Qualitative Studies in Cases of Trafficking

This chapter demonstrates how qualitative methods such as interviews and participant observation can be used to explore, investigate, examine, and understand the continuum of harm women face throughout their migration experience. The chapter will also show the challenges faced in conducting such studies. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation, the author conducted research at a government-run trafficked shelter known as Rumah Perlindungan 5 (RP5), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2016. Forty-one individuals were interviewed comprising of 29 trafficked women and 12 professionals. The purpose of the interviews was to explore and investigate women's victim identity and the harms they face throughout their migration experience and state processes. The chapter concludes with a presentation of detailed study findings and a nuanced description of women's trafficking experiences through excerpts of interviews.

Internal Migration Experience and Depressive Symptoms among Middle-Aged and Older Adults: Evidence from China

Background: This study aimed to examine the association of internal migration experience with depressive symptoms among middle-aged and elderly Chinese, as well as explore possible mechanisms of the relationship. Methods: Participants were from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), a nationally representative sample of residents aged 45 years and older (n = 43,854). Survey data on depressive symptoms and internal migration experience were collected from biennial CHARLS surveys (CHARLS 2011/2013/2015) and a unique CHARLS life history survey in 2014, respectively. Multiple logistic regressions and the Karlson–Holm–Breen (KHB) method were employed in the statistical analyses. Results: The overall prevalence rate of depressive symptoms among middle-aged and older adults was 34.6%. Internal migration experience was associated with higher risks of depressive symptoms (OR = 1.07, 95% CI = 1.02–1.12, p < 0.01), especially among females (OR = 1.08, 95% CI = 1.01–1.14, p < 0.05), middle-aged adults (OR = 1.12, 95% CI = 1.06–1.19, p < 0.001), rural-to-urban migrants who had not obtained an urban hukou (OR = 1.13, 95% CI = 1.07–1.19, p < 0.001), and those who had low migration frequency and first migrated out at 35 years of age or older. Chronic disease (17.98%, p < 0.001), physical injury (7.04%, p < 0.001), medical expenditure (7.98%, p < 0.001), pension insurance (4.91%, p < 0.001), and parent–child interaction (4.45%, p < 0.01) were shown to mediate the association of internal migration experience with depressive symptoms. Conclusions: This study indicates that there is a significant association between internal migration experience and high risks of depression onset later in life. It is suggested to reduce institutional barriers for migrants and implement evidence-based interventions to improve migrants’ mental health.

Following the state-owned enterprises: Chinese expatriate construction workers in Zambia

Chinese expatriate workers in Africa remain an under-researched and poorly understood group despite their large numbers. Based on data collected through interviews and participant observations during 2013 and 2014 among Chinese expatriate construction workers employed by a large-scale Chinese state-owned construction enterprise in Zambia, this article offers an analysis of their migration experience as it relates to the context of China’s growing economic involvement with Africa. This paper further argues that Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Africa function as transnational social organizations to promote Chinese expatriate workers’ migration to Africa and provide them social support and care when they experienced difficulties during their sojourn. In this way, the patron–client relationship was formed between Chinese SOEs and Chinese expatriate workers, paralleling the existing employment relationship.

The Memories of Displaced Children: Flight Experience in the Life Stories of Exiled Latvians

This article explores how Latvian children who were displaced during the Second World War came across their displacement and how they compose the narratives of this childhood experience. Their life story interviews have been preserved in the Latvian National Oral History Archive. Recorded testimonies convey the migration experience in an intense way by vividly depicting the psychological, emotional, and material circumstances that children faced and by revealing common themes relevant to them at the time of the displacement.

SĂNĂTATEA FIZICĂ ȘI PSIHO-SOCIALĂ A COPIILOR MARCAȚI DE MIGRAȚIA PARENTALĂ DE MUNCĂ

The Republic of Moldova is today one of the countries which is considerably affected by migration. Almost 25% of the economically active population of the country is involved in temporary labor migration. According to the data offered by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Social Protection of the Republic of Moldova, at the beginning of 2020, the total number of children affected by parental labor migration was 29 186. In order to define the quality of life (QL) of migrants’children, there were researched different aspects of their lives, such as physical functioning (FF), emotional functioning (EF), social functioning (SF) and school functioning (SF). The given research involved 150 children from Moldova. They were of different age groups (5-7, 8-12, 13-18), from whom 75 children were of the labor migrants and their parents/tutors who remain in the country and 75 children of the labor migrants without labor migration experience. As the instrument for given research there was used the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL™4.0) questionnaire. In the course of the research there was emphasized the quality of life of children of the highest level with the score from 100 to 91, the middle level from 90 to 81, the low level from 80 to 71 and the lowest level less than 70 points. According to the results of the investigation it was established that the migrants’ children of various age groups, from all the examined aspects had a very low level of QL (less than 70 points). The presented results perform a very convincing fact that labor migrants’ children in comparison to their peers from the families without labor migration experience had a considerably low index on all the scales and on integral characteristics of quality of life.

Can Rural Migrant Workers Afford to Retire in China? A Study of Chinese Migrant Worker’s Retirement Savings

This paper makes connections between social policies of retirement, migrant worker’s migration experience, and migrant workers’ retirement savings. Using insight from the political economy of aging and stress theory, this paper links the macro levels of understanding with the micro levels of work and aging experiences for migrant workers. Using binary logistic regression with a sample of 699 Chinese migrant workers from three emigration provinces (Anhui, Henan, Sichuan), this paper explores four specific aspects of migrant worker’s migration experience in relation to their retirement savings: financial status; length of employment; social support, and levels of hopefulness. Findings reveal that migrant workers with better financial status, social support, and higher level of hopefulness towards future are more likely to have retirement savings as compared to their counterparts. Discussions linking the macro and micro levels of social policies were provided. Policy implications were discussed.

Challenges of Return Migration to the Republic of Moldova in the Context of International Migration Flow

Return migration is one of the types of contemporary migration, gaining momentum in many countries of the world as a result of frequent economic, political and social conjunctural changes that have influenced migration as a phenomenon. As part of the migration process, return migration has been less studied, given the low intensity of this form of migration and the difficulty of quantifying returned migrants. The return and reintegration of returned migrants, regardless of the reason or the mode of return, is a challenge both for returnees and for the authorities of the receiving countries and requires action plans, well thought-out strategies in order to manage this process effectively and to encourage new flows of returnees. Through this study, the authors wish to analyse the phenomenon of return migration through the prism of its determining factors, to follow the effectiveness of instruments that stimulate the return migration, to analyse the experience of European countries in managing this type of migration as best practices.The use of classical and contemporary human geography research methods will allow the quantitative and qualitative assessment of return migration, the study being based on a sociological survey conducted with returnees following a migration experience.

Literarische Mehrsprachigkeit und Transkulturalität. Der Dialog zwischen den Kulturen und das Echo von Mimikry und sprachlicher Hybridität im Werk deutsch-türkischer Autorinnen

The beginnings of migration literature in Germany were noticeable 20 years after the first agreements for work enlistment in the 1950s between countries around the Mediterranean on the one hand and Germany on the other. Well into the 1980s migration literature was considered to be a politically moti-vated, autobiographical and experiential kind of literature produced by migrants, most of whom were initially foreign workers. Today migrant/- migration literature or intercultural literature is considered to be the work of a generation of authors originating from families with migration experience, or migrants themselves. It is the linguistic hybridity and thematic alterity in these works which form the pre-condition for the dialogue between cultures and languages; a dialogue initiated by the successful examples of migration literature currently available on the market. Indeed, a considerable number of German-Turkish authors ’works enrich the cultural and literary scene in Germany. The article analyses the use of hybridity and mimicry as central themes in the novel Der Mond isst die Sterne auf (1998) by Dilek Zapctioglu. This novel is then compared with the stories in the collection Mutterzunge (1998) and with a novel by Emine S. Özdamar, more specifically with the novel Die Brücke vom goldenen Horn (1998), exploring language and thematic hybridization. Central themes in migration literature are issues such as the loss of the homeland, culture shock, alienation, life in and between two languages and cultures, as well as everyday, subliminal discrimination and the accumulating communication problems. The novels can therefore be defined thematically on the basis of their changing time and space coordinates, their shared theme of space diversity, their oscillation between the homeland and the foreign land, the linguistic diversity of their voices and the reflection they offer on the diaspora.