New from IMR Migrant Mobility, Discrimination, and Political Participation
June 25, 2020
The Summer 2020 edition of the International Migration Review (IMR) is now available online and in print through paid or institutional subscription. This edition is thematically sorted into three sections. The first section has articles about migrant mobility, aspirations and life chances. The second section discusses racism, discrimination and social status. The third section is about migration, public opinion, and political participation. Lastly, this edition includes twelve book reviews which are free to access.
Understanding Immobility: Moving Beyond the Mobility Bias in Migration Studies
Kerilyn Schewel
Is there mobility bias in migration research through its focus on the “drivers” of migration – that is, the forces that lead to the initiation and perpetuation of migration flows? This article argues that migration theories neglect the countervailing structural and personal factors that restrict or resist these drivers and that can lead to different outcomes. It advances the overall migration research agenda by offering a definition of immobility, developing an aspiration-capacity framework to examine the factors that determine different forms of (im)mobility and why people do not migrate or desire to migrate, and providing future directions for further research on immobility.
This article analyzes the trajectories of neighborhood mobility for the post-1965 second generation in the United States. By analyzing geocoded longitudinal data from New York City over three decades, it documents patterns of second-generation neighborhood attainment and finds that the second generation has achieved significant contextual mobility both over time and across generations compared with US blacks. The second generation in this sample lived in better neighborhoods as young adulthood compared to their birth neighborhood where their parents once lived. Most groups moved away from the most disadvantaged areas, with the exception of Dominicans. In summary, these findings demonstrate that the second generation has surpassed US blacks in neighborhood attainment but has yet to achieve neighborhood parity with US whites.
Persian Pride and Prejudice: Identity Maintenance and Interest Calculations among Iranians in the United Arab Emirates
James Worrall and Alam Saleh
Based on extensive fieldwork in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran, this article examines conceptualizations of identity and interests within Iranian communities in the UAE. It develops the concept of identity maintenance as a way to understand the wider calculations and hedging processes embarked on by Iranians within an environment that increasingly securitizes Iranian identity. This study enriches understandings of the complexities of migration in the Gulf and highlights key drivers within processes of identity maintenance. These processes, it argues, represent a logical outcome of the context of precarity and suspicion that Iranian communities experience in the UAE, making identity maintenance both similar to and considerably different from more typical migration environments in the West.
MIGRANT MOBILITY, ASPIRATIONS AND LIFE CHANCES
Understanding Immobility: Moving Beyond the Mobility Bias in Migration Studies
Kerilyn Schewel
Do Emigrants Self-Select Along Cultural Traits? Evidence from the MENA Countries
Frédéric Docquier, Aysit Tansel, and Riccardo Turati
RACISM, DISCRIMINATION, AND SOCIAL STATUS
Attitudes of Turkish and Moroccan Belgians toward Redistribution and Government Responsibility: The Role of Perceived Discrimination, Generation, and Religious Involvement
Jolien Galle, Koen Abts, Marc Swyngedouw, and Bart Meuleman
Migration and Lived Experiences of Racism: The Case of High-Skilled Migrants in Wrocław, Poland
Krzysztof Jaskulowski and Marek Pawlak
Status Loss: The Burden of Positively Selected Immigrants
Per Engzell and Mathieu Ichou
Persian Pride and Prejudice: Identity Maintenance and Interest Calculations among Iranians in the United Arab Emirates
James Worrall and Alam Saleh
MIGRATION, PUBLIC OPINION, AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
Who Gets to Have a DREAM? Examining Public Support for Immigration Reform
Geoffrey P. R. Wallace and Sophia Jordan Wallace
To Europe or Not to Europe? Migration and Public Support for Joining the European Union in the Western Balkans
Artjoms Ivlevs and Roswitha M. King
Trust, Identity, Skills, or Recruitment?: Assessing Four Explanations of the Relationship between Associational Involvement and the Political Participation of Migrants
Marco Giugni and Maria Grasso
BOOK REVIEWS
Dear China: Emigrant Letters and Remittances, 1820-1980
Gregor Benton
Reviewed by Kelvin E.Y Low
Humanism in Ruins: Entangled Legacies of the Greek-Turkish Population Exchange
Asli Ig˘sız
Reviewed by Alexandros Sakellariou
Tight Knit: Global Families and the Social Life of Fast Fashion
Elizabeth L. Krause
Reviewed by Adua Elizabeth Paciocco
The Impact of Migration on Poland: EU Mobility and Social Change
Anne White, Izabela Grabowska, Pawel Kaczmarczyk, and Krystyna Slany
Reviewed by Eva A. Duda-Mikulin
The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America
Beth, Lew-Williams
Reviewed by Fredy Gonzalez
The Other Side of Assimilation: How Immigrants Are Changing American Life
Tomas Jimenez
Reviewed by Yalidy Matos
Rules, Papers, Status: Migrants and Precarious Bureaucracy in Contemporary Italy
Anna Tuckett
Reviewed by Tiziana Caponio
From Here and There: Diaspora Policies, Integration, and Social Rights Beyond Borders
Alexandra Delano Alonso
Reviewed by Pau Palop-Garcia
Diplomacy Meets Migration: US Relations with Cuba during the Cold War
Hideaki Kami
Reviewed by Melissa Hampton
Trespassers? Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia
Willo Lung-Amam
Reviewed by James Zarsadiaz
As an Equal? Au Pairing in the 21st Century
Rosie Cox and Nicky Busch
Reviewed by Sondra Cuban
Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam
Ivan Small
Reviewed by Mytoan Nguyen-Akbar