Transnational Practices and European Identity: From Theoretical to Policy Issues

This brief paper locates the EUCROSS project within the field of studies on European identity, sharpens its theoretical underpinnings and outlines policy scenarios in line with its general hypotheses. In the broad literature on European identity, a basic distinction between speculative research on civilisational identities and empirical social science research on collective identifications must be drawn. Focusing on the latter, to which the EUCROSS project belongs, it is argued that there are two distinct logics underlying existing inquiries. These are grounded in models of collective identity formation that stress either cultural messages inscribed in discursive processes or practices situated in socio-spatial relations. They are called respectively, the ‘culturalist’ and the ‘structuralist’ models of identification. The first one considers identity as a direct outcome of the exposure to content-specific messages; the second, as an emerging property of socio-spatial interactions that are content-free of identity references. The EUCROSS project adopts and advances the second and less developed research tradition which studies the effects of transnational practices on European identification. This paper discusses the potential of this approach from a policy-oriented perspective. In this last respect, it is held that the culturalist model encourages the development of narratives ‘selling’ the Union to its citizens, while the structuralist model suggests a content-neutral emphasis on the facilitation of cross-border practices

Izabela Grabowska (2016). Movers and Stayers: Social Mobility, Migration and Skills. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 242 pp.

Are migrants ‘special individuals’? With the world migrant population expanding, ‘inter-national mobility’ has been highlighted as a significant cleavage that cuts across societies and cohorts, possibly shaping emerging inequalities and socio-cultural differences. Existing migration theory can, at best, account for the direction and (rough) size of population flows in aggregate terms, but it remains almost blind to the profile of who is going to move and who is, in fact, more likely to stay put in sending communities. Grabowska’s book addresses the issue openly with reference to the single largest nationality of mi-grants within Europe – Poles. She relies on a multi-plicity of quantitative and qualitative sources, navigating through data collected between 1996 and 2012. But first of all it grounds data analysis in a pre-eminent theoretical preoccupation: what makes some people move and others not

The global visa cost divide: How and why the price for travel permits varies worldwide

Abstract Visas are an important means for countries to regulate the potential access of non-nationals to their territory. Past datasets and quantitative research on visas have focused on visa waivers, ignoring the fact that visas, where demanded, can vary greatly by cost. This paper presents a novel dataset based on a manual collection of visa costs for travel between a global set of country pairs in seven different categories (tourist, work, student, family reunification, business, transit, and other). Our analyses reveal a strong global visa cost divide that exposes the injustice in the right to travel for people located in different areas of the world. Whereas Europeans usually hardly have to work at all for travel permits, visa costs often amount to several weeks of mean income in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The result is a fundamentally paradoxical situation: The richer a country, the less its citizens pay for visas to go abroad (both in absolute terms and relative to their income). Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood regression analyses reveal that a variety of factors influence the costs of visas between countries: reciprocal treatment, processing costs, historical-cultural ties, geographic proximity and regional, religious, economic, and political discrimination. This confirms the important role of visa costs as a tool for states to control population movements and simultaneously position themselves in international relations

Social mobility and spatial mobility

There is no subject more central to sociology than social mobility.1 The degree to which modern industrialized societies enable talented, ambitious or lucky individuals to move up in status, or conversely the extent to which they reproduce inherited inequalities or social hierarchies from one generation to the next, are questions that still dominate much of the empirical mainstream of the discipline under the general rubric of stratification. Some of the most longstanding and detailed debates in the mainstream have centred on attempts to measure and distinguish the patterns of social mobility of European societies in comparison with others (Ganzeboom et al. 1989; Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992; Treiman and Ganzeboom 2000; Breen 2004) (...)

Navigating the European space: physical and virtual forms of cross-border mobility among EU citizens

Drawing on earlier works in the EUCROSS series, this working paper proposes a comprehensive picture of physical and virtual mobility practices. Physical mobilities are characterised with regards to the time factor, thus distinguishing between high and low permanence practices (or ‘migrationlike’ and ‘tourism-like’ mobilities). Virtual mobilities may have personal or impersonal character (taking a ‘facebook-like’ or an ‘eBay-like’ form). A short discussion of each mobility type is additionally described with existing sources (mainly from Eurostat). This range of cross-border practices is then mapped within the European countries in which the EUCROSS survey was carried out (Germany, the UK, Denmark, Italy, Spain and Romania). Quite against conventional wisdom which suggests that EU citizens make modest use of their free movement rights and are rather immobile, we found that one in six Europeans of the EUCROSS sample has spent at least three months in another EU country in their lifetime. Furthermore, 51 per cent have visited another EU member state, even if for a short vacation, in the last two years. Europeans cross borders in a nonphysical sense as well (almost three quarters of our sample), when they connect online or on the phone with significant others who migrated or with friends they met during their physical trips. Finally, Europeans increasingly engage in cross-border transactions (almost one third of EUCROSS sample), shopping online but also transferring money abroad. All these practices are socially structured, their likelihood depending significantly on education, socioeconomic status, gender and age in differing degrees, as multivariate analyses detail. National contexts matter as well. Danes are most mobile when it comes to low permanence physical mobility and impersonal virtual moves. In turn, Britons and Romanians – possibly with different purposes – have definitely higher odds of having migrated, even in the wider sense of migration as ‘long-permanence mobility’ that we used. This reverberates on being more strongly networked with other persons abroad than any other nationality examined

Keine Grenzen, mehr Opportunitäten? Migration und soziale Mobilität innerhalb der EU

"Der Wunsch nach einem sozialen Aufstieg ist eine wesentliche Triebkraft für die geografische Mobilität von Menschen. Dennoch erfahren die meisten Migranten zunächst eine Abwärtsmobilität (Chiswick 1979; Evans/Kelley 1991; McAllister 1995; Bauer/Zimmermann 1999). Das ist schon deshalb häufig der Fall, weil die Nachfrage nach Arbeitskräften zumindest in der Vergangenheit in der Regel bei unqualifizierten Tätigkeiten am größten war. Auch sind Migranten in der Regel in den Einwanderungsländern aus einer Reihe von Gründen benachteiligt. Ihr Human- und Sozialkapital ist in dem neuen Kontext teilweise entwertet (Sprachkenntnisse, soziale Normen, Ausbildungsabschlüsse) und sie sind oft Diskriminierung beim Zugang zu Arbeitsplätzen, Wohnungen und Sozialleistungen ausgesetzt. Zunächst wirkt allein das starke Lohngefälle zwischen Herkunfts- und Zielland ausgleichend. Die Migranten können dadurch ein höheres Einkommen als in ihrem Heimatland erzielen. Allerdings wird häufig davon ausgegangen, dass es im Laufe der Zeit doch zu einem sozialen Aufstieg kommt - spätestens in der zweiten oder dritten Generation. Insgesamt kann man davon ausgehen, dass Migranten auch sozial mobiler sind als Nicht-Migranten (Bauer/Zimmermann 1999)." (Autorenreferat

Pioneers of European Integration :introduction

‘Free movement has become a defining feature of European society. This important study answers the question “who are these free movers?”. Using both quantitative and qualitative research evidence, it brings new perspectives to the sociology of European migration and integration, broadening the analysis from traditional labour migrants to various new kinds of spatial and social mobility in the continent.’ – Russell King, University of Sussex and Sussex Centre for Migration Research, UK Pioneers of European Integration offers the first systematic analysis of the small but symbolically potent number of Europeans who have chosen to live and work as foreigners in another member state of the EU. The free movement of EU citizens is the most visible sociological consequence of the remarkable process of European integration that has transformed the continent since the Second World War. Based on an original survey of 5000 people moving to and from the EU’s five largest countries, the book documents the demographic profile, migration choices, cultural adaptation, social mobility, political participation and media use of these pioneers of a transnational Europe, as well as opening a window to the new waves of intra-EU East–West migrations

Dissecting global air traffic data to discern different types and trends of transnational human mobility

Human mobility across national borders is a key phenomenon of our time. At the global scale, however, we still know relatively little about the structure and nature of such transnational movements. This study uses a large dataset on monthly air passenger traffic between 239 countries worldwide from 2010 to 2018 to gain new insights into (a) mobility trends over time and (b) types of mobility. A time series decomposition is used to extract a trend and a seasonal component. The trend component permits—at a higher level of granularity than previous sources—to examine the development of mobility between countries and to test how it is affected by policy and infrastructural changes, economic developments, and violent conflict. The seasonal component allows, by measuring the lag between initial and return motion, to discern different types of mobility, from tourism to seasonal work migration. Moreover, the exact shape of seasonal mobility patterns is extracted, allowing to identify regular mobility peaks and nadirs throughout the year. The result is a unique classification of trends and types of mobility for a global set of country pairs. A range of implications and possible applications are discussed. Open-Access-Publikationsfonds 2019 Document type: Articl