Abstract This study examines the deskilling experiences of skilled, racialized immigrants who immigrated to Canada through the Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) program and resided in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. Skilled immigrants, particularly racialized immigrants, continue to face barriers in the Canadian labour market, resulting in significant deskilling, which has negative implications for the country’s economy and skilled immigrants. This mixed-methods study drew on a quantitative survey (n = 111) and qualitative focus group discussions (n = 18) to examine the complex dynamics contributing to deskilling. Multiple linear regression was used to analyze the quantitative data, and thematic analysis was used for the qualitative data. The quantitative results revealed that deskilling was significantly associated with the non-recognition of foreign credentials, upgrading education in Canada, bridging social capital, and having a master’s degree as their academic qualification. The qualitative findings revealed three overarching themes: (a) the illusory nature of meritocracy in employment, (b) deficiencies in social and community resources, and (c) gendered pathways to deskilling. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the systemic and gendered barriers faced by skilled racialized immigrants in British Columbia’s labour market. It emphasizes the importance of revisiting current immigration policies to better align with labour market realities and address these inequalities.
Abstract Migrants traverse not only territorial spaces but also territorialising temporalities. Both migrants and state actors deploy temporal strategies to shape migrants’ relationships to bounded places, underscoring the need for deeper theoretical and empirical attention to migration’s temporal dimension. From this perspective, immigrant identity politics mediates the relationship between migrants’ time and the historical temporalities of host territories, reconfiguring socio-economic and political boundaries between immigrants and citizens. This article examines the temporal politics of local governance in Myanmar–China migration, focusing on a Chinese border city. It proposes a tripartite analytical model—policy horizons, value regimes, and immigration infrastructure—to reveal how time structures immigrant–citizen distinctions. Central to this dynamic is the juridical limbo surrounding Myanmar migrants’ ambiguous (il)legality, which fuels policy uncertainty, institutional fragmentation, and weak commitment to immigrant incorporation. Consequently, local governance prioritises flexible, temporary immigration, sustaining discriminatory wage-labour regimes and underdeveloped facilitation infrastructure. This temporalising marginalisation renders Myanmar immigrants’ presence non-reproductive of local socio-political life. While acknowledging the positive reciprocity between temporary immigration and local economic development, the article calls for institutional interventions that resolve the juridical limbo to enable a more inclusive and resilient governance framework. Such a framework would entail: (1) a historically grounded policy horizon; (2) fair and competitive wage-labour arrangements; and (3) robust institutional infrastructure integrating immigrant incorporation as a core function. Achieving this requires coordinated action across functional agencies and administrative scales, for synchronising immigrants’ individual temporalities with the territorialised chronologies of the host society. Clinical trial number Not applicable.
Abstract While studies on mixed-citizenship couples predominantly focus on challenges and problems the families face because of immigration control, the emotional strategies of couples resisting exclusion remain untheorised. To address this gap, we propose an analytical approach that combines the frameworks of ‘doing family’ and ‘emotional geographies’ through the notion of ‘scale’. Our empirical data from Finland focuses on two types of couple and their networks: those in which a foreign partner originating from outside Europe has sought asylum, and those who in the majority have migrated for study or family reasons. Our analysis shows how these mixed-citizen couples have developed various coping strategies and forms of resistance focused on three intertwined and mutually reinforcing geographical scales: (trans)national, local, and intimate. Our findings show how integrating doing family and emotional geographies reveals the ways in which state power operates across scales to racialise belonging. By applying various emotionally, spatially and temporally informed strategies in restrictive contexts defined by immigration control, couples are ‘doing’ their families through narratives, silencing and various everyday practices.
Abstract Anthropological literature on future-making has highlighted the diversity of practices migrants’ can enact to realise their possible future or future-orientated projects. While such an approach has been instrumental in thinking about how futures can be collectively enacted, less interest has been given to how they might correspond to containment logics. This paper examines the collectivist forms of future-making practices and how they correspond to or resist containment logics. By tracing the life history of Lam a South Sudanese refugee, the paper explores the different practices of future-making they employ prior to and during the coronavirus pandemic. Based on twelve months of ethnographic research in Kakuma Refugee Camp Kenya and utilizing online ethnographic methods during the coronavirus pandemic, I demonstrate how combining research methods helped expose the multiple coexisting logics of containment active in Kakuma Refugee Camp. Doing so, this paper contributes to debates on future-making by illustrating its collectivist formations practiced with networks of kin and friends or used to imagine wider national futures of a state. Moreover, the paper outlines how humanitarian and state actors who enforced containment draw upon different power-inflected logics to guide their practices and relations with people on the move.
Abstract The relationship between feminist movements and racialised migrant women in Europe remains marred by the continued marginalisation of migrant women’s political claims in feminist struggles, despite the circulation of intersectional discourses within academic and activist circles. This article documents important spaces of experimentation which Black activists are creating within the Italian feminist movement to give voice to racialised migrant women without the mediating intervention of white feminists. Rooted in an understanding of the margins as a site of resistance, such efforts engage in practices of refusal and talking back to reclaim a Black epistemic identity which powerfully interpellates Italian institutions and feminist activists. Black migrant women demand the recognition not only of their inherent capacity to speak, act, decide, but also of their ability to articulate a political analysis and a political project to challenge the intersectional discrimination and violence they face. Their struggle centres work as a site of compounding gendered and racialised exploitation, thus carrying the potential to expand feminist thinking and action on reproductive labour, labour participation and equal pay.
The extent of educational homogamy has important consequences for social inequalities and social cohesion. However, little is known about current trends, cross-national differences, and the drivers of educational homogamy in Europe. This study aims to fill this gap by (a) describing trends in absolute educational homogamy (i.e., the share of similarly educated partners) and relative educational homogamy (i.e., homogamy corrected for the distribution of spouses’ education) for European countries; and (b) examining the association between a population’s educational composition and the level of absolute and relative educational homogamy. Given the large changes in the educational composition of European populations and the presumed consequences for absolute and relative educational homogamy, this focus on educational composition is warranted. Our aggregate-level regression analyses covering 36 countries and five birth cohorts (1940-1989) from the European Social Survey show that absolute and relative educational homogamy has not changed. However, this obscures variation by education group and country. We find that the extent of absolute educational homogamy in a country cohort is strongly associated with educational composition and observe statistical effects of educational expansion (positive for the higher educated), educational heterogeneity (negative), educational gender symmetry (positive), educational income inequality (positive), and educational reproduction (positive). Relative educational homogamy is only weakly associated with a population’s educational composition, and its effects are confined to gender symmetry (positive) and educational reproduction (positive). Our findings suggest that changes in educational composition in Europe affect educational homogamy in various directions and indicate that these effects come from structural opportunities rather than changing preferences for educational homogamy.
* This article belongs to a special issue on “Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences”.
Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology, City population. Including children in cities, immigration
Yusfiah Yasmin, Mujad Didien Afandi, Novi Rahmania Aquariza
et al.
English is a language that is needed in this day and age. Therefore, exposure is very necessary for students so that they are familiar with it for their future preparations. This research was conducted to determine the exposure of English students at Mts Bilingual Pucang to the acquisition of new vocabulary. Qualitative descriptive is the research method used in this research. The aim of this research is to describe exposure to English in an English-speaking environment on vocabulary acquisition. This research uses several instruments to collect data such as observation sheets to observe activities at school, questionnaires and interviews to determine students' perceptions of being in an English-speaking environment. The results of this research are based on observation data where students can acquire new vocabulary because they receive continuous exposure to English and are supported by an immersive environment. In addition, students are motivated to use English at school because of the positive impact they get, so that students enjoy the English-speaking environment.
Education, City population. Including children in cities, immigration
Syahnur Rahman, Fattah Hanurawan , Hetti Rahmawati
et al.
Abstract
In the world of education, teacher well-being and happiness play a vital role in creating an effective and positive learning environment for students. Teachers who experience a deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment in their professional duties are more likely to be motivated, engaged, and emotionally invested in the academic growth and success of their students. This study aims to determine the welfare of honorary teachers in a remote area, namely Talango Elementary School, Sumenep. This study uses a phenomenological approach with participants study This are six honorary teachers from S ekolah Dasar Negeri 1 Talango Sumenep. Eudaimonia and teacher happiness are two important aspects that influence job satisfaction and overall well-being in the field of education. There are several factors that contribute to teacher happiness. Teacher job happiness is very important in the successful implementation of educational reform and has a significant impact on their work performance, commitment, and motivation. Teachers who are satisfied and happy in their jobs are more likely to create positive and effective learning experiences for their students. Teachers in remote areas have close relationships with their students, which is beneficial for teacher well-being. Future research can further explore empirical evidence to support the proposed relationship between teacher well-being and student well-being
Education, City population. Including children in cities, immigration
A 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southeast Türkiye near the Syrian border on 06 February 2023 at 4:17am local time, with its epicentre near Nurdağı and Gaziantep in Gaziantep Province. [1] A second earthquake of 7.7 magnitude subsequently struck the same region 100 km to the north of the first epicentre later the same day. [2] Over 11,000 aftershocks have since been recorded in the region, and over 191,800 buildings (around 13.8% of those assessed) have collapsed, been heavily damaged, or been otherwise rendered inhabitable and in urgent need of demolition. [3] Tragically, over 1,400 deaths have been reported in the Government-controlled areas of Syria (a substantially larger number is predicted to have been sustained in territories controlled by other actors), [2] and over 45,000 deaths and 115,000 injuries have been reported in Türkiye. [3] An estimated 9.1 million people have been directly affected by the earthquakes, including 3.2–3.8 million who have been displaced due to the resulting loss of suitable shelter, disruption to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities, and deficiencies in food security, along with interruptions to the provision of health services, education and livelihoods. [3] In the context of Türkiye, although 42,000 Syrian refugees have re-entered Syria, [3] the majority of displaced individuals remain within Türkiye as internally-displaced people (IDP). While 1.0–1.3 million have left their original province by their own means, and a further 617,600 IDP now shelter across Türkiye as government-coordinated evacuees, 1.6 million IDP are displaced within their original province and temporarily reside in government-coordinated displacement sites (constituting tent/container cities and emergency shelters in public buildings), informal/makeshift settlements, or private solutions. [3] Some 484 government-coordinated tent/container cities, which collectively house 1.4 million IDP, have been established across 11 affected provinces, while 85,000 IDP reside in government-coordinated community shelters such as universities and dormitories. [3] Substantial attention has rightly been focused on the living conditions within these temporary settlements which, in addition to the stresses exerted by the natural disaster, pose substantial challenges to the physical and mental health, [4] protection and wellbeing of those they contain, [5] particularly children and adolescents. [6] Overcrowded tents, containers and community shelters located within densely populated displacement sites, and inadequate provision of suitable WASH facilities, increase the likelihood of communicable disease outbreaks, [7] while accessible health facilities are often suboptimal, [3] and the need for safe spaces, such as gender-segregated facilities designed to minimise child protection and gender-based violence risks, has been frequently identified. [3] However, the formal concentration of IDP into such centralised sites enables the mass provision of urgently needed shelter, food security and heating fuel for hundreds of thousands of displaced individuals, and serves to protect them from the immediate consequences of the disaster, including exposure to severe winter weather conditions. The vast majority of formal displacement sites have been established within urban areas, due to their proximity to and accessibility for large populations of affected people. In contrast, the sparsely populated rural and remote areas of affected provinces, coupled with the precarious and earthquake-damaged transport infrastructure that supplies them, has allowed the construction of very few formal displacement sites within these areas. Concurrently, those residing in the country’s rural and remote areas experience both the highest rates of poverty (estimated to be around 34.6%) [8] and the poorest health outcomes (increasingly those due to non-communicable diseases) [9] across Türkiye. Accordingly, many such people who have been affected by the earthquakes lack the means to relocate to formal displacement sites, and are often unwilling to abandon their damaged property. [3] Consequently, they are denied access to the vital provisions that are exclusively distributed at these centralised points. As such, it is those individuals who reside in rural and remote areas of provinces affected by the earthquakes – particularly those who have been unable to relocate to formal displacement sites in urbanised settlements – that bear the greatest burden of disease and associated health needs, rather than those who inhabit such sites. Paradoxically, it is this same group to which the provision of shelter, food security and healthcare is most challenging and least accessible, thereby creating a variant of the inverse care law in the context of natural disaster. [10] The tragic unfairness of this situation should be considered utterly reprehensible by the public health, humanitarian, and clinical healthcare communities worldwide. The steepness of the existing social gradient in Türkiye, and its powerful influence on fundamental health outcomes, has been markedly steepened by the effects of the earthquakes. Accordingly, urgent, coordinated, multiagency action is required to secure the delivery of essential humanitarian components – including high quality health care – to the people of Türkiye who need it most.
Since 1991, Albania has become a fertile terrain for the study of migration and its relationship to development. One aspect of the country’s intense and diverse experience of emigration which has received less attention is the movement of its students into higher education abroad. To what extent does this student emigration constitute a potential brain drain? We answer this question via a mixed-method research endeavour consisting of an online survey (N=651) of Albanian students enrolled in foreign universities and follow-up in-depth interviews (N=21) with a sample of the survey respondents. The survey and interviews were carried out in 2019–2020. The survey collected data on students’ social and academic background, reasons for going abroad to study, life in the host country, attitudes towards returning to Albania and perceived barriers to return. Half of the respondents do not intend to return immediately after graduating. The remainder have a more open or uncertain mindset, including 30 per cent who say they will return only after a period spent working or doing further studies abroad. Those who intend to return, either sooner or later, do so out of a combination of family ties, nostalgia and wanting to ‘give something back’ to their home country. However, the barriers to return are perceived as formidable: low pay, lack of good jobs, corruption and a general feeling that ‘there is no future’ in Albania. The scale of loss of young brains is thus potentially considerable and a major policy concern for the future of the country.
Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration, City population. Including children in cities, immigration
This is the Editorial on the Special Issue "Family Research and Demographic Analysis – New Insights from the German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA)".
Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology, City population. Including children in cities, immigration
Abstract This paper examines migrant workers’ subjective views of their rights and wellbeing in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar. Since the announcement of the World Cup, Qatar has been roundly criticized for the living and working conditions of the low-wage migrant workers responsible for building the country’s social and economic infrastructure. These critiques, however, either emphasize individual migrant experiences of mistreatment or the kafala migration regime that regulates migration and employment. Few quantitative and representative studies ask migrants how they understand and experience their rights and wellbeing, or how these views have changed as the country has embarked on key labor law reforms in response to international pressure. Therefore, we present results from a large-scale, nationally representative survey of low-wage migrant workers conducted in labor accommodations over four years, supplemented by a separate phone survey. The analysis emphasizes the views of migrants—including satisfaction with rights, awareness of rights, fulfillment of contracts, and quality of life—which are critical to successful policy implementation. We examine the objective factors that best explain these views and study the interaction between subjective and objective wellbeing dimensions. The results inform scholarly understandings of the living and working conditions of migrants and provide essential context for questions surrounding migrant rights and global justice in temporary labor migration regimes.
In 2015 and 2016, the enormous increase in asylum seekers travelling along the Balkan Route confronted the Member States of the European Union with an exceptional pressure on national asylum systems. Since then academic literature has revealed a reappraisal of the Common European Asylum System at regulative and policy implementation level, notably regarding the fair distribution of asylum seekers across Member States and regions. Yet we know very little about the locational choices of forced migrants or how those choices evolved and transformed during their journey.
In this paper, we aim to shed light on those decision-making processes and (individual, subjective) locational choices based on the aspiration-ability model, drawing from a series of qualitative interviews with migrants held in Luxembourg and Germany in the context of the H2020 project CEASEVAL. We focus on the migrants’ journeys to their actual recipient countries, highlighting mobility trajectories from the moment of first departure and on the process of decision-making regarding their choice of location. Then, we examine further mobility aspirations, which may lead to secondary mobility within or out of the country of residence. In the concluding section, we discuss the consequences of our findings for migration and asylum politics against the background of the “autonomy of migration” framework.
* This article belongs to a special issue on "Refugee Migration to Europe – Challenges and Potentials for Cities and Regions".
Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology, City population. Including children in cities, immigration
Chikezirim C. Nwoke, Jennifer Becker, Sofiya Popovych
et al.
Within bilateral and multilateral funding circles, there has been a strong and growing emphasis on the importance of understanding and responding to gender inequalities in humanitarian settings. However, given the often-short funding cycles, among other operational challenges, there is limited scope to incorporate interventions that address the root causes and social norms underpinning gender inequalities, or other gender transformative interventions. In the context of the decade-long crisis in the Lake Chad Basin, fuelled by incursions from non-state armed groups (NSAGs), including Boko Haram, and the resultant protracted and chronic humanitarian crisis, this article examines Save the Children’s child nutrition programmes in northeast Nigeria. Taking an ethnographic approach focused on volunteer-driven peer support groups (mother-to-mother and father-to-father) that aim to increase knowledge on best practices for infant and child nutrition, we investigate whether these activities are transforming societal gender norms. While evidence shows an improved understanding and awareness of gender-positive roles by both men and women, restrictive gender norms remain prevalent, including among lead volunteers. We suggest the possibility of longer term shifts in power dynamics in the home and society at large as well as suggest how humanitarian response can better integrate gender transformative programming.
City population. Including children in cities, immigration
Abstract In this paper, we bring together two concepts that we have been developing separately over recent years, to challenge linear and simplistic notions of migrant integration, depict multi-dimensional processes of settling and changeability over time. The concept of embedding has been proposed to capture dynamism beyond the more static notion of Granovetter’s embeddedness. The concept explores the contexts and contingencies of where and how migrants establish different degrees of attachment in different places and through different social relationships. Also the concept of anchoring has been developed to offer an antireductionist processual and multi-dimensional understanding of migrant adaptation and settling, highlighting the issues of security and stability. In this paper, using longitudinal research, we explore for the first time how bringing our two concepts together may offer additional insights and understandings of migrants’ experiences of and responses to the uncertainties and complexities of contemporary society, exacerbated by Brexit.
CHILDLINE is a non-profit national 24-h toll-free emergency telephone service provided across India for children who need care, emergency help and rehabilitation to homeless children. Children or adult, anyone can dial the CHILDLINE toll-free number ‘1098’ to access the emergency services. It uses the telephone as a medium to interact with children and counselling over by the phone to link children who need help and other rehabilitation programmes. Though CHILDLINE works for all children across the country, there are some special areas where CHILDLINE focuses more, especially the vulnerable ones which include street children; child labour; domestic girl workers; abused children in family and institutions including physically, mentally and sexually abused children; children who need emotional support and guidance, children sex workers; child trafficking; missing children; runaway children; differently able children, children in conflict with the law; mentally challenged children, HIV/AIDS-affected children; children conflicted in war; children affected by disasters; child refugee; children whose family is in crisis. CHILDLINE reaches out or helps 0–18-year-old children. In extreme emergencies, involving young adults up to 25 years of age, it provides help and care. The present study is mainly based on descriptive analysis of data collected through field-based research with a sample size of 5,290 participants. The data has been collected from the Guwahati-based organization CHILDLINE. Rescue child cases have been studied to describe the situation of how CHILDLINE work. We find that with limited resources, CHILDLINE has done an excellent job in safeguarding vulnerable children, specifically children in city areas. However, with the increase in population and child abuse cases, it finds it difficult to meet the needs of the society. Currently, it has tried to increase its boundaries to touch all the discriminated children across the country and cover 34 States/Union Territories (UTs) and 372 cities across the country.