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- Convenors:
-
Alena Zelenskaia
(Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)
Irene Götz (LMU Munich)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Mode:
- Face-to-face
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 23 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
The panel aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the complexities surrounding labour and family migration as well as family reunification of labor migrants in Europe and the broader impacts on their lives and communities. It seeks also to explore the ways of navigating the restrictions.
Long Abstract:
The EU border regime, known for its rigor, effectively distinguishes between wanted and unwanted migrants. While labor migration and family migration serve as legal pathways through the European border, they are not without their complexities. The panel will delve into the nuances of family reunion provisions for third-country nationals reuniting with their spouses who previously migrated to Europe to work. This aspect is critical in understanding labor market integration and the socio-economic challenges faced by migrant families. Historical perspectives, such as post-WWII European practices where family migration usually involved a dependent female spouse and minor children reuniting with a male labor migrant, will be discussed to contextualize current policies.
Additionally, this panel explores the various strategies and tactics of aspiring migrants as they adapt to the standards and trajectories required to obtain labor visas or family formation/reunification visas. This adaptation process involves “undoing the border”, which encompasses both subjecting oneself to these expectations, adapting to required subject positions, as well as everaging or creating opportunities to fulfill these requirements in less conventional ways.
The panel encourages presentations that engage with the practical knowledge and strategic notion of gaining legal access to the EU due labour and/or family formation/reunification and what this means for the migrants’ lifeworlds, biographies, and future aspirations. The strategies of migrants challenging the law restrictions and implications of these strategies will be a central theme.
(please be advised: by the beginning of EASA24 Alena Zelenskaia's affiliation will be different - at a Berlin institution)
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 23 July, 2024, -Joaquin Beltran Antolin (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will analyze the flexible citizenship of the Chinese origin population in Spain, specially those from South Zhejiang province. The family chain migration has changed along the time to adapt to the Spanish official reunion family policy, but Chinese migrants have developed many different.
Paper long abstract:
Aihwa Ong’s Flexible Citizenship (1999) focused on the elite Chinese practice to get two citizenships in times of uncertainty. In fact, this strategy has been also used by non-elite Chinese international migrants since long time ago as we will discuss in this paper focused on the Chinese origin population in Spain, especially those come from rural areas in South Zhejiang province. Family chain migration has been fully exploited by migrants since the beginning of the migration regime from China to Spain and goes beyond the nuclear household to include extensive kins and lineage members. The Spain official family reunion policy has changed along the time to become more restricted, and so the Chinese migrants’ strategies has also changed to adapt and to overcome it. Sometimes different members of the same family have different citizenship. We will analyze this phenomenon as well as other strategies that question the dominant and limited understanding of family reunion in a context characterized by transnational practices, cosmopolitan expectative and global identities. The cross-border of citizenship and ethnicity is not only a privilege of the elite, but also a common practice of rural origin international migrants.
Elise Huysmans (UCLouvain)
Paper short abstract:
Many Malagasy undertake au pair stays to turn them into migration projects to Northern countries. This paper will analyze the path taken by these female migrants and how they mobilize care practices to "undo borders" and, in their words, secure "a better future" for themselves.
Paper long abstract:
Structurally, Northern societies delegate a large part of care work to migrants from the South. These delegations of care have been analyzed as "global care chains" (Hochschild 2014) made up of multiple links where personal ties between individuals from all over the world are based on paid or unpaid care work. In this context, a large number of young Malagasy undertake au pair stays to turn them into genuine migration projects to Northern countries. Indeed, as an inexpensive option that gives easy access to a visa in the countries targeted by the migration projects, the au pair stay is for many young Malagasy women the starting point for their mobility towards the countries of the North. Based on an ethnography carried out in Madagascar, France, Belgium and Germany, this paper will analyze the path taken by these female migrants and how they mobilize care practices and play on gender stereotypes to "undo borders" and, in their words, secure "a better future" for themselves. We will also see that, more broadly speaking, Malagasy women of all ages mobilize formal and informal care work in order to have the possibility to migrate, notably through marriage (Cole 2014). The mobilization of care to secure a migratory path is therefore also a family process.
Mohammad Altaf Hossain (University College Dublin)
Paper short abstract:
This paper intends to illustrate how immigration policies and migrants’ economic and visa status play a significant role in family reunification. The study’s early findings based on qualitative data indicate that migrants’ right to family life is structurally ignored.
Paper long abstract:
Moving to a different country with family members varies according to the migrants’ immigration status in the receiving countries. Those who are mainly capable of selling their physical labour cannot financially afford to do so and are not entitled to migrate with family members. Leaving behind homes, communities, relatives and friends, they migrate abroad for a new hope—income security, a new home, and a better education for children. Living in Europe for non-European migrants requires sacrificing family lives. The physical labour of migrants is economically valued, but it is important to understand that a sustainable economy cannot be established without considering the labourers’ family reunification. Without family reunification, migrants’ family members are deprived of enjoying lives in the receiving countries where migrants invest his or her labour and time. Family reunification is important for integration and well-being. This paper intends to illustrate how immigration policies and migrants’ economic and visa status play a significant role in the family reunification of South Asian migrants to Dublin, Ireland. The prevailing housing precarity adds more complexities to the application for family reunification. The legal barriers to family reunification leave migrants in transnational lives, uncertainties, mental stress and despair. The study’s early findings based on qualitative data indicate that migrants’ right to family life is structurally ignored.
Yentl de Lange (University of Amsterdam)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores Tunisian visa applicants' strategies in their journeys to Europe, challenging fixed visa categories. Ethnographic material reveals their flexible approaches in what sociologists have called category jumping, queering traditional labor migration and family reunification.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the nuanced strategies employed by Tunisian visa applicants navigating the EU border regime, specifically focusing on the interplay of visa categories for family reunification, labour migration, and tourism. Challenging dominant assumptions of visa categories as fixed and state-given identities of people, this anthropological study of the multifold strategies of visa applicants foregrounds their assembled, messy and flexible character. Zooming in on three ethnographic anecdotes, this paper will apply an STS perspective on what sociologists have called category jumping. The ethnographic material queers our notion of family reunification and labor migration beyond the traditional notion of a working father that is reunited with spouse and children. Additionally, I discuss applicants’ engagement with other categories, such as false/true and legal/illegal, which are intricately linked to potential rejection and the criminalization of migration by states. By highlighting participants’ perceptions, the study complements the existing knowledge on visa applicants strategies in navigating categories as well as their perceived impact on the visa procedure’s success.
Angeliki Athanasopoulou (Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines how Albanian migrants’ conceptions and practices towards work insurance change over the years. These changes are related to migration policies, labor market formations as well as to migrants' gender, age and family status.
Paper long abstract:
After an initial period of undeclared and uninsured work in construction and agriculture, Albanian male migrants acquire work insurance ensuring family’s access to legal status with all the rights that this entails -notably, education, health care, pension. Albanian women did not wish to be insured both because of the labor sector in which most of them work -domestic work is a prominent case of informal and undeclared labor-, and of a family strategy according to which only one of the two spouses is expected to be insured. They claim their right to insurance, when men’s work loses its stable and systematic character, with undeclared and uninsured work prevailing again, jeopardizing thus family’s legal status. The exception among Albanian female migrants were single, divorced, and widowed women for whom work insurance has always been a priority. The issue of insurance is also linked to age, in different ways for first- and second-generation migrants. The first-generation migrants start to worry when they get older and start thinking about when and if they will be entitled to a pension and to what amount they will be entitled to. For the second-generation, adults now, getting a declared and insured job is essential to the extent that it ensures their legal stay in Greece. This is even more the case for those who do not continue their studies after high school, and therefore are not covered by family residence permit, as well as for those who have not acquired Greek citizenship.