Unsettling events: Understanding migrants' responses to geopolitical transformative episodes through a life-course lens

Migration under the European Union’s (EU) Freedom of Movement is constructed as temporary and circular, implying that migrants respond to changing circumstances by returning home or moving elsewhere. This construction underpins predictions of an exodus of EU migrants from the United Kingdom (UK) in the context of Brexit. While migration data indicate an increase in outflows since the vote to leave the EU, the scale does not constitute a “Brexodus.” Moreover, EU migrants’ applications for UK citizenship have been increasing. The data, though, are not sufficiently detailed to reveal who is responding to Brexit in which way. This article aims to offer a deeper understanding of how migrants experience and respond to changing geopolitical episodes such as Brexit. Introducing the term “unsettling events,” we analyze data collected longitudinally, in the context of three moments of significant change: 2004 EU enlargement, 2008–09 economic recession, and Brexit. Examining our data, mainly on Polish migrants, through a life-course lens, our findings highlight the need to account for the situatedness of migrant experiences as lived in particular times (both personal and historical), places, and relationships. In so doing, we reveal various factors informing migrants’ experiences of and reactions to unsettling events and the ways in which their experiences and reactions potentially impact migration projects

Conditioning family-life at the intersection of migration and welfare: the implications for ‘Brexit families'

European Free Movement (EFM) was central to the referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. Under a ‘hard’ Brexit scenario, it is expected that EFM between the UK and the EU will cease, raising uncertainties about the rights of existing EU citizens in the UK and those of any future EU migrants. This article is concerned with the prospects for family rights linked to EFM, which, we argue impinge a range of families – so-called ‘Brexit families’ (Kofman, 2017) - beyond those who are EU-national families living in the UK. The article draws on policy analysis of developments in the conditionality attached to the family rights of non-EU migrants, EU migrants and UK citizens at the intersection of migration and welfare systems since 2010, to identify the potential trajectory of rights post-Brexit. While the findings highlight stratification in family rights between and within those three groups, the pattern is one in which class and gender divisions are prominent and have become more so over time as a result of the particular types of conditionality introduced. We conclude by arguing that with the cessation of EFM, those axes will also be central in the re-ordering of the rights of ‘Brexit families’

Brexit and beyond: Transforming mobility and immobility

This Guest Editorial introduces a special issue entitled Brexit and Beyond: Transforming Mobility and Immobility. The unfolding story of Brexit provided the backdrop to a series of events, organised in 2018 and 2019, which were the result of a collaboration between migration researchers in Warsaw and the UK, funded by the Noble Foundation’s Programme on Modern Poland. The largest event – held in association with IMISCOE – was an international conference, arising from which we invited authors to contribute papers to this special issue on the implications of Brexit for the mobility and immobility of EU citizens, particularly – but not exclusively – from Central and Eastern Europe, living in the UK. As we outline in this Editorial, collectively, the papers comprising the special issue address three key themes: everyday implications and ‘living with Brexit’; renegotiating the ‘intentional unpredictability’ status and settling down; and planning the future and the return to countries of origin. In addition, we include an interview with Professor Nira Yuval-Davis, based on the substance of her closing plenary at the conference – racialisation and bordering. Her insightful analysis remains salient to the current situation – in June 2020, as the UK enters the final months of the Brexit transition period – in the unexpected midst of a global pandemic and an imminent recession

EU integration in the (post)-migrant-crisis context: learning new integration modes?

This article explores the integration of the European Union (EU) as an institution after the 2015-2016 migrant crisis. Qualitative data from elite interviews in Brussels and policy analysis, in the framework of a bigger project about the impact of the migrant crisis on European integration, highlight the EU learning about new integration modes as a key theme following the crisis. The article focuses on this theme and argues that EU integration has been happening through intensive learning after the-migrant crisis, whereby the EU has been exploring a combination of certain integration modes: shaping the relationships with candidate countries by restraining from enlargement; shaping the relationships with (prospectively) exiting Member States by considering fuzziness at the borders; exploring differentiation among the existing Member States, possibly through promoting a two-tier EU, instead of universal deepening. A key contribution lies in applying the notion ‘learning’ to understanding EU integration modes specifically after the migrant crisis

Introduction to the special issue "Transnational care : Families confronting borders"

In this article, we introduce the key themes of our Special Issue on “Transnational care: families confronting borders”. Central to this collection is the question of how family relations and solidarities are impacted by the current scenario of closed borders and increasingly restrictive migration regimes. This question is examined more specifically through the lens of care dynamics within transnational families and their (re-)configurations across diverse contexts marked by “immobilizing regimes of migration”. We begin by presenting a brief overview of key concepts in the transnational families and caregiving literature that provides a foundation for the diverse cases explored in the articles, including refugees and asylum seekers in Germany and Finland, Polish facing Brexit in the UK, Latin American migrants transiting through Mexico, and restrictionist drifts in migration policies in Australia, Belgium and the UK. Drawing on this rich work, we identify two policy tools; namely temporality and exclusion, which appear to be particularly salient features of immobilizing regimes of migration that significantly influence care-related mobilities. We conclude with a discussion of how immobilizing regimes are putting transnational family solidarities in crisis, including in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, gripping the globe at the time of writing

BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION'S COHORT STUDY OF 2006 MEDICAL GRADUATES : LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF CAREER TRAJECTORIES

https://www.bma.org.uk/news/2017/september/women-more-likely-to-switch-career https://www.bma.org.uk/collective-voice/policy-and-research/education-training-and-workforce/cohort-stud

Examining transnational care circulation trajectories within immobilizing regimes of migration : implications for proximate care

In this paper we argue that the current political context of restrictionist migration policies is dramatically affecting people’s capacity to cross borders to engage in proximate care with their relatives, which is a central, yet often overlooked, feature of transnational care practices. We examine how the wider context of temporality, restrictive mobility, and heightened uncertainty about the future affect people’s ability to be mobile and to move back and forth for caregiving. In examining the wellbeing effects of such restrictions, we highlight their variable impact depending on factors such as socio-economic positioning, life-course stage and health. The first sections of the paper present the care circulation framework and the particular meaning and function of proximate forms of care, as well as the main categories of care-related mobility that support this. We illustrate the main dynamics and challenges faced by transnational family members who engage in these care-related mobilities, through three vignettes involving care circulation between India and the UK, China and Australia, and Morocco and Belgium. In the final section, we discuss our vignettes in relation to the political, physical, social and time dimensions of current regimes of mobility that impact on care-related mobilities. We argue that the regimes of mobility that currently govern care-related mobilities are best understood as ‘immobilizing’ regimes with important and undervalued implications for ontological security and wellbeing

Household composition across the new Europe: Where do the new Member States fit in?

In this paper we present indicators of household structure for 26 of the 27 countries of the post-enlargement European Union. As well as broad indicators of household type, we present statistics on single-person and extended-family households, and on the households of children and older people. Our main aim is to assess the extent to which household structure differs between the "old" and "new" Member States of the European Union. We find that most of the Eastern European countries may be thought of as lying on the same North-North-Western-Southern continuum defined for the "old" EU Member States, and constituting an "extreme form" of the Southern European model of living arrangements, which we term the "Eastern" model. However, the Baltic states do not fit easily onto this continuum

Introduction

The post-2014 'migrant crisis' focusing mainly on the European Union`s southeast periphery where the so called Balkan Route1 exists, has demonstrated that the degree of integration and solidarity among EU members is not as deep and complete as expected. Attempts to outsource the crisis to its periphery impacted also on the relationship of the Union with EU candidate countries. The lack of a common EU policy and reluctance to share sovereignty became evident among EU members from early on. This has in turn led to a demise in the credibility of the EU, its fundamental principles like solidarity among its member states and protection of human rights, as well as, its institutions. The Erasmus+ Jean Monnet project MIGRATE CTRL + Enter Europe – Jean Monnet Migrant Crisis Network2 looks into the developments in the Balkan Route pre and post the EU-Turkey Statement and the responses by the individual countries inside this framework