IMER Masters International Migration, Inclusion, and Exclusion

Fall 2018 - Christina Johansson (Malmö University)

IMER Masters International Migration, Inclusion, and Exclusion Submodule 1:1 Exam

Essay 1

By the end of the twentieth century almost 50% of the world’s migrants were women, with many leaving as independent ‘autonomous workers’ rather than accompanying members of their families (Oishi 2005, p. 2). Women in Motion: Globalization, State Policies, and Labor Migration in Asia by Nana Oishi (2005) depicts how crucial migrant women are in today’s ever growing global society and how female migration impacts the individual, her friends, families, co-workers, etc. Oishi is able to convey how female migrant workers continue to influence Asia and the world through her hypothesis “by focusing on temporary flows of a legal nature” and showing that “[t]emporary migration... now forms a large component of international migration both in Asia and elsewhere in the world” (p.4). Women in Motion is organized to showcase Oishi’s hypothesis and findings by breaking it up into six main sections: 1) the aim of the book; 2) the methods used; 3) four levels of analysis; 4) how the book is interdisciplinary; 5) findings/main results; and, 6) how successful Oishi is in her ambitions.

In the first section of Women in Motion, Oishi states that her personal aim is “to explain the causal mechanism of cross-national patterns of international female migration through an integrative approach” (p. 10). Oishi notes that she is not the only researcher to try to comprehend this type of migration, however she does point out where her fellow colleagues went wrong – they did not use a “unified theory; rather, they are reflected in a variety of theories that identify the connecting elements between the macro and micro levels, such as households, networks, and institutions” (p. 10-11). It is important to note that even though these scholars did not use a ‘unified theory’, the approaches they used, “share a common aim, which is to link ‘different levels of social organization, analyze simultaneously the origin and destinations, and consider both historical and contemporary processes” (p. 10-11). Additionally, Oishi’s personal aim for this book was to elaborate her research on the approaches she used as well as advancing the framework by adding in her personalized dimension of gender (female) studies to migration. Finally, maybe without specifically pointing it out, readers of Women in Motion might observe that a final (almost hidden) aim of Oishi’s is to showcase how international legal mechanisms are actually abusing and limiting female migrants which sequentially helped conceive and cultivate many of Oishi’s research questions which “became the seed for this book” (p. xi).

In the second section of Women in Motion, research methodology was explored. Most of her data came from field research in Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong. She supplements field research with data from her work with the International Labor Organization over 5 years (p. 15). Research findings were based on qualitative (e.g., interviews with 249 individuals) and quantitative data (e.g., macroeconomic indicators –GDP per capita, unemployment rates, and women’s labor participation rates) (p. 15).

In the third section of Women in Motion, Oishi uses four levels of analysis to compare and contrast countries on how they treat female migrants. She breaks up her levels of analysis into four major categories: 1) Suprastate (global perspective); 2) Macro-state; 3) Meso-state; and 4) Micro-individual. One, at the suprastate or the global perspective level, Oishi examines “the impact of globalization on women’s employment, changes in the international labor market, international relations, and the lack of an international migration regime” (p. 11). She reminds readers not to follow the logic that globalization affects all Third World Asian women in the same manner, especially with the differences between sending vs. non-sending countries (p. 11). She makes a critical note that there “is [a] lack of an effective international legal framework- an ‘international migration regime’- to protect migrant workers abroad” (p. 11). As a case in point, Sarah Balabagan, a sixteen-year old Filipina migrant worker in the United Arab Emirates was sexually assaulted and later stabbed her attacker to death. After being arrested, she was sentenced to death by an Islamic Court which was later reduced to 100 lashes and one year in prison (p. 68). Although globalization is “often associated with the declining role of states and heavier reliance on free markets… [w]ith economies becoming more liberalized, states are becoming less significant” (p. 58). However, states are not backing down and are trying to regain their power by introducing new immigration policies to halt migrants. However, it is important to point out that over time, more and more states are interested and sometimes favor international migration because “they believe that overall international labor migration brings net economic benefits” (p. 58). Why then are there such high restrictions of migration policies, especially for women, when there is such much to gain? For example, in the non-migrant sending country of Bangladesh (who usually has strictest migration restrictions), instituted the “[b]an on recruitment of female domestic workers” as well as the “[b]an on recruitment of entertainers but not on nurses, doctors, and engineers” (p. 60). Another example can be seen from 1983 to 1988, when the Suharto administration in Indonesia encouraged female migrant workers to go abroad as part of their Fourth Five-Year Plan (p. 61). It is critical to point out that in many of these countries represented in Women in Motion, even the countries who are pro-migration set restrictions for women. Many countries often use the explanation that these restrictions are in place to protect females which can reflect that “emigration policies for women are more complex and arise from the need to strike a delicate balance between economic necessity and social value” (p. 63). Furthermore, many of these nations try to discourage female migration because they are developing states that cannot dutiful stand up for its citizens. Often, this means that when abroad, if a woman is abused it places developing countries in uncomfortable situations that they try to avoid by simply making it harder for people (i.e., women) to migrate (p. 62). Two, moving to the macro or the state level, Oishi investigates how the state impacts and effects the migration of females and the state’s response. As she states: “[i]nternational migration matters greatly to the state on both receiving and sending ends because it involves crucial economic and political interests that the state is compelled to act upon” (p. 12). For example, in certain Asian countries strong gender dimensions of women’s employment exist which in turn creates national policies which can either limit or encourage migration varying over time (p. 83-84). Three, at the meso or societal level, Oishi introduces the concept of ‘social legitimacy’, which she defines as “norms that accept women’s wage employment and geographical mobility and that establish an environment conducive to international female migration” (p. 13). She notes that female labor has historically been an accepted part of work outside the home on colonial estates so female labor migration is socially legitimate (p. 13). Four and finally, at the ‘smallest’ level of analysis – micro or the individual level – Oishi describes how “women’s autonomy and decision-making power…. does not necessarily guarantee blind compliance by the citizenry” (p.13) Oishi elaborates by contextualizing this to the Philippines where “state efforts to ban female migration failed because... women kept migrating abroad through unofficial channels” (p. 13). This statement demonstrates that state efforts to try to stop women migrating do not always work. It is important to understand at the individual level that migration for women is not always easy due to factors such as 1) if married, your husband may cheat on you, 2) can your family cope with your absence?, 3) worry about family, and 4) abuse from employers (p. 105).

In the fourth section of Women in Motion, Oishi’s presentation demonstrates how the book is interdisciplinary. For example, Oishi uses a variety of disciplines to back up her research. She does not just use economic resources such as statistical figures on how much economic impact migrants have made countries, nor does she just focus on how migration laws (politics and law) impact migration. She uses as well personal narratives and case examples to make her main points. She intertwines the disciplines seamlessly so that it is hard to determine where one discipline starts and where the others end.

In the fifth section of Women in Motion, Oishi’s hypothesis and findings are presented. After completing her fieldwork in Asia, Oishi stated (multiple times) how her interpretation of female migration changed after seeing the abuse that plenty of female migrants face daily. Female migration in Asia often carries a negative connotation especially in the work (economic) sector because of the common types of jobs these women choose as factory and domestic workers (p. 188). Furthermore, many of these jobs “are often characterized by low wages, poor working conditions, and lack of unionization. Many studies tend to describe immigrant women as victims of abuse and harassment” (p. 187). On the other hand, her findings showed how migration empowered these women, which she stated was a new “dimension [that] was not directly related to [her] research and will require more in-depth examination and analyses” (p. 187). Oishi’s findings show that most of her interview participants had a positive view of their experience abroad (p. 188). Even those who were abused stated that they viewed migration as a great learning experience, which to Oishi meant realizing that you can solve your own problems, support and stand up for yourself, deal with employers, and learn a new language (p. 190).

In the sixth section of Women in Motion, Oishi describes how successful she is in her ambitions. After reading this work, it is believable that Oishi is successful in her ambitions to provide contextual information to the “cross-national variations and causal mechanisms of international female migration in Asia” (p. 170). She proves this through her research by interviewing over a couple hundred women from various economic, educational, and national backgrounds as well as using further qualitative and quantitative research to back up her hypothesis and claims. However, this study is somewhat outdated and needs to be researched and applied again as time and populations have drastically changed which could impact her findings.

While Oishi has demonstrated the significance of migrant women in Asia, her findings are almost twenty years old and need to be conducted again as times are changing. Given the importance of female migrants in the world around us, it is imperative that women’s migration continue to be studied. In order to raise awareness of this ever increasing global issue, a solution could be to implement more studies at Western and Non-Western schools and universities to learn about the plight many Asian women face in migrating.

Works Cited:

Oishi, N. (2005). Globalization, State Policies, and Labor Migration in Asia. Stanford, CA:

Stanford University Press.

IMER Masters International Migration, Inclusion, and Exclusion Submodule 1:1 Exam

IMER Masters Identity and Ethnicity in a Global Community

Fall 2018 - Anne Sofie Roald (Malmö University)

IMER Theory in Practice Project

Introduction

The primary aim for this Theory in Practice is to investigate whether the decision by Mexican nationals to migrate to the United States is personally perceived as a good or bad investment and how personal perceptions of investment impact on the willingness to remain engaged in the U.S. labor market. These personal perceptions will be examined through the lens of the Social Network Theory (SNT) and the accompanying construct of Social Capital, with the hypothesis that greater social networks (e.g., family, friends, and faith communities) rich with social capital (i.e., “resources linked to social ties”) are statistically associated with positive perceptions of investment and that perceived positive personal investment is statistically associated with remaining engaged in the U.S. labor market.

Method

This study will adopt a mixed methods approach using primary sources gathered through a single interview with each study participant in which both qualitative (open-ended questions for contextual richness) and quantitative (brief written survey) data will be gathered, with the interviews conducted in Spanish. The qualitative analysis will include the use of a social network mapping tool and the quantitative analysis will include the use of a survey to gather socio-demographic variables, migrant’s personal estimations of investment (i.e., good/bad), and their experiences in the labor market. Convenience and snowball sampling will be used to recruit study participants because these methods can be useful when a population is hard to locate (Czaja, R., & Blair, J. 1996). In this study it would be very difficult to gain access to a listing of undocumented Mexican laborers so in order to get informants, I will attempt to meet them through churches, civic organizations, work crews, landscaping and construction sites, as well as through personal referrals by study participants themselves. The sample will consist of males and females born in Mexico, currently living in the U.S. but undocumented, and between the typical working ages of 18 and 55 (Zong, J., & Batalova, J. 2018 and Carter, M. 2018). The recruitment location will be two large metropolitan areas of the Triad (Greensboro, High Point, and Winston-Salem) and the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill) of North Carolina, USA.

Theoretical Overview

The earliest work by scholars on social networks can be traced back to the work of Viennese intellectual Jacob Moreno, who during his work in the U.S., is credited with first using the concept of “social networks” as it is used today (Freeman, L. C. 2004). There was further work in this area carried out by Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet in the mid-1940s explaining how voters in the U.S. informally influenced the voting patterns of family and friends (“social networks”), however it was not until the 1960s that a more organized SNT was developed (Liu, W., Sidhu, A., Beacom, A. M., & Valente, T. W. 2017). A basic definition of SNT is: “[t]he social network approach is grounded in the intuitive notion that the patterning of social ties in which actors are embedded has important consequences for those actors. Network analysts, then, seek to uncover various kinds of patterns. And they try to determine the conditions under which those patterns arise and to discover their consequences” (Freeman, L. C. 2004). A fundamental aspect of SNT is that individuals vary in their social experiences, including the number and quality of their social partners (Sih, A., Hanser, S. F., & McHugh, K. A. 2009). In addition to help explain the ties or connections between the individual and his/her network (and the bridges between the networks of two or more individuals), social capital can also be an important part of SNT. As summarized in the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, social capital is the “accrued actual or virtual resources acquired by individuals or groups …. [and it] resides in the individual as the result of his or her investment” (Claridge 2015). From the related construct of social capital, we can hypothesize that it is not only the number of social connections that matter but also the strength of those connections (for a brief discussion of ties, see Granovetter 1973).

Although employed in a number of disciplines, SNT will be used in this study to determine how social networks influence undocumented Mexican labor migrants’ investment in the U.S. labor market. The reason I chose SNT is because it an appropriate way to study how integrated/assimilated the study population is in the U.S. It is hypothesized that the more integrated/assimilated (“socially networked”) a person is, then the greater the chances are of them being involved in the community, including their engagement in gainful employment.

Application of Social Network Theory to Investment Decisions and Labor Participation

The application of SNT to migration rose in popularity in the 1980s with the help of Douglas Massey who focused on Mexican movement to the U.S. (Samers, M, & Collyer, M. 2017). Scholars have used SNT to offer insights into how migrant’s social networks influenced their decision to migrate (Blumenstock, J., & Tan, X. 2016; Samers, M, & Collyer, M. 2017). Oftentimes, the literature has focused on the importance of personal migrant networks (e.g., close family members/the household) and/or non-personal migrant networks (e.g., communities) (Liu, M. 2013; Meeteren, M. & Pereira, S. 2013) with the general theoretical assumption being that strong social networks in the sending and receiving countries encourage voluntary migration. With the well-established idea that much of the migration from Mexico is economic (Aguila, E., Akhmedjonov, A. R., Basurto-Davila, R., Kumar, K. B., Kups, S., & Shatz, H. J. 2012), scholars have also employed SNT to explain the associations between work and migration (for example, Amuedo-Dorantes, C., & Mundra, K. 2007 who found an association between rich social networks and increased hourly wages).

It is important to note that not all scholars agree that SNT is a particularly useful model. For example, critics believe that scholars have not considered other actors who could influence the decision to migrate such as employers and institutions. Much of the focus has been on strong social ties rather than extended family, friends, smugglers, employers, government officials, etc. For example, scholars have discovered that ‘non-traditional’ networks were more influential for migrants than family or communities (Meeteren, M. & Pereira, S. 2013). A popular and widely-used example of influential ‘non-traditional’ social networks to migrants are human smugglers. It may be, for example, that the experience of having been smuggled into the U.S. might be very impactful on the perception that getting into the U.S. was a good or bad investment which could influence participation in the labor market. Although understudied and not well documented, the reality of human trafficking and economic slavery has been documented in the U.S. among undocumented Mexican aliens (NY Post 2018).

SNT (and social capital) offer insight into how undocumented Mexican labor migrants determine if their decision to migrate to the U.S. was personally a good or bad investment. I propose that migrants with positive perceptions of their migration will be involved in a multitude of active sectors (e.g., if religious, attend worship services regularly; join a sports team; get a gym membership; take English language classes; go back to school; be employed). By being involved, they will have higher chances of meeting new people, building strong and healthy social networks, feeling more at home, and be more likely to stay in the U.S. On the contrary, I expect to see those who have poor social networks to have more negative views of the U.S. and be less likely to be involved in religious, civic, or other activities. Furthermore, I propose that by having healthy social networks, members of this ‘group’ are more likely to remain in the U.S. or in the nation’s labor market. In summary, the hypothesis for this study is that the greater the social networks (and rich with social capital) a migrant has, the more likely he/she is to have positive views of investment and are more likely to remain engaged in the U.S. labor market; the converse of this would also be expected (see, Table 1).

In conclusion, this study contributes to our understanding of migration in part because of its timeliness in light of the recent momentum to build a wall separating Mexico from the United States (Trump 2018) and by testing a model which explores the links between social networks and the personal appraisal of whether emigrating from Mexico to the U.S. was beneficial and then considering whether this evaluation is linked to labor force participation.

Table 1: The hypothesis for the undocumented Mexican labor migrants study. Explanation: The more social networks a migrant has, the more likely they will have high social capital (value of relationships) which will lead to a good investment, and they will more likely stay in the labor market.

Works Cited

Aguila, E., Akhmedjonov, A. R., Basurto-Davila, R., Kumar, K. B., Kups, S., & and Shatz, H. J.

(2012). Causes of Migration from Mexico to the United States Book. United States and

Mexico: Ties that bind, issues that divide. Rand Corporation.

Amuedo-Dorantes, C., & Mundra, K. (2007). Social networks and their impact on the earnings of

Mexican migrants. Demography, 44(4), 849–863.

Blumenstock, J., & Tan, X. (Dec., 2016) [online]. Social Networks and Migration: Theory and

Evidence from Rwanda [Access Dec. 4, 2018]. Preliminary.

Carter, M. (9 Nov., 2018). IMER Essay 2 Part 2

Claridge, T. (2015). [online]. Bourdieu on social capital – theory of capital. [Accessed Dec. 10,

2018]

Czaja, R., & Blair, J. (1996). Designing Surveys. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Freeman, L. C. (2004). The development of social network analysis: A study in the

sociology of science. Vancouver, BC Canada: Empirical Press.

Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6),

1360-1380.

Liu, M. (24 May, 2013). [online]. Migrant Networks and International Migration: Testing Weak

Ties [Accessed Dec. 5, 2018].

Liu, W., Sidhu, A., Beacom, A. M., & Valente, T. W. (2017). Social network theory. The

International Encyclopedia of Media Effects. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Meeteren, M. & Pereira, S. (2013). [online]. The differential role of social networks: Strategies

and routes in Brazilian migration to Portugal and the Netherlands [Dec. 5, 2018].

NY Post (2018). [online]. Immigrants say ranch’s price of smuggling them into country was

‘slavery.’ [Accessed Dec. 10, 2018].

Samers, M, & Collyer, M. (2017). Migration. New York, NY: Routledge

Sih, A., Hanser, S. F., & McHugh, K. A. (2009). Social network theory: new insights and issues

for behavioral ecologists. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 63, (7), 975–988|

Trump, D. J. (2018). [online]. Remarks by President Trump on the Illegal Immigration

Crisis and Border Security. [Accessed Dec. 11, 2018]

Zong, J., & Batalova, J. (11 Oct., 2018). [online]. Migration Policy Institute. [Accessed Dec.5,

2018].

Social Networks

Good Investment

Bad Investment

Stay in Labor Market

Exit Labor Market

IMER Theory in Practice Project

HEA 640-01 - Global Health Issues

Spring 2019 - Sharon Morrison, Ph.D.

Tobacco Case Study PowerPoint Presentation for Poland

Throughout this class, one of the most important aspects was understanding and applying the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations in 2015. The overall purpose of these goals is to improve people's lives throughout the world (e.g., no poverty and gender equality). One way in which our class was able to apply these SDGs was through our individual case studies. For my case study, I focused on Poland and their frequent tobacco use with the video listed below as my virtual presentation.