called 'second generation'. Less attention, however, has been given to those growing old in a transnational social field, in spite of the social and demographic significance of those who have reached retiring age after having worked as unskilled labour in the richer European countries. Drawing on a study on Italians in the UK, this paper focuses on two interrelated issues. The first one relates to the effects of transationalism on ideas of home and belonging (e.g. where to retire). Questions that I will address in this context are the following. What are ageing retired labour migrants' perceptions of 'home'? How do these migrants experience space and place, having lived for decades in the UK while keeping connections with their villages of origin in Italy? What are the consequences of their visions and landscapes in accessing support and experiencing old age? The second issue refers to the changes that are occurring within migrant families (e.g. decline of extended families, second-generations' full time involvement in the labour market, social and geographical mobility of offspring) and their implications for older people. Specifically, I want to consider their access to resources and networks of support that operate within but also beyond the family (such as in community organisations). In doing so I explore the continuities and rupture for both those elderly migrants who chose to stay on in Britain and those who return and provide some examples of the strategies they employ to reconstruct a sense of continuity between different places and experiences.