scholarly journals Syrian Refugees and the Digital Passage to Europe: Smartphone Infrastructures and Affordances

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 205630511876444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Gillespie ◽  
Souad Osseiran ◽  
Margie Cheesman

This research examines the role of smartphones in refugees’ journeys. It traces the risks and possibilities afforded by smartphones for facilitating information, communication, and migration flows in the digital passage to Europe. For the Syrian and Iraqi refugee respondents in this France-based qualitative study, smartphones are lifelines, as important as water and food. They afford the planning, navigation, and documentation of journeys, enabling regular contact with family, friends, smugglers, and those who help them. However, refugees are simultaneously exposed to new forms of exploitation and surveillance with smartphones as migrations are financialised by smugglers and criminalized by European policies, and the digital passage is dependent on a contingent range of sociotechnical and material assemblages. Through an infrastructural lens, we capture the dialectical dynamics of opportunity and vulnerability, and the forms of resilience and solidarity, that arise as forced migration and digital connectivity coincide.

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego F. Leal ◽  
Nicolas L. Harder

AbstractEvidence from 184 countries over the span of 25 years is gathered and analyzed to understand North–North, South–South, and North–South international migration flows. Conceptually, the analysis borrows from network theory and Migration Systems Theory (MST) to develop a model to characterize the structure and evolution of international migration flows. Methodologically, the Stochastic Actor-oriented Model of network dynamics is used to jointly model the three types of flows under analysis. Results show that endogenous network effects at the monadic, dyadic, and triadic levels of analysis are relevant to understand the emergence and evolution of migration flows. The findings also show that a core set of non-network covariates, suggested by MST as key drivers of migration flows, does not always explain migration dynamics in the systems under analysis in a consistent fashion; thus, suggesting the existence of important levels of heterogeneity inherent to these three types of flows. Finally, evidence related to the role of political instability and countries’ care deficits is also discussed as part of the analysis. Overall, the results highlight the importance of analyzing flows across the globe beyond typically studied migratory corridors (e.g., North–South flows) or regions (e.g., Europe).


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 114-117
Author(s):  
Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso

Population movements between countries and continents are not recent phenomena. What is new today is that migration flows are increasingly linked to the globalization process and to environmental degradation. Most of the migrants leave their homes for economic reasons, but also due to the higher frequency of natural disasters. Of the total migrant population, those who escape from conflicts or persecution still represent a smaller fraction and are entitled to obtain refugee status. This thematic issue includes eight articles that analyse migration flows and migration governance from different analytical perspectives. Five of the eight contributions examine the role that several factors play in explaining international migration flows and its effects, namely cultural diversity, information technology tools, governance, terrorism, and attitudes towards immigration. The remaining three articles are country studies that analyse the socio-economic causes/effects of migration flows to Portugal, Spain, and Germany, devoting special attention to forced migration and refugees.


Author(s):  
Andrés Solimano

The international mobility of people and migration flows are critically influenced by differences in per capita incomes, real wages, job opportunities, institutional capacities and living standards across nations and cities. Its dynamics are shaped by social networks and regulated by the migration policies of receiving countries. International migration represents around 3.3% of world’s population; up from 2.7% in 1995. It is composed mainly of working-age people, with men and women migrants being in roughly equal numbers. Historically, the globalization process of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was also accompanied by large migration flows, mostly, from the “Old World” (Europe) to the “New World” (United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and other countries in the Global South). Starting in the 1980s migration has increased relative to a rise in total population, although the share of international migration to total population was, on average, higher in the first wave of globalization of the 1870–1914 period. Main substantive topics and new themes in the field of international migration include: (a) the motivations and determinants of the international mobility of the wealthy (High-Net Worth Individuals, HNWIs), a largely unexplored topic in the literature of international migration; (b) the international migration of talent (high-skills, educated, and gifted people), (c) the linkages between the mobility of talent and the mobility of capital and their evolution over time affected by macro regimes and international conditions, (d) The relation between macroeconomic and financial crises (e.g., the 2008–2009 crisis), stagnation traps and immigration flows, (e) the influence of international migration on inequality within and between countries, and (f) forced migration, displaced population and humanitarian crises, following war, violence, persecution, and human rights violations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 182-196
Author(s):  
Raya Muttarak

Among demographic events (birth, death, and migration), migration is notably the most volatile component to forecast accurately. Accounting for forced migration is even more challenging given the difficulty in collecting forced migration data. Knowledge of trends and patterns of forced migration and its future trajectory is, however, highly relevant for policy planning for migrant sending and receiving areas. This paper aims to review existing methodological tools to estimate and forecast migration in demography and explore how they can be applied to the study of forced migration. It presents steps towards estimation of forced migration and future assessments, which comprise: (1) migration flows estimation methods using both traditional and nontraditional data; (2) empirical analysis of drivers of migration and migration patterns; and (3) forecasting migration based on multidimensional population projections and scenarios approach. The paper then discusses how these demographic methods and tools can be applied to estimate and forecast forced migration.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shan Li

AbstractThis article studies the role of rainfall in determining the education composition of Mexico-US migration. Emphasizing the relationship between rainfall and migration costs, a revised Roy model indicates that rainfall affects selection on education through not only households’ liquidity constraints but also the comparisons between changes in migration costs and wage differentials at different levels of education. With retrospective data on the migration history of male Mexicans, the empirical analysis shows that the inverted U-shaped relationship between migration probabilities and education is less dispersed with a higher vertex when rainfall decreases, suggesting higher migration costs and reinforced self-selection patterns. The impacts of rainfall on selection and education are stronger for the migrant stock than for migration flows. Studying how rainfall influences migrants’ return decisions provides consistent results.


The current era of globalization is characterized by a high degree of interconnectedness across borders and continents. This not only goes hand in hand with significant levels of international trade and foreign direct investments but also with migration, which is all too often driven by conflicts of various kinds. While various interdependencies between conflict and migration have been explored in the literature, a link that is not yet sufficiently understood relates to the interdependencies between environmental or resource-related conflicts and migration as well as the role of governance in this respect. This book strives to overcome some of these shortages in providing an interdisciplinary analysis of the interconnectedness between environmental and resource conflicts and migration. To this end, the contributions of this book address four core questions: (i) When do environmental and resource-related problems lead to conflicts and how does this create incentives for migration? How does the governance of natural resources either reduce or enhance the chances of conflicts and migration to emerge? (ii) Who leaves a country and where do migrants go? Which migration governance arrangements are at play in mediating conflicts and in directing migration flows? (iii) How do the trajectories of national, regional and international migration governance regimes look like? How effectively do they regulate environmental or resource-related migration? (iv) Which effects does migration have on possible conflict dynamics in destination countries and what is the role of governance arrangements in this respect? How do host countries participate in governance for the prevention of environmental or resource-related conflicts in countries of origin in order to reduce or prevent migration?


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana María Ibáñez ◽  
Sandra Rozo ◽  
Maria J. Urbina

We examine the role of Venezuelan forced migration on the propagation of 15 infectious dis-eases in Colombia. For this purpose, we use rich municipal-monthly panel data. We exploit the fact that municipalities closer to the main migration entry points have a disproportionate ex-posure to infected migrants when the cumulative migration flows increase. We find that higher refugee inflows are associated with increments in the incidence of vaccine-preventable dis-eases, such as chickenpox and tuberculosis, as well as sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS and syphilis. However, we find no significant effects of migration on the propagation of vector-borne diseases. Contact with infected migrants upon arrival seems to be the main driving mechanism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-398
Author(s):  
Ruchi Singh

Rural economies in developing countries are often characterized by credit constraints. Although few attempts have been made to understand the trends and patterns of male out-migration from Uttar Pradesh (UP), there is dearth of literature on the linkage between credit accessibility and male migration in rural Uttar Pradesh. The present study tries to fill this gap. The objective of this study is to assess the role of credit accessibility in determining rural male migration. A primary survey of 370 households was conducted in six villages of Jaunpur district in Uttar Pradesh. Simple statistical tools and a binary logistic regression model were used for analyzing the data. The result of the empirical analysis shows that various sources of credit and accessibility to them play a very important role in male migration in rural Uttar Pradesh. The study also found that the relationship between credit constraints and migration varies across various social groups in UP.


2020 ◽  
pp. 81-92
Author(s):  
Andrey Ivanovich Shutenko ◽  
◽  
Elena Nikolaevn Shutenko ◽  
Julia Petrovna Derevyanko ◽  
◽  
...  

The article is devoted to the problem of educational communications development as a sphere of implementation of modern information-communication technologies in the higher education system. The purpose of the article is to present the structure and functions of educational communications aimed at the development of personal potential and self-realization of students. Methodology. The study is based on the methodology of personal and communicative-informational approaches in education, psychological-pedagogical provisions on the structure of communication, the leading role of learning activity, didactic principles of building an educational-informational environment. In theoretical terms, the study is based on the idea of the indirect implementation of ICT in education through the development of educational communications. The developing structure of educational communications, including didactic, informational-gnostic, interactive, psychological, attractive-motivational, value-semantic components, is presented. The possibilities of developing personal potential in educational communications are considered. The author’s developmental model of ICT functions is presented, which includes clusters of actual and latent functions aimed at the formation of information-educational space for the development of students’ personal potential. In conclusion, a inference was made about the prospects of the indirect introduction of modern ICT as tools for the development and functioning of various educational communications. At the same time, it is essential that these communications perform psychological and pedagogical tasks and functions.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serena Martinelli ◽  
Vanessa D'Antongiovanni ◽  
Susan Richter ◽  
Letizia Canu ◽  
Tonino Ercolino ◽  
...  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document