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- Convenors:
-
Jenny Rodriguez
(Newcastle University)
Angelo Martins Junior (University of Birmingham)
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- Location:
- ATB G107
- Start time:
- 12 April, 2013 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 4
Short Abstract:
Mobility and migration have transformed geographical, cultural, social, technological and political actors, spaces and dynamics in Latin America. The panel explores the interplay between mobility, migration and transformations to subject positions, identities and materialities in the region.
Long Abstract:
Mobility and migration have been fundamental in transforming geographical, cultural, social, technological and political actors, spaces and dynamics in Latin America. From peasants' journeys from rural to urban areas to the brain drain, the significance of processes of mobility and migration have had an influence on structural arrangements at all levels (ie, societal, familial, occupational), changing our understanding of the forms globalisation takes for countries, communities and individuals in the region. The panel is interested in exploring the relationship between mobility, migration and transformations to subject positions, identities and materialities in Latin America.
The panel welcomes works addressing dynamics of mobility and migration from, to and within the region that help to reflect on the following themes and questions:
• Experiences of mobility and migration (ie, who migrates and why? How do mobility and migration mediate identity construction and meanings of belonging? What dynamics underlie the gendering of migration? What consequences do mobility and migration bring for individuals' work and life?)
• Material consequences of mobility and migration (ie, what is the impact on social relations, arrangements, and power dynamics?)
• Mobility and migration as processes of political organisation, communal formation and/or personal agency (ie, how are mobility and migration political processes? What are their implications on the temporal and spatial reconfiguration of self?)
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
To what extent is the feeling of identitary linkage to Latin America shared by the population of these countries? The aim of this research was to analyze the identitary link of Latin American undergraduate students to Latin America and how academic mobility affects this sense of belonging.
Paper long abstract:
In recent years, Latin American integration has received considerable attention from political, academic and cultural spheres of the countries in the region, leading to a variety of measures for approximation. One may wonder, however, to what extent the feeling of identitary link to Latin America is shared by the population of these countries. An example of this approximation effort is the academic mobility of students, based on curriculum equivalence and acknowledgment of diplomas. In this sense, the aim of this research was to analyze the identitary linkage of Latin American undergraduate students to Latin America - including Hispanics and Brazilians - and what they think about Latin American integration. Furthermore, we intended to analyze how foreign students feel about Brazil and Brazilians and how Brazilian students feel about the Hispanic countries and their populations. In a pilot study, a total of 16 people were interviewed: 11 Latin American foreign undergraduate students and 5 Brazilian undergraduate students, all studying at the time at the University of Brasilia. The interviews were analyzed with Analysis of Content. It was noted that the displacement, even temporary, to another country in the region served to intensify the feeling of sharing things in common. Regarding Brazilians, the contact brought about by the mobility of foreign students was important to minimize the symbolic separation that exists between Brazil and Hispanic countries in the region, creating identitary links to Latin America.
Paper short abstract:
The paper reveals how, despite tight state control over local movement, mobility networks were forged around music festivals linking local and transnational circuits in ways that became significant for identity making among young, indigenous people.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the mobilities of evangelical indigenous musicians in Peru during the civil war in the 1980s and early 1990s. It examines the geographies of the state of emergency and how evangelical communities in the southern Andes forged indigenous subjectivities in this context. It highlights the role that spaces of creativity play in the everyday production of 'enclave subjectivities' and focuses on the efforts to secure a space for performance in Quechua music festivals under curfew regimes and at time when 'congregating' was banned. It reveals how, despite tight state control over local movement, mobility networks were forged around music festivals linking local and transnational circuits in ways that became significant for identity making among young, indigenous people. Drawing on archive work and life history interviews with evangelical Christians in Apurimac, the paper examines the creation of emergency zones as technologies of partition and explores the 'respectful modes of citizenship' that emerged in the face of this to facilitate the hosting of Quechua music festivals and the movement of musicians nationally and internationally.
Paper short abstract:
Nas últimas décadas, dedicado atenção à migração internacional referente às características e à temporalidade dos fluxos, aos processos e formas de mobilidade, integração nos países de destino e como os imigrantes desenvolvem as suas relações sociais na origem e nos destinos, designado por transnacionalismo.
Paper long abstract:
O presente projeto pretende estudar a migração brasileira para Portugal, centrando-se na construção do projeto de retorno ao Brasil e na identificação dos motivos que o condicionam, tendo por objeto a "segunda" vaga migratória (período posterior a 1997/1998 (Malheiros, 2007). O stock de imigrantes brasileiros em Portugal mantém-se estabilizado, constituindo-se como o grupo de estrangeiros com maior representação, contudo, os pedidos de apoio ao retorno voluntário da OIM e as declarações de imigrantes e de associações de imigrantes a investigadores e à imprensa apontam para o aumento do número de retornos no atual contexto de retração económica. Entende-se a imigração brasileira como processo dinâmico composto por fluxos de pessoas em ambos os sentidos, o que justifica objetivos de investigação complementares, designadamente se mantém um processo de substituição sistemática dos imigrantes brasileiros, se os imigrantes regressados mantém relação com Portugal e como se processava sua reinserção no Brasil.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the structural violence surrounding Honduran migration, and the consequences for the lives of ‘failed’ migrants. Findings are based on fieldwork interviews with returned migrants including detainees, long-term US residents, and migrants seriously injured on the journey North.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I discuss the structural violence surrounding Central American migration, by examining the impacts and implications of legal structures and physical barriers on the lives and bodies of "failed" Honduran migrants. Based on fieldwork I conducted in Honduras, I analyze the consequences for those who are returned to their countries of origin, a critical subject that is seldom discussed at length in the literature on migration. With immigration as an increasingly hot-button issue in United States, the more violent or tragic stories can no longer be left out of the discourse on policy reform.
It is well known that the migrant path from Central America to the United States is fraught with danger, from the physical demands of the journey to victimization at the hands of criminals or immigration officials. For this project I interviewed return migrants of many kinds: deportees who had built lives in the United States, migrants who failed to reach the US, immigration detainees, and men who lost limbs falling from the trains on their way Al Norte through Mexico. Returning to Honduras as an "unsuccessful" migrant has deep social and psychological implications for their sense of agency and identity, and for those mutilados, the physical consequences of their injuries could permanently impact their employability and mobility. My paper explores the grounded perspective of unsuccessful migrants, and the structural violence which mediates the experience of Honduran emigration.
Paper short abstract:
This paper present a detailed analysis of the effects of remittances and migration on labor force participation and the investment in order to discuss the relationship among development, remittances and migration circuits in two countries in the South of Latin America, Bolivia and Paraguay.
Paper long abstract:
This paper aims to understand the effects of migration and remittances, two interconnected processes but rooted in different causalities; on the sending areas in two countries in the south of Latin America, Bolivia and Paraguay. The general view among analysts and the public is that out-migration has positive effects for sending countries because it provides a safety valve to poverty and unemployment. However a number of scholars from the global South argue that migration is not only a symptom of underdevelopment, but a consequence and a cause of it.
We will focus on the particular case of Paraguayan and Bolivian migration as these migration streams constitute a little researched case of south-south migration. In Paraguay and Bolivia the remittances come mainly from Argentina and Brazil (from the Global South) but also from USA and Spain (from the Global North). This is interesting to develop comparisons between different migration systems. We want to study whether migration, from Bolivia and Paraguay has had developmental effects in these two countries. Also, we want to investigate whether the effects of remittances are equal in these two countries (Bolivia and Paraguay).
The information used comes from two sources: the Permanent Household Survey (EPH), a nationally-representative household of Paraguay and Bolivia (2010) and data from the World Development Indicators (WDI). Analytical work on the impact of remittances is complex due to the intrinsic endogeneity and selection bias involved in decisions surrounding migration and remittances. To meet these various methodological challenges we perform propensity score matching.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation addresses the question, “How have Brazilian migrants dealt with border controls in London in the aftermath of 9/11?” The empirical focus is how Brazilians from Alto Paranaiba have journeyed through both airports located in the Schengen area and in British territory to London.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation addresses the question, "How have Brazilian migrants dealt with border controls in London in the aftermath of 9/11?" The empirical focus is how Brazilians have journeyed through both airports located in the Schengen area and in British territory to London. As a main research orientation, I draw the theoretical framework from the concepts of mobility, borders and places as approached by scholars who reflect on the movement of people through an interwoven perspective, where places are connected in the migrant journeys not as arenas of fixed rootedness, but as flexible spaces which have also been transformed and shaped through mobility (Cresswell 2006, Ingold 2011, Knowles 2010). In addition, I use the notion of borders and surveillance discussed by contemporary literature focusing on airports and borderlands (Adey 2004, Mezzadra 2007, Ceyhan 2008). According to this, a wide range of technological apparatus known as smart borders has been installed in airports since the events of 9/11. In this process, I explore the idea that the journeys produced by these Brazilian migrants are tactical border crossing movements involving people, places and choices which do not follow a specific path, rather choices and decisions are taken while they are journeying to London. I attempt to reflect on migration beyond the concepts of flows and networks, and surveillance mobility, not in terms of static categories but as a continuum which is present in the movement made buy this kind of mobile people.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I examine how occupational mobility of Japanese immigrants ─ from colonos to land owners ─ and government policies towards economic development programs were crucial to the emergence of agricultural cooperatives in Brazil.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I examine how occupational mobility of Japanese immigrants ─ from colonos to land owners ─ and government policies towards economic development programs were crucial to the emergence of agricultural cooperatives in Brazil. Using data from a 1958 Japanese population census in Brazil and bibliographical material, I suggest theoretical and empirical guidelines for a better understanding of the interplay between the market and noneconomic factors in the experience of these cooperatives. It is argued that the agricultural cooperativism represented one of the main collective organizational devices of Japanese immigrants for economic activity coordination, as well as it aggregated potential resources for the inclusion of this population in political and social processes in the host society. Cooperatives of Japanese immigrants in Brazil increased significantly from the 1930s, and especially during the Brazilian military dictatorship they have become fundamental institutions for the agriculture modernization policies. To understand the conditions that allowed these entrepreneurships emergence and its outcomes for the Japanese immigrants and their descendants over time I consider external and internal organizational factors, like the State regulation through laws and economic development plans, political regime changes, the spatial mobility of immigrants, the growth of the regional economy and cultural characteristics of immigrants. I explore relevant political processes of Brazilian society to understanding the performance structures of these cooperatives on market, as well as the orientation and influence of social forces that operated over these structures, sustaining or modifying it over time.
Paper short abstract:
O paper propõe abordar a experiência social dos migrantes bolivianos(as), que migraram para se inserir no setor de confecção de São Paulo e/ou Buenos Aires, destacando as relações entre seus perfis biográficos e as territorialidades constituídas a partir dessa experiência migratória e laboral comum.
Paper long abstract:
Os processos de globalização contemporâneos, concomitantes ao recrudescimento da competitividade comercial e às dinâmicas de reestruturação produtiva, vêm incidindo de diversas formas nos mercados laborais dos grandes centros urbanos, destacando-se a emergência de circuitos de subcontratação que ultrapassam as fronteiras nacionais. Essas novas configurações do mundo do trabalho, em alguns setores produtivos e/ou comerciais, trazem à tona, da perspectiva sociológica, a questão das articulações entre migração e trabalho na experiência social dos que se inserem nesses circuitos a partir de suas regiões de origem, de maneira informal e precária.
Para avançar na compreensão dos sentidos e impactos individuais e/ou familiares dessa experiência migratória/laboral dinamizada a partir da inserção em circuitos de subcontratação, abordaremos a experiência boliviana no interior desses circuitos para o trabalho em oficinas de costura, nas cidades de São Paulo e Buenos Aires - captada a partir de observação participante multisituada e entrevistas biográficas com bolivianos(as) que, em algum momento de suas vidas, se inseriram nessa atividade.
O paper proposto focalizará as relações entre, por um lado, os perfis biográficos (mobilidades espaciais, laborais e familiares) anteriormente constituídos pelos entrevistados, a partir dos seus locais de origem e de passagem. E, por outro, as novas territorialidades estabelecidas pelo compartilhamento de uma experiência comum de migração e inserção laboral, a partir da consideração das formas de entrada, de saída e de mobilidade no interior do circuito, de aquisição de habilidades e de circulação de informações sobre essa atividade.
Paper short abstract:
The mining industry in Peru creates internal migration flows to mining centres. Meanwhile, external labour flexibility through subcontracting and temporal work gains importance. This research shows that different employee groups, formed by those two tendencies, perform unequal labour in terms of health.
Paper long abstract:
The mining industry in Peru is responsible for 49.2% of the total export and approximately 450,000 Peruvians were working in the industry in 2006. This investigation connects internal migration, external labour flexibility and the health of miners in the mining industry in 2012.
The mining industry causes labour migration flows to mining centers. Those flows create differences between rural and urban(1), indigenous and non-indigenous(2) and finally local and non-local miners(3). Moreover, some authors suppose that rural, indigenous and local miners fulfill the "bad" secondary jobs, while the others fulfill the "better" primary jobs. Besides internal migration the industry is characterized by external labour flexibility, which is connected with reductions in work related health. External flexibility could create health-differences between miners in subcontracted firms and miners in head companies(4) and finally between temporal and permanent miners(5).
The health of miners is shown in a unique model which combines labour organisation and function characteristics. Western sociology focuses on the demand-control model, supposing that only active work with high labour demands and labour control is healthy. This model has a narrow focus on the labour organization of mine organizations, so that, this research adds the concept of "overworked".
The influence of the five segregation lines on health is investigated through methodological triangulation. In addition, the research works with expert interviews and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). QCA gives deterministic paths, combinations of conditions derived from the different segregation lines, which lead to unhealthy and healthy labour in the mining industry in Peru in 2012.
Paper short abstract:
A análise da forma como músicos brasileiros em Lisboa desenvolvem suas carreiras artísticas a partir da experiência da mobilidade transnacional que empreendem, apresenta-se como interessante fonte de entendimento acerca da circulação de bens culturais e de pessoas no mundo contemporâneo.
Paper long abstract:
O mundo contemporâneo caracteriza-se pela intensificação dos processos de globalização e a massificação das migrações transnacionais. Neste cenário estão inseridos músicos brasileiros que decidem dar continuidade às suas carreiras profissionais e artísticas em Lisboa. Não sendo reconhecidos do grande público estão sujeitos aos mesmos percalços vividos pelos outros imigrantes brasileiros sobretudo os migrant workers. Contudo, carregam consigo os bens culturais que difundem através de suas apresentações e, assim sendo, fazem parte de uma forma de mobilidade específica. A peculiaridade da mobilidade empreendida por estes músicos contém aspectos relevantes para a análise da globalização e das mobilidades transnacionais na atualidade, confrontando-as com as suposições de que estes processos impulsionariam a superação das fronteiras e identidades nacionais. Além disso, pode indicar para o modo como a experiência migratória implica em formas de constituição subjetiva específicas. Este artigo busca aliar os debates sobre a globalização, o transnacionalismo e à mobilidade às discussões que dizem respeito à produção e circulação de bens culturais brasileiros num contexto, que embora seja transnacional, compartilha o mesmo idioma. Desse modo, explora a partir de observações feitas em campo e pensadas à luz das reflexões bibliográficas a forma como a mobilidade dos músicos brasileiros em Lisboa viabiliza a circulação de bens culturais brasileiros, ao mesmo tempo em que é também resultado desta circulação.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses the presence of the homosexual social subject during the near six month of the Mariel exodus through a comparative analysis of periodical printed material from Cuba and the US.
Paper long abstract:
The new ideal of the 1959 revolution in Cuba was for many a dream come true but for others, it represented the beginning of a long struggle. For the LGBT community the subsequent years will reflect the struggle Fidel foresaw in his first speech post revolution and that for many only left "exile" as an alternative to "come out" of a closet bigger than that of their sexuality. This paper aims to discuss and analyse the relationship between the Revolution and the LGBT community and its relevance for the emigration process in the post-59 Cuba taking as a point of analysis the six months of the Mariel exodus in 1980.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focus on the relationship and challenges faced by adult migrant daughters living in the United Kingdom, London, and their parents left-behind in Brazil. The paper explores the exchange of care practices, such as economic and emotional/moral support at a distance.
Paper long abstract:
Recently international mobility and immigration has affected Brazilian families and introduced a new phenomenon in Brazilian society - contemporary transnational family. By analysing the later historic and socio-economic context of Brazil society, two main migratory waves were identified. The first migratory wave, in the 80s, which was characterized by male migration in search of financial improvement as men were considered the breadwinner and thus the ideal person to go abroad and send remittance back to his family. And the second wave in the 90s, when women have started also leaving the country in search for employment, study and improvement of career. By focusing on the second wave, this paper aim to present that feminization of migration is challenging traditional intergenerational expectations of the role which women should play in family life. In the case of Brazilian society, women are the main source of family practical, emotional and moral support. This social fact can be understood as inheritance of patriarchal society, Catholic Church and lack of welfare-state. This new phenomenon influences the way Brazilian families have organized themselves until recently. Many of Brazilian women who left Brazil in the 90s or early 00s now are in their later 30s or early 40s, and are facing the challenge of traditional intergenerational expectations, once their parents are ageing and they are living apart from them in another far away country. Then, I will present in this paper to what extend adult-migrant daughters and left-behind parents negotiate their relationships, expectations and obligations of transnational care and support.
Paper short abstract:
The paper looks at complexities and contradictions in Latin American women’s migration experiences, focusing on their agentic efforts and how in the context of displacement and a flexible world they struggle with the messiness of being themselves and the sense-making to narrate themselves.
Paper long abstract:
Transnational mobility is a central feature of globalization, where the interplay between migration and identity is central to understand the shifts and transformations experienced by individuals. However, the gendering of migration needs to be problematised further. It has long been argued that female migration is primarily associated with economic needs and family roles; however, other intersecting dimensions of women's social backgrounds provide a more comprehensive picture of their reasons for, and experiences of migration. The paper explores the complexities associated with the agentic efforts of Latin American women in their migration trajectories. Findings suggest that family and societal regimes are the main push factors, and motives for extending their stay abroad seem to be associated with a desire for a cosmopolitan lifestyle, developed once in the host country. Deployment of identities is characterized by complex dynamics: whilst women might live cosmopolitan lives in rhetorical and representational terms, they are isolated from their home environment and struggle to adapt to and navigate hurdles in the host environment. At the same time, there are identifiable processes of reconfiguration of the self whereby through emotional and material acculturation, women normalize their experiences in the host country. The paper unpacks the contradictions that emerge from Latin American women's agentic efforts and explores the reasons for female migration focusing on how, in the context of displacement and the "flexible world", women struggle with the messiness of being themselves and the sense-making to narrate themselves.