Search results

Building upon previous studies on the factors shaping undocumented migrants’ experiences on the host labour markets, the purpose of this paper is to expand the theoretical understanding of labour market participation and ethnic solidarity networks, accounting for the sending context of war and political persecution, and the trajectory to irregularity.

This paper extends the understanding of the role of ethnic solidarity networks on the labour market participation of migrants with insecure legal status. It draws on data from a questionnaire survey of 178 Iraqi-Kurdish migrants with insecure legal status, four focus groups and ten expert interviews. Working conditions and sectors of employment are explored alongside strategies for accessing work and the role of ethnic solidarity networks.

The analysis of the data provides strong support for the theoretical expectations outlined above, assuming that the conflict-generated diaspora communities display a very distinct solidarity among its members, embedded in a shared history of conflict, persecution and identity struggles. Ethnic solidarity is put to the ultimate test in times of intensified enforcement of employment and immigration law. It stretches to accommodate the risks that employers take to provide work to their insecure co-ethnics, facing the tangible threat of raids, business closure, defamation and colossal fines, to mention but a few. In this context, the authors have defined “stretched solidarity” as a form of support and resource sharing among certain conflict-generated ethnic groups, embedded not only within a shared history of displacement, collective memory and trauma, and shared culture, language, loyalties, obligations and experiences but also in the “reception context”, which may limit ethnic solidarity through restrictive immigration controls.

The authors recognise the limits of the paper, which are that analysis is mainly based on experiences of the majority of whom were young and male migrants with insecure migration legal status, rather than employers.

This paper has identified the social phenomenon of “stretched solidarity” and has set out a model for understanding its embeddedness within conflict-generated diasporic networks. By drawing together research insights and data on Iraqi-Kurdish migrants with insecure legal status, it addressed the central research question how “unauthorised” migrants get access to the segmented labour market at a time of increased in-border controls in the UK.

The paper contributes towards an enhanced understanding of the complex phenomenon of “stretched solidarity” and its role in migrants’ gaining access to and maintaining employment in the host labour market. The notion of “stretched solidarity” developed here provides a platform for identifying a number of emerging areas for further empirical study and policy thinking. This requires advanced research not only into the processes of migrants’ access to the host labour market but also into the role of ethnic networks, resources and structures that enable migrants in precarious situations to survive.

To identify the trajectories of occupational mobility among non-EU immigrant workers in Europe and to test empirical data against neoclassical human capital theory that predicts upward occupational mobility and labor market segmentation theories proposing immigrant confinement to secondary segments.

Data from survey and semi-structured interviews (2,859 and 357, respectively) with immigrants from Brazil, Ukraine, and Morocco in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Norway. Multinomial regression analysis to test the likelihood of moving downward, upward, or stability and identify explanatory factors, complemented with qualitative evidence.

We found support for the thesis of segmented labor market theories of limited upward occupational mobility following migration. However, immigrants with longer residence in the destination country have higher chances of upward mobility compared to stability and downward mobility, giving also support for the neoclassical human capital theory. Frail legal status impacts negatively on upward mobility chances and men more often experience upward mobility after migration than women.

Findings reflect the specific situation of immigrants from three origin countries in four destination areas and cannot be taken as representative. In the multinomial regression we cannot distinguish between cohort effects and duration of stay.

Education obtained in the destination country is very important for migrants’ upward occupational mobility, bearing important policy implications with regards to migrants’ integration.

Its focus on trajectories of mobility through migration looking at two important transitions: (1) from last occupation in the origin country to first occupation at destination and (2) from first occupation to current occupation and offers a wide cross-country comparison both in terms of origin and destination countries in Europe.

This chapter examines the lives of Central American immigrant workers, with a focus on the paramount position of legal status in immigrants’ lives.

The legal context into which Central American immigrant workers arrive creates the various legal statuses they hold, which in turn dictate the kind of jobs they can obtain, where they live and, in general, shape their prospects in the United States. Although many Central Americans have held various forms of temporary protection from deportation, such relief is temporary and therefore subject to multiple extensions, applications, forms, and renewals, which serve to accentuate these immigrants’ legal uncertainty. Given their legal predicament and the consequent truncated paths to mobility, many Central American immigrant workers live in poverty; indeed, they are more likely to live in poverty than other foreign born. At the same time, they have high labor force participation rates. Their high rates of poverty coupled with high labor force participation rates indicate that their jobs do not pay much. In spite of these circumstances, they remit a significant portion of their earnings to their non-migrating family members in the origin countries.

The largely unchanged occupational and sectorial concentrations of Central Americans in the U.S. economy over the last two decades underscores the critical implications of legal status for immigrant incorporation and socioeconomic mobility.

This chapter exposes the vulnerabilities imposed by a precarious legal status and highlights the importance of more secure legal statuses for immigrant workers’ potential integration and paths to mobility.

This paper presents an analysis of how health intersects with the experience of housing insecurity and homelessness, specifically for migrant women. The authors argue that it is important to understand the specificities of the interplay of these different factors to continue the advancement of our understanding and practice as advocates for health and housing security.

An exploratory, qualitative, methodological approach was adopted, using a broad definition of housing insecurity: from absolute homelessness (e.g. residing rough) to invisible homelessness (e.g. couch surfing) to those at risk of homelessness. In total, 26 newcomer (foreign-born women who came to live in Canada during the previous ten years, regardless of their immigration status) women were recruited in Montreal, Canada. Participants were recruited directly through advertisements in public places and in collaboration with community organizations (women’s centers, homeless shelters, crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, immigrant settlement agencies and ethnic associations) and they self-identified as having experienced housing insecurity. Efforts were made to include a diversity of immigrant statuses as well as diversity in ethnicity, race, country of origin, family composition, sexual orientation, age and range of physical and mental ability. Women were engaged in semi-structured, open-ended interviews lasting approximately 1 h. Interviews were conducted in English or French in a location and time of participants’ choosing.

The findings are presented around three themes: how health problems instigate and maintain migrant women’s housing insecurity and homelessness; ways in which women’s immigration trajectories and legal status may influence their health experiences; and particular coping strategies that migrant women employ in efforts to maintain or manage their health. The authors conclude with implications of these findings for both policy and practice in relation to migrant women who experience or are at risk of housing insecurity and homelessness.

Intersections of women experiencing migration and housing insecurity in Canadian contexts have rarely been examined. This paper addresses a gap in the literature in terms of topic and context, but also in terms of sharing the voices of migrant women with direct experience with housing insecurity.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss family migration through the findings of the undocumented worker transitions (UWT) European Union funded, sixth framework project, which was completed in February 2009.

Focusing on results from 211 interviews across seven European countries, together with the current literature on the subject, the paper identifies types of family migration and examines the implications of migration policies and measures in relation to family life and the position of individuals within it, such as women, children or the older people. The paper argues that family‐related reasons often play a central role in the decision to migrate and shape employment experiences.

Independent of restrictions imposed by various states to control migration, family‐related migration does occur in destinations considered to provide economic prosperity (or survival) with the help of social networks and often with the intention of settling permanently/semi‐permanently in the host state. Status shift towards irregularity often translates to a more vulnerable position in the labour market, inviting exploitation and worsening of the working conditions as a result of precarious employment conditions.

The paper concludes that greater protection (in terms of status) and encouragement (in terms of involvement in the civic society) is needed for migrant families in order to enable integration and combat future disadvantage and discrimination that might be experienced by this group.

The paper places emphasis on irregular migrants, as research in this area is limited. The work is also original as it is based on primary research on the experiences of undocumented migrants in seven European countries.

Currently, a much-debated issue concerns the social and political significance of the emergence of the precariat, a social class consisting of people for whom uncertainty and unpredictability of life circumstances and employment relations make it impossible to plan for the future, forcing them to live on a day-to-day basis (Standing, 2011). However, it remains unclear how the precariat may be defined and operationalized. On the one hand, treating non-standard employment arrangements (fixed-term contracts, temporary agency work, etc.) as a basis for identifying precarious jobs is likely to be misleading, as research has shown non-standard employment to be heterogeneous with respect to working conditions and chances for achieving stabilization. On the other hand, subjective perceptions of security may also be misleading as indicators of precarity, as they are compounded by psychological coping mechanisms and perceptions of reference group status. This analysis attempts to disentangle the complex relationships between non-standard employment and perceived insecurity in order to provide grounds for a more adequate conceptualization and measurement of job precarity. Specifically, I assess the extent to which the relationship between worker contractual status and perceived job, labor market, and employment insecurity is conditional on various characteristics of workers, their jobs, and their households, taking into account the country-level economic and institutional context. The analysis is based on multi-level regression models using data from the 2010 European Working Conditions Survey.

Migrant workers are often concentrated in segments of the labour market characterised by low-paid and insecure work and which fall outside of the traditional ‘web of rules’ providing workers with protections. Institutional experimentation provides an opportunity to rectify this. This chapter examines the reasons why migrant workers are often subject to exploitation and marginalisation in the labour market. It then analyses the roles of the three main actors with the capacity to protect and improve migrant workers’ labour market position: governments, trade unions and community organisations. It proposes a ‘co-regulation’ approach based on collaborative institutional experimentation between these actors as the most effective way to address the exploitation and marginalisation of migrant workers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the barriers preventing women in prostitution from accessing co-ordinated health services in the Republic of Ireland. By examining the experiences of migrant women engaged in prostitution, the research contributes to knowledge pertaining to the psychosocial experiences of female sex workers’ access to healthcare.

The study interviewed migrant women across Ireland, using a biographical narrative approach and an adapted voice-centred relational model of analysis to determine the necessity for a health promotion strategy for this demographic.

The findings indicate migrant women work primarily indoors, hold precarious legal status and are in Ireland due to processes of globalisation, migration and economic necessity. The women discussed their entry into prostitution and their experiences within prostitution in the context of their psychosocial experiences.

While the findings are from a small qualitative sample confined to the Republic of Ireland, it is the first study to prioritise migrant sex workers’ psychosocial experiences in Ireland.

The research concludes education and service development that respects the various social determinants impacting women in prostitution is missing but remains necessary in Ireland. It finds a gendered reform of policies using an ecological framework for health that can address issues of poverty, migration and the global trends of the sex industry.

This means a national review of current services in health, social work and community development fields is timely.

This paper gives insight into the lives of migrant women involved in the sex industry and can make an important contribution to future research directions and practice in Irish and European prostitution contexts.

The political crisis related to two main factors internal to the public revenue system, namely financial markets and the commercialisation of the state, and three related external factors, pertaining to the pandemic, popular discontent and inequality. The emphasis on financial markets since the mid-1990s expanded the commercialisation of the state while neglecting public accountability and government oversight. The efforts to shore up public finances through the tax system is increasingly undermined by the global tax architecture, enabling financial secrecy and illicit financial flows.

The pandemic revealed the significance of women’s work, paid as well as unpaid care work. The pandemic also exposed the limitations of a domestic economy, based on export-oriented development, over-reliant on tourism and remittances from migrant workers. Combining with the on-going dengue epidemic, the pandemic highlighted the urgency of climate adaptation. Meanwhile, the popular discontent conveyed an accumulation of grievances linked with cultural discrimination, political misrepresentation as well as economic maldistribution. The participation of new middle-class segments in the protests foregrounded new tendencies significant for strengthening the labour movement as well as working-class parties in their demands for redistribution, reframing democracy as well as citizenship.