Serial migration, multiple belongings and orientations toward the future: The perspective of middle-class migrants in Singapore

The growing phenomenon of serial migrants – people who have moved at least three times and profess belongings to more than two places – challenges the dialogic relationship imagined in studies of transnationalism. This is particularly true in the case of the mobile middle class, which has attracted less attention than the multiple migrations of low-waged labour migrants and the global professional elite. Drawing on interviews with 35 Australian and Indonesian migrants in Singapore, this article proposes the idea of orientation in order to understand the serial migration biographies of middle-class migrants. Rather than focusing on the propulsion and direction of movement, the notion of orientation suspends a migrant between reflection, action and imagination as they forge provisional pathways that upend or cleave to more conventional social trajectories. Developing this concept helps us to understand how migrants with middling resources navigate post-national socio-political formations contoured by race, gender, and class.

Filipino and Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong: Their Life Courses in Migration

This article presents a portrayal of Filipino and Indonesian female domestic workers’ life courses in migration, using the life history calendar data from the 2017 survey of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong. Applying sequence analysis, we first analyzed migration trajectory features such as individual migration trajectories, duration spent in each state, and longitudinal diversity of state distributions. We found that Indonesian domestic workers, compared with their Filipino counterparts, are more diverse in their migration histories, indicating involvements in serial migration. We also conducted a cluster analysis of the domestic workers’ migratory trajectories. The analysis yielded three meaningful clusters/types of migrant workers—those moved late in life, those who participated in serial migration, and those migrated directly from their home country to Hong Kong. Finally, we investigated the effect of a complex migration history on job satisfaction and the characteristics of membership in the three ideal-typical migration types among the domestic workers older than 39 years.

Migration and Displacement

This chapter makes the case that displacement was one of the major responses by Native Americans to the encroachment of European powers. It first considers the nature of Native American movements in the Southeast during the centuries immediately prior to the arrival of the first Spaniards in Florida. Then, displacement is further broken down into several categories of population relocation: serial migration, diaspora, and flows to frontiers. Reasons for displacement vary greatly: destructive wars, depredations of slave trading, and incursions of colonial settlements undermined settlement stability to a historically unprecedented degree, while perceived opportunities provided yet another major stimulus for migration and relocation, as families and towns moved to locations advantageous for trade, travel, and communication. This examination of population movement opens social, environmental, and political discussions concerning the paths of Native American peoples in North America.

Situating Children’s Family Troubles: Poverty and Serial Migration

This article aims to contribute to understandings of how children experience family troubles. It considers how children’s family troubles are socially situated and interlinked with the resources children and other family members have available and the societal contexts in which they live. Since this is an under researched area, the article aims to understand how bringing together different sources of evidence can illuminate children’s perspectives. It first introduces the issue of children’s family troubles and then considers how children feel about their families when they experience two globally common but underresearched kinds of family troubles; living in poverty and rejoining their parents following a period of separation in the process of serial migration, where family members migrate consecutively, rather than together. The chapter illuminates commonalities and differences in how children make sense of family troubles in which they are situated, and the relevance of ideas of “family.”

Migrants of the British Diaspora Since the 1960s

This is the first social history to explore the experience of British emigrants from the peak years of the 1960s to the emigration resurgence of the turn of the twentieth century. It scrutinises migrant experiences in Australia, Canada and New Zealand alongside other countries. The book challenges the assumption that the ‘British diaspora’ ended in the 1960s, and explores its gradual reinvention from a postwar migration of austerity to a modern migration of prosperity. Building on previous oral histories of British emigration to single countries in postwar years, it offers a different way of writing migration history, based on life histories but exploring mentalities as well as experiences, against a setting of deep social and economic change. The book charts the decade-by-decade shift in the migration landscape, from the 1970s loss of Britons’ privilege in destination countries and the 1980s urgency of ‘Thatcher’s refugees’, to shifting attitudes to cosmopolitanism and global citizenship by the 1990s. Key moments are the rise of expatriate employment, changing dynamics of love and marriage, the visibility of British emigrants of colour, serial migration practices, enhanced independence among women migrants and ‘lifestyle’ change ambitions. These are new patterns of discretionary and nomadic migration, which became more common practice generally from the end of the twentieth century.

Introduction: the modern drive to emigrate

The introduction canvasses key themes to emerge from migrant testimony: traditional sojourning and adventure migration, the casual adoption of global mobility and global identities from the 1960s, the conjuncture of geographical mobility with occupational and marital and family mobility, and the continuing importance of traditional ties of family alongside changes in migration practices and attitudes. An underlying theme is the complex interplay of change and continuity in migration history. It explores the social and economic contexts in Britain and beyond which set the stage for dramatic changes in migration practices like serial migration in and between developed countries. It argues the case for exploration of modern mobility through the experience of the British ‘diaspora’, and the value of oral testimony and life histories for exploring migrants’ mentalities at a time of heightened individualism and focus on personal desires. It stresses the importance of gender during a time of transformational social change and points to the impact of social mobility, in the population and among migrants, at a time when receiving countries were tightening visa qualifications.

Migration, cosmopolitanism and ‘global citizenship’ from the 1990s

This chapter concludes the chronological section by examining testimony of migrants from the 1990s, pointing to intensification of cosmopolitan mentalities and motivations like lifestyle enhancement. It focuses in some depth on stories of two generations of women through the separate but connected mobilities of mother and daughter, both global in outlook but deeply loyal to adopted localities. Noting that scholarship on globalisation has done little to relate the macro trends to mentalities of ordinary people, it suggests that modern migrant story-telling might shed light on how the globalising world has impacted upon wider populations as well as migrants themselves. It scrutinizes politically motivated mobility, particularly inspired by hostility to British politics and class, involving both expatriate employment, transnational marriage and serial migration; this is juxtaposed against family migration and travel seemingly devoid of political motivations but imbued with a virtual lifetime of adventure motivations. The chapter concludes with a case of a woman’s serial migration from Britain to Europe to South Africa to Australia, highlighting experiences of the ‘trailing spouse’ of an expatriate husband, of their later migration, and the impact of frequent mobility on marriage and family as well as on shifting identities.

Postwar pioneers of modern mobility: the 1940s to the 1960s

This chapter examines features of the first generation of postwar British emigrants which foreshadowed the later rise of modern global mobility. The drive of Anglophone immigrant countries to attract skilled employees, coinciding with the spread of higher education and social mobility in Britain, opened the way for aspiring migrants to use migration as a means to social advancement and entrepreneurship. Continuing global mobility, once the preserve of elites, was becoming democratised, and young travellers seized on the facilities to pioneer new forms of serial migration. At the same time the shadow of the British Empire continued to exert its influence on potential migrants with backgrounds in the military and imperial administration. Some faced the threat of downward social mobility, but, comfortable with global transience, turned to continuing migration as a means of comfortable survival. ‘Nomad daughters of the Empire’ describes women’s adaptation to new forms of mobility, and ‘the empire of the imagination’ explores ways in which the power of the ‘colonial dividend’ worked to stimulate thoughts of ‘wanderlust’ and serial migration, setting powerful precedents for the next generation of mobile Britons.

The quest for new lifestyles: migration, treechange and grey nomads

This chapter canvasses the turn to ‘lifestyle’ goals in migration, in ‘escape stories’, in drives to realise ecological principles and anti-urban ideology and in quests for a ‘purer’ way of life often driven by enhanced modern expressions of individualism. It begins with two examples of ‘island stories’, on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, and on Dangar Island in New South Wales. Both exemplify ‘escape’ themes alongside ecological pursuits, close-knit community living and local identities. ‘Tree-change’ stories’ denote similar lifestyle passions, one shaping a lifetime pursuit for Nordic landscapes, finally settling in New Zealand. Others establish connections between lifestyle goals and ‘new age’ aspirations, settling in locations associated with alternative lifestyles like Byron Bay in New South Wales. Cosmopolitan identities co-existed with continuing mobility, a strong sense of place and high valuation on belonging to ‘the land’. ‘Grey nomad’ touring marked the ultimate extension of serial migration, with a nomadic couple’s account of passions for global mobility and lifestyle pursuits into retirement years, recalling former migration while continuing permanent itinerancy in the mobile home, earning a living on the road without fixed address.