Re-negotiating Switzerland from Abroad: An Ethnographic Perspective on Citizenship-Belonging Nexuses
This chapter analyses how Swiss migrants in Mainland China and Northern Europe perceive and rediscover Switzerland in their transnational lives. We are interested in how negotiations of belonging and citizenship practices intersect and interact over time and distance. Based on an ethnographic and inductive approach, we situate the daily-life experiences of these rather privileged migrants […]
There is evidence that immigrants experience difficulties in finding a job that matches their human capital endowment upon arrival in the host country. Based on data from the Migration-Mobility Survey 2016, our empirical analysis has two goals. First, it measures the incidence of educational and skills mismatches among different groups of recent immigrants according to […]
The article links Swiss migration to questions of ‘race’ and ‘whiteness’ and shows how Swiss immigrants in Lima benefitted from the legacy of a colonial logic in post-World War II Peru. It problematises Switzerland’s economic and ideological interests, which influenced the representation of Swiss migration as ‘exceptional’. I argue that up to the present day […]
Research on migration usually focusses on the role of states in defining the “wanted” migrants who receive facilitated access to specific national territories. However, many countries apply a demand-driven admission policy in which employers play a central role in selecting candidates for migration. This article investigates the role of employers in the Migration-Mobility Nexus by […]
Today’s patterns of migration move on a continuum from long-term and permanent to increasingly temporary and fluid. In this context, it is central to understand immigrants’ intentions with respect to naturalization and remigration, not least because these intentions summarize the respondent’s attitude towards the migration experience. Using data from the Migration-Mobility Survey, this chapter tests […]
The increasing need for information on immigrants can scarcely be satisfied by traditional population surveys or censuses. Only migrant-specific surveys allow for the integration of migrant-specific topics. However, when organizing a survey targeting immigrants, challenges concerning the survey setup are even more accentuated compared to traditional surveys. After a short introduction, this chapter first reviews […]
This chapter analyses immigrants’ labour market trajectory throughout their settlement in Switzerland considering their employment situation in the country of origin and the characteristics of the family migration process. The investigation is particularly interested in analysing whether the observed inequalities by origin in the labour market integration result from differences in terms of human capital […]
This chapter aims at measuring the extent to which the subjective reasons of immigration impact on the level and the pace of structural integration, defined as the participation in the labour market. The analysis not only considers primary migrants but also accompanying spouses and distinguishes between migrants regarding their country of origin and level of […]
By confronting and assembling the main results of the previous chapters with respect to the three key dimensions – increasing mobility and transnationality, labour market participation and political and social participation – this concluding chapter discusses the implications for the Migration-Mobility Nexus framework. In addition, the authors address how these results apply to the European […]
Previous research has deepened our understanding of the reasons that both push and pull individuals to leave a place to settle in a new country. However, little is known about individuals who have undertaken multiple international migrations. Based on the Migration-Mobility Survey data, this chapter explores both the migration trajectories and why frequent international movers […]
Based on ethnographic field research in Northern Europe and China amongst Swiss nationals, this paper explores how such relatively privileged migrants negotiate their identities with respect to their society of origin and their host societies. By doing so, they participate in and produce a variety of discourses of inclusion and demarcation that are often ambiguous […]
I agree to certain extent with Costica Dumbrava that ius sanguinis encompasses certain problematic issues, especially where it concerns newer forms of procreation, like IVF for lesbian couples and surrogacy. However, the origin of the problem cannot be attributed to ius sanguinis, but to non-solidarity of states that overuse the ordre public exemption for the […]
Silence seems to have fallen yet again on the fate of those who, though most of the time significantly contributing to European States’ economies, are presumed invisible by those same States’ governments and administrations. The Swiss stance towards undocumented migrants has, for quite some time, mirrored the European one of – at best –isolation and […]
This chapter shows how the Talmud imagines its own community, how it projects its being in Babylonia, its raison d’?tre, the status of Palestine, and its own status vis-à-vis Palestine as well. It also argues that multiple passages in the Talmud add up to a virtual diasporist manifesto, acknowledging that there are other much less […]
Preceding the 2015/16 refugee “crisis”, aid conditionality and visa relaxation topped the list of leverages at the EUs disposal to enlist third-country cooperation in the fight against irregular migration. To correct some shortcomings of its resettlement policy, in particular the low intakes, the EU in the Jordan Compact experiments with keeping refugees employed abroad instead. […]
