SPATIAL MOBILITY, SOCIAL MOBILITY, AND PROFESSIONAL CAREERS OF MIGRANTS: AIMS, PROBLEMS AND RESEARCH APPROACHES

Abstract

The social and geographical mobility, including international migration, interlink and interplay but are approached by different research methods. This article makes an effort to combine these approaches of researching mobility. The studies on social and occupational mobility of migrants may relate to, at least, three dimensions: (1) between sending and receiving countries (a comparison of the pre-departure and during migration socio-occupational positions of migrants); (2) in the receiving country (socio-occupational positions of migrants are compared to those of natives); (3) in the sending country (a comparison of the pre-on-post migration socio-occupational positions of migrants). The article considers the third approach. First part relates to the critical analysis of various approaches of researching social mobility and international mobility. In the following, as based on the nearly two decades of studies of Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw, various options of analyses of occupational careers of international migrants have been presented. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches have been taken into account in this article. Therefore, this article made possible an analysis of pros and cons of both approaches and brought an evidence that they complement each other while studying occupational careers of migrants