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To examine an exceptional case of international labor solidarity and advocacy in a nontraditional labor-receiving country of South Korea.

Ethnographic research on migrant advocacy organization in Korea from its inception in the mid-1990s to the present; theoretical and comparative review of literature on migrant labor mobilization, with a focus on labor unions and migrant advocacy organizations.

The significance of the Korean case is that there are an unusually high number of migrant advocacy organizations that increasingly espouse an internationalist ideology. Furthermore, their effectiveness and sustainability rest on embedded solidarity networks across a spectrum of progressive labor and civic organizations.

The chapter underscores the agentic power of society’s vulnerable populations, such as undocumented immigrant workers, despite the market-driven forces of globalization that disrupts communities and disciplines workers. Embedded solidarity with migrants from a transnational perspective adds to the much-needed discussion about global protests in the context of globalization and neoliberalism.

This chapter addresses the following questions: To what extent do the socio-economic characteristics of circular/repeat migrants differ from the migrants who return permanently to the home country after their first trip (i.e. return migrants)? And, what determines each of these distinctive temporary migration forms? Using Albanian household survey data and both a multinomial logit model and a maximum simulated likelihood (MSL) probit with two sequential selection equations, we find that education, gender, age, geographical location and the return reasons from the first migration trip significantly affect the choice of migration form. Compared to return migrants, circular migrants are more likely to be male, have primary education and originate from rural, less developed areas. Moreover, return migration seems to be determined by family reasons, a failed migration attempt but also by the fulfilment of a savings target.

Purpose – Examined here are some of the tenets of social capital in the context of the migrants’ crossing the U.S.–Mexico border without official authorization. Using this context helps identify how social capital development is weakened by the structural and gendered dimensions of migration, contributing to the rise in undocumented border crosser deaths since 1993.

Approach – A selection of published works provide an overview of social capital, and in particular, how the framework has been used to further our understanding of the process of migration and immigrant settlement in new destinations. The principles of social capital are then examined in light of women's border crossing experiences and used to argue that migrants from emerging migrant-sending states in southern and central Mexico have had less time to accumulate resource-enhancing migration-related social capital. The narratives of repatriated women collected during research on the border in 2006–2007 are used to illustrate how controlling environments undermine the acquisition of social capital at a critical time.

Findings – The selection of narratives of women who were repatriated after attempting to cross into the United States without authorization illustrate the perilous interplay of hardening border enforcement and multiplying illicit border smuggling organizations. The outcome is the downward leveling of social capital on the border that potentially poses greater life-threatening risks for migrants.

Originality/value – This study provides a theoretical understanding that can be used to explain rising levels of violence along the U.S.–Mexico border that increasingly engulf migrants fleeing poverty in Mexico.

Using Kunming, the capital of China's southwest Yunnan Province, as an example, this mixed-methods research examines three interacting dimensions of social change in contemporary China: migration, ethnicity, and education. In particular, it sheds light on the issue of educational achievement of migrant children, especially children of ethnic minority background. The quantitative portion of the study is based on data gathered from over 700 sample students, teachers, and principals who participated in the “2008 Kunming Migrant Children's Survey.” A two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) is employed to identify student- and school-level factors and to estimate the impacts of these factors on migrant children's academic achievement. The qualitative portion of the study is based primarily on the data collected through in-depth individual interviews and focus-group discussions with 97 migrant students, teachers, and school principals from 10 government and nongovernment migrant children's schools in Kunming between 2008 and 2009. The qualitative and quantitative results highlight four interrelated groups of educational barriers experienced by migrant students in pursuing compulsory education: institutional, socioeconomic, cultural, and psychological barriers. In particular, cultural and psychological barriers, including difficulty in school adaptation, low self-esteem, lack of family support, and discrimination against ethnic minorities due to their different religious beliefs and ethnic traditions, are found to have exerted particularly significant negative influences on academic achievements of ethnic minority students.

To explore income inequality in urban China, this paper investigates disparities between- and within-urban locals and rural migrants from 2002 to 2013, using three waves of the China Household Income Project (CHIP) data. While the existing literature concentrates on the wage disparity between these two groups, our results show that the Gini among the migrants increased by 17.86% between 2007 and 2013 and that among the locals increased by 15.54% from 2002 to 2007. The urban–migrant average income gap decreased during the whole period mainly due to higher growth in migrants’ average income. Estimates based on Mincerian earnings functions for both groups reveal the significant role of the education, occupation and type of contract in determining the within-group inequality. In addition, using a recentred influence function (RIF), we observe that short-term and other types of contracts, duration of the job, in-system ownership, marriage and skill have inequality-enhancing effects for migrants. The variation of skills has a larger impact on the income disparity among migrants than on that among urban locals. The RIF-based Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition of the mean difference of incomes shows that labour market discrimination between the two groups is not significant; however, both pure explained and unexplained differences are significant when applying the RIF decomposition to the variance of the logarithms of incomes. While the type of contract significantly reduces the pure explained difference between migrants and urban locals, occupation has a positive impact on this difference between these two groups. The heterogenity analysis shows that the factors influencing incomes in these two groups are different. We recommend labour market intervention to reduce unreasonable occupational and sectoral disparities, especially in the net inflow provinces, to mitigate urban inequality in China effectively.

The assumption that the family migrates as a unit downplays migrants’ circularity. This chapter focuses on China's rural–urban labor migrants that travel back and forth between the sites of work and home community and between places of work. I argue that migrants and their households pursue work flexibility in order to obtain the best of the urban and rural worlds, by gaining earnings from urban work and at the same time maintaining social and economic security in the countryside. Work flexibility demands flexibility in household organization, in the form of division of labor and collaboration between genders, generations, and households. Based on a study in Sichuan, I examine household biographies and narratives to identify migrants’ work and household strategies.

Migrants change jobs frequently, switch from one type of work to another and one location to another readily, and often return to the home village for months or even years before pursuing migrant work again. Not only are migrants ready to split the household between the city and the countryside, but also they frequently change from one form of division of labor to another. The inside–outside model, where the wife stays in the village and the husband does migrant work, used to be the dominant arrangement. Over time, the outside–outside model, where both the husband and wife migrate to work and leave behind other family members, is increasingly popular. This is facilitated by intergenerational and interhousehold division of labor in the form of assistance by the extended family. Intergenerational division of labor takes place when the second generation is replacing the parents in migrant work. This research's findings support the notion that rural–urban migrants are fast becoming a hybrid segment of Chinese society, playing dual roles of farmers and urban workers and straddling the peasant and urban worlds.

Purpose: This chapter examines alternative education programs available for Myanmarese migrant youth in Thailand, what these young migrants expect of education, and how these migrant learning centers (MLCs) can help provide more opportunities for migrants.

Methods: This study draws from the data collected through two stages of qualitative research undertaken in Mae Sot, a town that borders Myawaddy, Myanmar in Thailand. Stage one consisted of ethnographic research with the local Myanmarese diaspora when I worked as a volunteer at a community-based organization. In stage two, a series of interviews were conducted with eight faculty members and twenty students enrolled in the secondary school level or vocational training program of three local MLCs.

Findings: The main finding is that even with both inclusive education policies and alternative education options in place, there is still a missing link between the educational attainment of Myanmarese migrant youth and their future prospects. While Thai public education seems to be a pathway to more future opportunities in the host country, it can be a trap when migrant youth cannot make good use of their learned knowledge and Thai language skills in the future due to their irregular status. In contrast with Thai public schools, MLCs offer more than simply education. They also provide scholarship, employment and social welfare assistance to serve the varying needs of young migrants.

Originality: The case of Myanmarese migrants presents a unique study in which the gap between students’ educational attainment and future prospects cannot necessarily be bridged even with a valid work visa scheme in place. Some Myanmarese migrants are displaced individuals who fled from civil wars and without any identification documents. The legal systems enforced by nation-states, such as Thailand, that rely on identification documents to control the flow of population still lack the capacity to adequately address the educational needs and employment opportunities of individuals with irregular status.

This chapter is a descriptive and exploratory study of the challenges and opportunities faced by franchisors in adapting their franchise systems to accommodate cultural diversity among franchisees. It uses literature on migrant entrepreneurs and cultural diversity in small business settings in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the Americas as a basis for application to a franchising context. Triggered by events in the Australian franchising sector over the past two years, in which franchise systems have been embroiled in controversial and illegal activities undertaken by franchisees – many of whom were business migrants – the research begins to unravel the complexities of utilizing migrant franchisees as vehicles of system growth. Two sources of data provide indicative evidence about the issues associated with migrant franchisees. Firstly, two surveys of franchisors were conducted in 2014 and 2016 to obtain descriptive data about the incidence of migrants as franchisees. Secondly, a series of focus groups provided insights into the challenges and opportunities faced by franchisors in recruiting and managing migrant franchisees. Tentative findings of best practice in accommodating migrant franchisees are revealed. This research begins to fill an important gap in the literature about cultural diversity in franchising.