Search results

This paper aims to check whether the bodily self-perception factor plays any role in (female) migrants’ alleged underuse of health services. Out of the four main reasons identified by scholars, the “cultural specificity” factor is tackled here from an intersectional perspective that envisages gender, migration and totalitarianism.

A survey was conducted on 20 Romanian women living in Spain. Two categories were analysed (body as image and body as discourse) to detect perceptions in consultations in Spain as compared to Romania. The assumption that their perceptions varied between the period prior and subsequent to the fall of the dictatorship was contrasted with the information provided by a sample of 25 Spanish women.

The analysis revealed perceptions of a more relaxed medical relationship for Romanian patients in Spain, hence the possibility that migration (normally stressful) gave them a sense of freedom and empowerment.

The intersectional perspective in health communication is original. This study opens a research avenue in health services’ underuse by migrants.

Romanian women migrant entrepreneurs (RWMEs) are amongst the largest EU migrant communities in the UK and make significant socioeconomic contributions to both their host and origin nations, but academic research and policy discussions have ignored them. Intersectionality raises complex contextual issues that require comprehensive examination and inclusive policies and programmes. This study is aimed at exploring how Romanian women migrant entrepreneurs experience their transnational intersectional journeys of belonging, as they create, negotiate and enact their intersectional identities of the country of origin, gender and being entrepreneurs in the UK and Romania.

This Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) draws on draws upon Crenshaw's (1991) intersectional and Social Identity theories (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) to investigate how nine interviewed RWMEs have experienced their transnational journeys of acculturative belonging in the UK and Romania.

The study findings show how RWMEs undo and negotiate their intersecting identities to adhere to socio-cultural standards in both their host and native nations. In the UK, they feel empowered as women entrepreneurs, but in patriarchal Romania, their entrepreneurial identity is revoked, contradicting the prescribed socio-cultural roles.

This study responds to the call regarding inequalities in entrepreneurship opportunities (Vershinina et al., 2022). By focussing on the understudied community of RWMEs and exploring new intersectional and transnational contextual insights, it contributes to the literature and practice of migrant entrepreneurship. These empirical findings are essential for the development of evidence-based, disaggregated entrepreneurship programmes and policies.

This study responds to the call regarding inequalities in entrepreneurship opportunities (Vershinina et al., 2022). By focussing on the understudied community of RWMEs and exploring new intersectional and transnational contextual insights, it contributes to the literature and practice of migrant entrepreneurship. These empirical findings are essential for the development of evidence-based, disaggregated entrepreneurship programmes and policies.

Purpose: The research conducted in this chapter approaches a topical subject and examines the labour market advancement of Romanian migrants within several receiving economies across the European Union, as well as the impact of international migration on the Romanian economy and labour market, also considering the present context of the Covid-19 pandemic and digitalisation challenges.

Method: The methodology embeds spatial bootstrap analysis (spatial lag and error models) applied to a newly compiled dataset for Romania during 2000–2020.

Findings: Main findings of the current research update and complement the specialised literature with new data on Romanian migration by identifying unknown potential reasons that generated the departure of the Romanian labour force abroad and several credentials of the return migration intentions and strategies.

Originality and significance of findings: The results mainly entail some of the essential effects generated by the Covid-19 pandemic regarding the interplay between the labour market and international migration, with a keen focus on Romania.

Non-verbal communication (NVC) remains largely understudied despite its importance in today's fast-paced and cross-cultural management and research landscape. This article is significant because it reveals valuable insights into NVC, which represents 65–93% (Mehrabian, 1981) of communication and has the potential to considerably increase management effectiveness and efficiency by providing leaders and researchers with the knowledge they need to understand and handle diversity with competence.

This article draws on social identity theory (SIT) (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) and rapport management theory (RMT) (Brown and Levinson, 1987) to analyse illustrative interview extracts of co-occurring verbal and NVC from an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) study focussed on understanding how London-based Romanian migrant entrepreneurs experience acculturation.

Romanian migrant entrepreneurs use a variety of verbal and non-verbal communication approaches in their acculturation narratives, providing depth and occasionally shifting meaning. These tactics include repeating verbal discourse with non-verbal clues, replacing verbal communication with non-verbal gestures, complementing verbal communication and juxtaposing non-verbal cues with verbal descriptions.

This study makes a valuable contribution to the fields of qualitative organisational management and entrepreneurial studies by addressing the lack of methodological tools available for analysing non-verbal language in interpretative research. This study presents a systematic technique for assessing non-verbal language symbols that has been developed through face-to-face interviews. The article utilises the first-hand interview experience of a Romanian co-researcher to demonstrate the significance of NVC in the transmission of meaning and the formation of identities amongst Romanian migrant entrepreneurs. These findings contribute to a better understanding of organisational management and research practices, particularly about this understudied entrepreneurial minority of Romanian businesses in London, by helping researchers and managers better grasp the cultural and contextual meanings communicated non-verbally. The article holds significance in the context of cross-cultural and organisational management practices.

The purpose of this paper is to explore multiple cases of Moldovan women who individually initiated and involved in work arrangements with Italian employers. The main purpose is to examine the international employment experiences of female migrants by identifying the challenges they face in a foreign country and building a comprehensive typology of female migrant workers.

The empirical work consists of field notes gathered through direct observations and semi‐structured interviews conducted with five Moldovan women while they were still working in Italy. The content analysis of the interviews reveals how Moldovan workers perceive their foreign experience and the ways it influences their personal development.

The paper suggests that such brain mobility concepts as brain drain, brain waste and optimal brain drain represent the distinguishing characteristics of our interviewees who are citizens of a transitional economy. Imaginary trip, frustrating encounter, identity consolidation and self‐actualization are identified as four consecutive stages through which the self‐initiated migration experience develops over the time. The resulting variations in migrants' behaviours and mind‐sets create a typology of female workers based on their desperateness to migrate (planner vs despairer), their failure to tolerate the frustrating encounter (surrenderer), their attitudes towards personal development (conformist vs rejuvenator) and their ability to transcend their own limitations (highflyer). The paper describes the double identity strangeness along with other aspects which differentiate self‐initiated experiences from expatriate assignments.

The use of a limited number of case studies prevents concluding whether and to what extent the findings apply to all female migrant workers from other transitional economies. This limitation could be clarified in a future study on larger samples of female respondents involved in self‐initiated employment arrangements in Italy or in other developed countries.

At the organizational level, the findings allow employers and human resource managers in the destination country to distinguish different types of migrant workers and better understand their particular needs in order to facilitate their intra‐firm integration.

Using a gender analysis highlighted in the international migration literature, this research makes a contribution towards creating a solid knowledge base on Moldovan migrant women – a widely underexplored group of migrant workers – and their involvement in labour market processes in Italy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenge of interpreting the growth in arbitrage opportunities at the Ukrainian‐Romanian border within a rural Ukrainian border community. The author illustrates that whilst the proliferation of economic activity through the border has provided a boost to the local economy, it has also led to the development of discursive performance around these practices within rural Ukrainian communities, which both mitigates the potentially negative impacts of economic growth in Romania and also reflects emerging views of consumption as a cultural competence.

The paper draws on more than 18 months of participant observation in three rural communities on either side of the Ukrainian‐Romanian border between September 2007 and May 2010.

The discursive performance of consumption has emerged as an important means for the production of values amongst the low income households of Diyalivtsi (pseudonym). As part of this performance, the villagers of Diyalivtsi differentiate themselves from their Romanian neighbours through critical analysis of Romanian consumption practices, which are viewed through the prism of cross‐border economies.

This is one of the first papers to consider how the diverse economies of post‐socialism are (re)performed in the communities in which they have become embedded. Rather than seeking to theorise or quantify cross‐border economies and the practices of trading and consumption, it illuminates the social aspects of them for rural Ukrainian communities.

Contemporary mobilities research has demonstrated a fundamental blurring between work, leisure and tourism practices for migrants as they seek to construct new lifestyles whilst maintaining connections with their homelands. The purpose of this paper is to present some of the results of a research project that analysed the work and leisure experiences of Polish migrants living in the North East of England using a mobilities theoretical approach. In this paper, the authors focus on the reasons influencing their migration and their leisure and tourism mobility practices.

The results are based upon a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods gathering a sample of 90 questionnaires and 11 focus groups.

Based upon a statistical analysis of the questionnaires using SPSS and textual analysis applied to the focus group transcriptions, different gendered work, leisure and tourism mobilities were identified relating to family attachments and social ties.

The authors argue that seemingly mundane leisure and tourism practices can often be a catalyst for greater mobility, and this mobility has significant gender dimensions.

This paper thus provides new insights into the interweaving of different gendered work and leisure mobility practices based upon empirical findings of Polish migrants to the North East of England.

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.

Naples, Italy in the last decade has become a destination for Ukrainian migrants escaping the economic uncertainty of their homeland. A sign of the city's importance in the diaspora is that the Ukrainian government in 2008 opened a local consulate. Estimates are that nearly a million Ukrainians have used Italy as a point of labour transit, even if only a fifth of those are formally registered. The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategies with which Ukrainian migrants in Naples, Italy attempt to create ontological security in the context of informal economies and the uncertainties of the migratory process.

The research is based on 18 months of ethnographic close observation and participation in migrant networks in Naples between 2004 and 2008.

The research reveals the strategies used by Ukrainian migrants to arrange and maintain transnational connections, seek work, and develop a sense of belonging through place‐making and institutional development in the face of the significant barriers to inclusion and socio‐economic stability in Neapolitan society.

The evidence suggests that policymakers concerned with social cohesion and integration might wish to consider informal economic activities not simply as a “problem” to resolve but a key feature of contemporary capitalism that may create the conditions to address their concerns. Therefore, a more nuanced understanding of how migrants create their lives through these activities would be useful.

This ethnographic material suggests that greater attention should be paid to the creative capacities of migrants to create a sense of security through informal activities. Migrants make extensive use of social networks and knowledge distribution to form the basis of decisions about economic behaviour, emplacement and ontological security.

An increasing number of international immigrant workers enter the EU labour market to fill the gap in many key economic sectors. Labour migration often implies a process of family adaptation and, in some cases, a breakdown in the community structure and networks. This study aims to provide insights into the dynamics of transnational families, focusing on changes in the redefinition of roles within family members and children care arrangements.

The study was based on the analysis of 12 biographical interviews conducted using semi-structured interviews between November 2018 and December 2019 among Romanian women who worked as caregivers in families in an Italian metropolitan city and the surrounding urban area.

Despite the economic dimension being essential, psychological well-being increasingly burdens workers’ migratory experience and that of their family members. Findings suggest including employers and children among the actively involved actors of the family decision-making process; working and contractual conditions as factors that significantly impact the opportunities and capability of workers to provide and receive care, mainly if the latter are employed in the informal market.

The study makes it possible to highlight that the dynamics in decision-making processes in transnational families change in the different phases of the migration project and involve numerous actors. These processes are not always rational and are strongly influenced by the labour market structure in which migrants are employed.