The Role of the Migration Industry in Chinese Student Migration to Finland: Towards a New Meso-level Approach

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-49
Author(s):  
Hanwei Li
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Student ◽  
Student Migration ◽  
Meso Level ◽  
Migration Industry

A migration industry for skilled migrants: the case of relocation services

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Tissot
Keyword(s):  
International Schools ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
Skilled Migration ◽  
Meso Level ◽  
Key Informants ◽  
The Family ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Migration Industry

The aim of this article is to clarify the role of the organisations that support skilled migrants after a relocation, using the analytical concept of migration industry. The concept is used as a tool to explore the gap between the macro and the micro levels and by that stresses the crucial meso-level when it comes to conceptualizing (skilled) migration. I use 30 semi-directive interviews with skilled migrants and six interviews with key informants in the migration industry as a basis for the analysis, leading me to distinguish three main services at the heart of this industry. Each service is covered by distinct private actors: the basic needs of the family by relocation offices, the education of the children by international schools, and the careers of the partner by outplacement agencies.

Hai Gui or Hai Dai? Chinese Student Migrants and the Role of Norwegian Mobility Capital in Career Success

Young ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aihua Hu ◽  
David Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Career Development ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Career Success ◽  
Master's Degree ◽  
Chinese Student ◽  
Student Migration ◽  
Master’S Degree ◽  
Degree Level ◽  
Level Analysis

In this article, we look at an example of student migration between Asia and Europe: movement between China and Norway, with the main objective of illustrating the value of studying in Norway to career development upon return to the sending country. Adapting terminology associated with Bourdieu, we discuss this experience as ‘mobility capital’, exploring the value of skills and capacities acquired while abroad in career success. Evidence is drawn from a recent qualitative study of former student migrants from across China, all of whom had previously studied in Norway at Master’s degree level. Analysis of our material demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of what we term Norwegian ‘mobility capital’, with discussion of these outcomes organized using two heuristic categories: ‘Hai Gui’, a term that refers to a returnee experiencing career success, and ‘Hai Dai’, which relates to returnees who cannot find a secure job upon return.

scholarly journals The unmaking of a commodity: Intermediation and the entanglement of power cables in Nigeria

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 1295-1313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Østbø Haugen
Keyword(s):  
Main Part ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Power Cables ◽  
Meso Level ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Market Orders

Nigerians once trusted power cables to be safe and compliant with international standards. Today, however, the Nigerian market is rife with substandard cables, which may overheat, shoot out sparks, and cause fires. Power cables have been transformed from commodities with stable and precisely defined properties into entangled objects that can only be known through the actors accompanying them. Marketization scholarship has conventionally focused on efforts and investments to disentangle things from their networks of connections, affording less attention to the specifics of how entanglements are produced. This article examines the role of intermediation in creating entanglements and undermining market orders. The analysis first identifies intermediaries that endeavor to translate the market logic into concrete realities in Nigeria. The second and main part of the analysis draws upon data from ethnographic fieldwork in Nigeria and China to assess how intermediaries destabilized the commodity of cables by forging new connections between traders and producers and by enabling inferior products to enter the market. The article proposes intermediation as a meso-level concept for connecting concrete and empirically observable events to theories of marketization. The approach moves marketization scholarship forward and away from its oft-vague operationalizations, while also suggesting new avenues for research on intermediation beyond the study of markets.

scholarly journals Making Sense of One's Feelings

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Jean-Michel Montsion
Keyword(s):  
International Students ◽  
Study Abroad ◽  
Chinese Student ◽  
Chinese International Students ◽  
Student Migration ◽  
Canadian Universities ◽  
Migration Experience ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
Feeling Rules

Canadian universities’ sharpened focus on international students starting in the early 2000s coincided with the growing interest by students from China to study abroad. Various actors, including states, have shaped and benefited from this increase in student migration. I examine how student migrants deal with the feeling rules transmitted to them, as an under-explored site where the migration experience is shaped and justified. In light of the work of Sara Ahmed and Arlie Russell Hochschild, I explore how students feel and are asked to feel about their studies abroad, and how emotions work in framing and maintaining the migration narrative. Through Ahmed’s concept of skin of the collective, I argue that Chinese student migrants are affected by and contribute to an affective atmosphere regarding their years of study in Canada as specific feeling rules help them make sense of similar experiences of confusion, frustration, self-reliance, and responsibility. Based on interviews with students and university staffers, I discuss the links between this type of migration, the actors involved, and the emotional landscapes students navigate in order to highlight how they interpret their own experiences and how these interpretations contribute to maintaining a general narrative about being Chinese international students in Canada.

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