ABSTRACT As more first‐generation Chinese migrants in the Netherlands reach older age, increased attention is required to reconcile their care needs and expectations with the expectations and perspectives of their adult children. Moving beyond filial piety, this study examines how second‐generation Chinese migrants develop and reflect on their preferences and plans for their parents' care. The study employs a developmental life course perspective (DLCP) to contribute to the understanding of the evolution of care planning from an individual perspective. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews, the findings show that adult children are generally willing to support their parents, but seek simultaneously to establish boundaries in response to parental expectations. Institutional care is often preferred over family‐based care, particularly when intensive support is anticipated. In this regard, filial piety is neither fully nor seamlessly transmitted across generations. The analysis based on DLCP sheds light on multiple tensions that are either intensified or mitigated through the perceived relevance of Dutch and Chinese cultures, past and present parent–child relationships, sibling dynamics, and agency in striving toward ideal care arrangements.
ABSTRACT Despite growing policy interest in attracting diverse talent, little is known about how family dynamics and caregiving responsibilities influence the labour market integration of skilled migrant workers. This article examines the employment of migrants in South Korea, focusing on the role of skill levels, gender, and caregiving responsibilities in shaping labour market outcomes. Applying a Difference‐in‐Differences approach to national survey data ( N = 21,018), this study evaluates the stability of migrant employment amid labour market disruptions. The results show that migrants experienced an overall four percentage‐point decline in employment, with a much sharper reduction among highly educated mothers, whose employment probability fell by 18.6 percentage points. This finding illuminates the compounded effects of human capital, gender, and family care duties on migrant labour market outcomes. The study contributes to research on migrant employment by demonstrating the gendered precarization of skills, emphasizing the role of caregiving responsibilities. The results underscore the need for family‐friendly policies that address the specific vulnerabilities of female migrants in order to enhance their economic incorporation and long‐term retention in the labour force.
ABSTRACT Policy makers increasingly promote refugee resettlement in rural areas. Despite trust being widely recognized as central to successful resettlement, little attention has been given to how trust is manifested in rural regions and whether urban‐based understanding of trust‐building governance practices requires adaptation for rural settings. Drawing on 111 interviews (2023–2024) with refugees, teachers, municipal social services employees and volunteers involved in resettling Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Iceland (2015–2021), we conceptualize rural trust as a relational process shaped by mobility, memory, temporality, and hypervisibility. Situating our findings within trust and migration governance debates, we show how small localities manage responsibilities typically handled by larger bureaucracies and thereby exhibit an overlap between interpersonal and institutional trust. We argue for reflective approaches that account for mobility and temporality, consider common socio‐demographic features of sparsely populated areas, while recognizing the heterogeneity of rural areas.
ABSTRACT Free Movement Regimes (FMRs) establish a mobility pathway that allows nationals of one country to enter, reside, and work within the territory of another state, extending well beyond the channels typically associated with conventionally defined migration. Despite their global prevalence and significance, they have attracted little scholarly and policy attention. This article introduces the Freemove Dataset, the first dataset to comprehensively map all bilateral and multilateral FMRs globally. Our aim is to identify every FMR in force or adopted between 1992 and 2024, analysing and comparing their provisions, so as to assess their growth and expansion. Additionally, this article presents some descriptive and analytical results for the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. We demonstrate that the number of countries and regimes has increased enormously, resulting in a complex patchwork of partially overlapping bilateral and multilateral regimes. By employing indicator scorings to measure three clusters of FMR provisions (beneficiaries, rights and restrictions), we find that the depth of FMRs has significantly risen over the past three decades.
ABSTRACT Europe's ageing population includes a growing number of older migrants whose experiences of ageing in place require methods that capture mobility, place, and social participation. Mobile ethnography, particularly walking/go‐along interviews, offers valuable opportunities to examine how older migrants engage with everyday environments. Yet existing mobile research with older migrants has often focused on participants able to take part in walking interviews, leaving less attention to how mobile ethnography can be applied with migrants in advanced age and with different mobility conditions. Drawing on fieldwork with migrants from Turkey in Germany, nearly all aged 70 and above, this paper develops a more flexible understanding of mobility within mobile ethnography. It shows how engagement with place can be explored through walking, but also through familiar community settings, shorter movements, narrated routes, remembered places, supported mobility, and repeated everyday routines. The paper offers a more inclusive methodological approach for research with ageing migrant populations.
ABSTRACT While the impact of COVID‐19 on youth development has been widely studied, less is known about its effects on transnationally mobile young adults. This longitudinal study of Australian outbound and inbound mobility examines how the pandemic disrupted this population's experiences abroad as they navigated transitions to adulthood. It draws on two waves of survey data collected using a convenience sample between July 2020 and September 2022. Our findings reveal that COVID‐19 presented significant challenges to young adults living away from home, with disruptions to their future plans, social connections, and well‐being. However, these impacts were not uniform. The pandemic magnified existing inequalities, with those on short‐term visas, women, and those already facing financial precarity experiencing greater negative effects. Moreover, individuals who experienced higher negative effects also reported increased struggles in achieving personal milestones associated with transitions to adulthood. This study highlights how crises (like the pandemic) amplify the vulnerability of transnationally mobile youth, a population often assumed to be—or actively striving to be—independent and self‐sufficient. It underscores the need for targeted support and interventions that address their specific challenges, including more equitable and inclusive migration and education policies that recognise the differentiated and overlapping vulnerabilities faced by this population.
ABSTRACT This article examines migration aspirations among highly educated Japanese nationals considering migration to Europe, with particular attention to how Europe is imagined as a normative horizon. Drawing on interviews with migration experts and Japanese aspiring migrants, the study shows that migration aspirations are shaped not only by structural constraints in Japan—such as economic stagnation, demanding work cultures, and gender inequality—but also by perceptions of Europe as a space associated with democratic values, social inclusion, gender equality, and alternative ways of organising work and everyday life. By focusing on aspirations rather than realised mobility, the article demonstrates how imaginaries of Europe and perceived constraints in the country of origin interact to shape migration motivations prior to actual movement.
ABSTRACT This study examines the migration trajectories of Filipino migrant workers in Belgium, asking how migrants rely on intermediaries across different informal migration pathways. Drawing on Fresnoza‐Flot's humanizing approach to migration studies and based on 20 in‐depth interviews, it traces how migrants navigate legal precarity through intermediaries. Empirically, intermediaries become salient at two critical junctures: (1) facilitating entry into Belgium through invitations, referrals and circulation of information and (2) assisting migrants, to varying degrees, to navigate Belgian legal, social and labour systems after arrival. By centering migrant narratives, the study presents three informal migration pathways: jump ship migration as a shift from regular to irregular status; short‐term visa overstay as legal entry that extends beyond authorized stay; and cross‐border labour mobility as movement through multiple countries before settling in Belgium. Migrant narratives matter analytically because they show how intermediaries shape the terms under which legal precarity is navigated, how legality is interpreted and recalibrated over time and how informal pathways are produced relationally rather than as isolated individual acts.
ABSTRACT This paper argues that contemporary United States immigration law and policy construct a hierarchy of personhood for undocumented migrants which better explains their status as opposed to a classic binary framework of citizen/migrant. It develops a four‐layer conceptual framework of personhood including baseline personhood, membership personhood, administrative personhood and social personhood. These layers are argued to be unevenly distributed across legal domains, creating a strong and impactful hierarchization of individuals. Historically situating the current regime within the late‐twentieth‐century turn towards employer sanctions and one‐time legalization, the expansion of deportable offences, the restriction of non‐citizens' access to public benefits, and post‐9/11 securitization, the paper demonstrates the rise of an ‘immigration industrial complex’. It then draws on critical scholarship relating to deportability, the illegality trap, and crimmigration to argue that illegality is actively produced as a tool for governance that keeps migrants exploitable. A section on doctrinal analysis of constitutional and administrative law shows that undocumented migrants are recognized as persons in some contexts, yet denied secure access to the social state and membership. The paper further identifies mechanisms of personhood‐thinning and reads their combined effects through a republican non‐domination lens. It concludes by sketching reforms aimed at thickening personhood and reducing domination to escape the illegality trap and move towards a just immigration law framework.
ABSTRACT Peace governance and the rights‐based politics of refugee returns are inseparable, yet in practice they unfold in isolation. Even when peace agreements include return provisions, peace transitions and dignified returns rarely align. This paper draws on the Syrian war as a foundational case to show how these processes, each central to the remaking of political order, have moved along discordant tracks. It distils three lessons from the Syrian war. First, refugee return evolved during the war into a marketplace for transactional conflict management. Second, a stark misalignment has persisted between top‐down initiatives and the bottom‐up practices through which grassroots communities have negotiated political voice. Third, refugees have remained excluded as peace actors despite their centrality to any post‐war order. The Syrian case highlights the need for research on anticipatory peacebuilding defined here as an approach to peace governance that works on the conditions needed for future peace by integrating grassroots communities and refugees as peace actors long before hostilities end.
ABSTRACT Livelihoods have been a central element of the humanitarian response to the Syria crisis. This was especially the case in Jordan, with the Jordan Compact promising hundreds of thousands of jobs for Syrians, and development opportunities for their hosts. In this commentary, we highlight three broader lessons from the scheme, the results of which were disappointing for many Syrians. Livelihoods interventions must ensure that indicators of success are linked to tangible changes in refugees' lives; that refugees' integration into national systems is done cautiously, in ways adapted to their circumstances and priorities; and that much more attention is paid to the gendered, racialised and classed nature of labour market dynamics. In order to achieve these goals, refugees' experiences and aspirations as labour market participants, and their own assessments of whether and how their lives have improved, must be at the heart of future programme design, implementation and evaluation.
ABSTRACT The arrival of around 1 million asylum seekers in Germany in 2015, many from Syria, reshaped migration debates and exposed structural weaknesses. Initial solidarity soon turned into fatigue as local authorities struggled with reception capacities, including provision of housing and education. Public discourse shifted from humanitarian concerns to security narratives, contributing to the rise of the far‐right Alternative für Deutschland and to the increase in political polarization. Policymakers responded with restrictive measures emphasizing control. Despite this, many refugees—especially Syrians—have successfully integrated into the labour market and society. However, recent political developments prioritize return over long‐term inclusion, particularly after the regime change in Syria. The paper argues that forced or premature return policies overlook the complexity of migration processes and the need for stability in countries of origin. It concludes by advocating for policies that support long‐term integration, voluntary return, and transnational engagement, while cautioning against the dominance of restrictive migration agendas.
ABSTRACT This paper explores the meaning of work for highly educated female migrants. While employment tends to be considered central to migrant integration, migration research has paid limited attention to the deeper meanings associated with work, and the role they play in migration processes. In order to address this knowledge‐gap, this paper analyses narratives of highly educated female migrants from the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) living in the UK with a focus on how work‐related interests and aspirations impact on migration choices and plans, and on how the women evaluate their experiences in the UK. The paper draws theoretical insights from the literature on work orientations and meaningful work, and shows that being able to obtain employment in line with one's qualifications and skills is important to these female migrants in multiple ways: in order to achieve aims and aspirations for economic stability and social mobility, make career advancements, and because of personal interests, ambitions and values, and how those are reflected in the jobs the women do, or aspire to do. While migration is often considered a route to achieving work‐related aspirations, the extent to which this succeeds varies amongst the research participants, and for some, migration involves blocked career mobility and a need to adjust and/or re‐assess one's plans and options. Through an in‐depth exploration of how employment and career feature in these female migrants' stories, the paper adds crucial insights into this aspect of their motivations for and experiences of migration, while highlighting the deeper implications of professional opportunities gained and barriers encountered for integration and belonging.
ABSTRACT The global increase in displaced populations underscores the need for diverse refugee solutions, with Western countries expanding resettlement and sponsorship programmes. Sponsorship programmes, involving private and community actors in refugee support, are often credited with offering more comprehensive, personalised assistance than government‐led resettlement, leading to assumptions of better integration experiences. However, empirical evidence is limited. This study compares the integration experiences of refugees resettled in the UK through the government‐led Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) delivered via local‐authority caseworker support and the volunteer‐led Community Sponsorship (CS) scheme. Using the Home Office's Indicators of Integration framework, the findings show that differences in social support are mediated by structural and institutional factors and do not consistently translate into significant disparities in employment, education, or health experiences. Structural barriers, such as the non‐recognition of refugees' qualifications, persist across both schemes. The study highlights the need for a multi‐stakeholder approach to refugee integration.
