Individualisation of migration from the East? Comparison of different socio-demographic groups and their migration intentions

Recent studies on Eastern European migration argue that moving for self-development reasons is becoming increasingly common among this group. Furthermore, it is suggested that migration from the East is becoming individualised and less dependent on social surroundings. Nevertheless, most such results rely on interviews conducted among certain social groups, such as the young and highly skilled. Hence, the comparison between different social groups and their motivations is rarely provided and, therefore, the claims about increased individualisation might be premature. This article uses the Estonian Household Module Survey, including responses from 620 Estonians intending to migrate, to evaluate if migration flows are indeed becoming more individualised and less dependent on social surroundings. Using cluster analysis, three different groups -self-development, economic and life quality migrants- are formed, which are then tested using regression analysis to check for the influence of socio-demographic variables. The article concludes that socio-demographic variables such as gender, age, ethnicity, family status and socio-economic status are still relevant for migration intentions. Indeed, a new group of Eastern European migrants, mainly oriented towards self-development, is emerging; however, it is small and consists mostly of young, Estonian-speaking females. The results complicate the notions of free mobility and liquid migration from Eastern Europe and illustrate that there is a need to pay attention to the increasing group differences in these societie

Individualisation of Migration from the East? Comparison of Different Socio-Demographic Groups and their Migration Intentions

Recent studies on Eastern European migration argue that moving for self-development reasons is becoming increasingly common among this group. Furthermore, it is suggested that migration from the East is becoming individualised and less dependent on social surroundings. Nevertheless, most such results rely on interviews conducted among certain social groups, such as the young and highly skilled. Hence, the comparison between different social groups and their motivations is rarely provided and, therefore, the claims about increased individualisation might be premature. This article uses the Estonian Household Module Survey, including responses from 620 Estonians intending to migrate, to evaluate if migration flows are indeed becoming more individualised and less dependent on social surroundings. Using cluster analysis, three different groups — self-development, economic and life quality migrants — are formed, which are then tested using regression analysis to check for the influence of socio-demographic variables. The article concludes that socio-demographic variables such as gender, age, ethnicity, family status and socio-economic status are still relevant for migration intentions. Indeed, a new group of Eastern European migrants, mainly oriented towards self-development, is emerging; however, it is small and consists mostly of young, Estonian-speaking females. The results complicate the notions of free mobility and liquid migration from Eastern Europe and illustrate that there is a need to pay attention to the increasing group differences in these societie

Young Baltic graduates living and working in London: from peripheral region to escalator region in Europe

This paper examines recent migration from three little-studied EU countries, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, focusing on young, early-career graduates who move to London. It looks at how these young migrants explain the reasons for their move, their work and living experiences in London, and their plans for the future, based on 78 interviews with individual migrants. The wide-ranging theoretical context draws on notions of core-periphery, youth transitions, ‘easy’ transnationalism, ‘liquid’ migration, and London as an ‘escalator’ region for career development. Also relevant in shaping these migration flows are EU accession in 2004 and the recent financial crisis. Findings indicate that these highly educated young adults from the EU’s north-eastern periphery migrate for a combination of economic, career, lifestyle and personal-development reasons. They are ambivalent about their futures and when, and whether, they will return-migrate

Welfare deservingness for migrants: Does the Welfare State model matter?

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Cogitatio. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v10i1.4818This article draws on the idea that welfare systems and institutions are based on normative assumptions about justice, solidarity, and responsibility. Even though the literature on welfare deservingness has highlighted the connection between ideas of solidarity and the support to, for instance, people with different ethnic backgrounds, there is very little research on the interconnections of different welfare state models and ideas on how migration should be governed. This article suggests that there is a link between the welfare state models suggested by Esping‐Anderssen and different discourses on migrant welfare deservingness. The article explores the interlinkages of three welfare state models—liberal, socialdemocratic, and continental‐corporative—and four discourses on welfare deservingness of migrants in respect to social welfare—labourist, ethno‐cultural, residential, and welfarist (see Carmel & Sojka, 2020). It is suggested that the normative foundations embedded in different welfare systems lead to dissimilar ways of approaching migrants and migration.Research for this article is based on and was funded by the NORFACE Welfare State Futures programme (grant number 462–74‐731). The research was developed in the TRANSWEL project Mobile Welfare in a Transnational Europe led by Prof. Anna Amelina. The interviews were collected during Work Package 1, led by Dr. Emma Carmel, and Work Package 3, led by Prof. Ann Runfors. We are grateful to all policy experts who participated in our research, for their time and consideration in sharing their views and experiences with us.Published onlin

Kõrgtundliku südamespetsiifilise troponiini suurenenud väärtuste prognostiline tähendus rindkere tömptrauma korral

Eesti Arst 2020; 99(11):707 &nbsp

From peripheral region to escalator region in Europe: young Baltic graduates in London

This paper examines recent migration from three little-studied European Union (EU) countries, the Baltic states, focusing on early-career graduates who move to London. It looks at how these young migrants explain the reasons for their move, their work and living experiences in London, and their plans for the future, based on 78 interviews with individual migrants. A key objective of this paper is to rejuvenate the core–periphery structural framework through the theoretical lens of London as an ‘escalator’ region for career development. We add a necessary nuance on how the time dimension is crucial in understanding how an escalator region functions – both in terms of macro-events such as EU enlargement or economic crisis, and for life-course events such as career advancement or family formation. Our findings indicate that these educated young adults from the EU’s north-eastern periphery migrate for a combination of economic, career, lifestyle and personal-development reasons. They are ambivalent about their futures and when, and whether, they will return-migrate

Labor Unions in Estonia Around the Global Financial Crisis : Defending Workers and Europeanizing Estonia

The global financial crisis in Estonia brought to the forefront the dominant ideologies characterizing the country’s political culture in the post-communist era: neoliberalism and Europeanizing the country’s national identity. The austerity measures passed by the government to deal with the crisis are expressions of these ideologies and underline the degree of harm that the state was willing to deal on the population in order to 'reach Europe'. However, while similar austerity approaches were adopted by of other European countries, the Estonian case is particular in that it was not met with significant public protest, including by labor unions. Labor unions in Estonia and other post-communist countries have in previous literature been conceptualized as shaped by historical legacies of communism and post-communism, both of which are seen as having led unions to align with the market- liberal, Europeanization-oriented politico-economic ideologies that govern their countries, rather than to develop into worker- defending institutions. As a result of these legacies, post-communist labor unions are also seen as eschewing politicized identities, instead focusing on 'narrow' economic questions. Yet with more than two decades having passed since the collapse of communism, the current relevance of historical legacies among labor unions should be questioned. Furthermore, when analyzing this, attention should be brought to the particularities of the cultural and politico-economic environments of the nation-states to which unions belong, as this provides the possibility of a more thorough understanding of the degree to which post-communist labor unions align with their countries’ hegemonic political cultures. This thesis sought to understand the extent to which the dominant Estonian labor union confederation, the Estonian Trade Union Confederation (Eesti Ametiühingute Keskliit, EAKL), identifies with the market-liberal and Europeanization ideologies of post- communist Estonian political culture around the period of the global financial crisis. Estonian political culture is conceptualized as a hegemonic project defined by these ideologies, and labor unions as actors within this project. The research employed the EAKL’s newsletters from 2006 to 2011 and conducted a content analysis of this data using classification analysis and Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévénot’s justification theory. It was hypothesized that the EAKL does not identify with the country’s market-liberal economic policy, but does support the goal of Europeanizing the country’s national identity, as well as that the union’s opposition to market-liberalism and its identification with the Europeanization ideology both peaked during the financial crisis, with its anti- market-liberal stance also retaining its strength after the crisis. The research findings showed some support to these hypotheses: the EAKL was found to oppose market-liberalism and to instead have a clear worker-defending identity, yet Europeanizing the country’s national identity remains an important goal for the union. Furthermore, while the union’s support for Europeanization was indeed found to have increased during the financial crisis, the research findings as to the relative strength of the union’s anti- market-liberal stance during and after the financial crisis as compared to the period before the crisis remained inconclusive

Cultural differences in spa tourism and the expectations of Finnish spa goers

Spa Tourism is one of the many branches of the fast growing and continuously developing Health and Wellness Tourism. The aim of the present bachelor’s thesis was to explore the consumption habits and the customers’ wishes regarding the Finnish Spa Tourism through a customer survey and to discuss the differences in spa tourism in different regions. The wishes for a future spa experience formed a part of the customer survey and future insights of the industry in general are discussed in the work as well. In order to understand the needs and the differences in spa tourism in different countries the definition of health tourism is discussed first as well as all of its subsectors and the history of the industry. The customer survey was part of an international spa project called ILIS which was conducted in all five partner countries. In Finland, the survey was conducted 15 June–4 August 2009 at the spa hotel Holiday Club Caribia. The survey consisted of multiple choice questions, open questions and hybrid questions in the survey. However, most of the questions were based on Likert’s scale on a scale from 1 (very important) to 4 or 5 (no significance). The results of the survey indicate that the reasons why Finns choose a spa are: hospitable service as well as pleasantness of the public spa areas. The Finnish respondents’ top reasons for visiting spas according to this survey are: spending time with the family and friends and to get mentally refreshed. Other main reasons indicated by the survey such as feeling stressed and looking for relaxation were one of the main reasons in another international survey as well. According to the respondents, the strengths of the spa hotel Holiday Club Caribia are: pool facilities, accessibility by car, hospitable service and courtesy of the staff. The majority of the development suggestions were related to the rooms, price level and entertainment and cultural services. The Finnish spa offering differs from the international offering in some aspects. There are still many cultural differences although the industry is getting ever more global and partly homogeneous. The purpose of the Finnish spa tourism is still leisure when elsewhere it is mainly health reasons and increasingly mental reasons. Those reasons however, according to this survey, exist in Finland, too. Eventhough the typical Finnish commercial spas will continue to be important especially for the Finnish families and, being different from the spas in their home countries, they are appealing to many foreign customers, there seems to be a greater need for spas contributing to well-being and healthiness in Finland with peacefulness, greenness, spacious and luxurious facilities, diverse and healthy food services, treatments and activities.Tämän opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena oli selvittää suomalaisten kylpyläkävijöiden käyttäytymistä ja toiveita asiakaskyselyn avulla ja verrata kylpyläkulttuuria eri maiden välillä. Kylpylämatkailu on osa laaja-alaista ja alati kasvavaa ja kehittyvää terveysmatkailua. Jotta kylpylämatkailua voitaisiin tarkastella, on tässä opinnäytetyössä tarkasteltu aluksi käsitettä terveysmatkailu, sen alakäsitteitä, historiaa ja alan eroja eri kulttuureissa. Osa asiakaskyselyä oli myös selvittää toiveet tulevaisuuden kylpyläkokemuksesta ja kylpylämatkailun tulevaisuuden suunnat käsitellään tässä työssä myös yleisellä tasolla. Asiakaskysely oli osa kansainvälistä ILIS-kylpyläprojektia ja se suoritettiin 15.6–4.8.2009 kylpylähotelli Holiday Club Caribiassa. Kyselyssä käytettiin enimmäkeen Likertin asteikkoa jossa kyselyn väittämät arvioitiin asteikoilla 1–5 tai 1–4 tärkeämmästä merkityksettömään. Kyselyssä oli myös monivalinta- sekä avoimia kysymyksiä. Kyselyssä selvisi että tärkeimmät valintakriteerit kylpylöiden osalta ovat ystävällinen palvelu ja yleisten kylpylätilojen viihtyvyys. Suomalaisten tärkeimmät syyt mennä kylpylään tämän tutkimuksen mukaan ovat viettää aikaa perheen ja ystävien kesken sekä virkistyä henkisesti. Muut yleisimmät syyt kuten stressin lievittäminen ja hemmottelu olivat yleisimmät syyt kylpylävierailuihin myös erään kansainvälisen tutkimuksen mukaan. Kylpylähotelli Holiday Club Caribian vahvuuksia ovat vastaajien mukaan allastilat, hyvä saavutettavuus autolla sekä ystävällinen ja kohtelias henkilökunta. Huoneen, hinta-tason sekä viihde- ja kulttuuripalveluiden osalta toivottiin kehittämistä. Suomalainen kylpylätarjonta ei kaikilta osin vastaa kansainvälistä tarjontaa. Kylpylämatkailussa on yhä paljon kulttuurieroja vaikka ala on yhä kansainvälisempää ja osittain yhtenäisempääkin. Suomessa kylpylämatkailun tarkoitus on edelleen huvi, vaikka muualla maailmassa kylpylöissä käydään enemmänkin terveydellisistä syistä ja paino on siirtynyt enenevissä määrin myös henkisiin syihin, mikä tämän tutkimuksen mukaan tosin näkyisi myös Suomessa. Vaikka Suomelle tyypilliset niin sanotusti viihteelliset kylpylät ovat tärkeitä suomalaisille ja houkuttelevia ulkomaalaisten silmin erikoisuutensa vuoksi, ovat suomalaiset kasvavassa määrin kiinnostuneita hyvinvointiin ja terveyteen painottavista kylpylöistä. Oleellisina osina tällaisissa kylpylöissä pidetään rauhallisuutta, vehreyttä, tilavia ja ylellisiä tiloja, monipuolisia ja terveellisiä ruokapalveluita sekä hoitoja ja aktiviteettejä

Reconfiguring Nation and Diaspora: Self-Identifying Estonians in Estonia as a Diaspora

Includes photographs, bibliographyI will present the main reasons why this research is important. First, it helps to contest the marriage between nation and state; second, it offers new ways for understanding borderland and diaspora space; third, it offers an overview of how nonnational spaces inside the institutional borders of states are being created; fourth, it helps to bring together literature about diaspora and borderlands; and lastly it offers insights on people's identities who inhabit these spaces. My project investigates how groups grapple with and/or makes sense of their identities; how dialogues between dominant understandings and resistance identity take place, how diasporic identity and nationalism can be seen in new ways