Using data for the United States, we explore how interactions with immigrants during school age affect imagination during adulthood for native children. The analysis uses The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health survey and focuses on the impact of differences in the number of immigrants across cohorts within schools. Results suggest that exposure to immigrant classmates has positive effects on the long-term imagination of natives. Increasing the number of immigrants in the grade by 20 students, would increase the likelihood of reporting a high level of imagination during adulthood by three percentage points. We suggest that the effect is not coming via direct friendship with immigrant students, but through increasing exposure to diverse ideas and experiences.
More is known about how ‘push factors’ motivate emigration and how immigrants adapt to their new environment than about psychological factors associated with migration intentions for those experiencing adversity in their country of origin. This paper explores the association between multisystem resilience and migration intentions among youth in Honduras. In this context of high economic need and contextual violence, higher levels of resilience are associated with higher levels of migration intentions among those who have a job and thus the ability to navigate or negotiate access to resources – economic, social and psychological – that make it possible to consider migration. Among those who have not been victims of violence and consequently may not have that motivation to migrate, higher levels of resilience are associated with lower migration intentions.
Settlement services are key to Canada's success in welcoming and integrating immigrants. Offered mainly in person prior to COVID-19 by non-governmental agencies reliant on and regulated by government funders, services were forced online and delivered by staff working remotely. We document this transition between September 2020 and September 2021 in Ontario, Canada and the conditions that influenced it. Surveys completed by workers and managers at member agencies of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants reveal how agencies provided services and stabilized organizational resources and capacities. Their success is evident in staff satisfaction with management's responses to the pandemic. While our findings underscore the resilience of the agencies and their workforce, they also challenge many tenets of New Public Management. The survey and discussions with managers suggest that sustained and flexible funding, rapid and respectful communication between agencies and funders and collaborations with other agencies were key to overcoming pandemic challenges.
A plethora of government- and non-government actors are involved in the labour market integration of highly skilled refugees, forming a complex “system” that is difficult to navigate for integration actors and refugees. Based on interviews with 32 labour market integration actors in Sweden, this article examines multi-level governance gaps in the wake of the simultaneous centralization and decentralization of labour market preparation services. It examines various “steps” in the labour market integration process to gain a more holistic perspective of “the system”, and identifies governance gaps in each step. The article finds that the devolution of services has opened up participatory spaces for non-government actors, but narrowly defined mandates and short-term funding mechanisms hamper cooperation within and between territorial levels of policy implementation.
This paper explores the motivations and barriers behind the decision of economically disadvantaged Moldovans to refrain from migrating for better economic prospects. Drawing on 30 qualitative interviews with voluntary stayers, it uncovers a range of individual-level characteristics that impede migration aspirations. These findings highlight the heightened sensitivity of lower-wage stayers to their perceived social status abroad, their limited adaptability to new cultures and environments and their lower willpower to endure the challenges of long-term gains. Moreover, this paper sheds light on their contentment with modest material gains and their aversion to migration risks. At the structural level, it emphasizes how social inequalities act as barriers for specific social groups, particularly the economically disadvantaged. These empirical insights challenge prevailing assumptions about the dominance of economic costs and network abroad in migration decision-making, offering a fresh perspective on the social factors and costs shaping stayers' choices.
Since 2014, numerous people on the move have been accused of migrant smuggling in Italian courts for steering makeshift vessels or for assisting in navigation across the Mediterranean Sea. This is the case regardless of the fact that such behaviour was the result of coercion or threats. In this contribution, drawing upon extensive empirical research and following a socio-legal paradigm, I first explore the criminalization of people on the move in relation to migrant smuggling charges in the years following the so-called 2014–2015 refugee crisis and discuss the impact on their rights. Second, I tackle the issue from a policy perspective, considering three potential EU/national policy reforms and the ways in which they could successfully address an existing policy problem. Such reforms vary in scope, from a damage limitation logic to a fully fledged change of paradigm, and the three can be described as follows: alignment of EU and national frameworks with the United Nations Protocol against migrant smuggling; a more significant differentiation between migrant smuggling and the facilitation of undocumented migration; and an explicit exoneration from criminal liability for people on the move accused of migrant smuggling. This article presents innovative insights, providing on the one hand an up-to-date empirical understanding of this form of criminalization of people on the move and, on the other, extensive reflections on the way in which policy reforms could prevent it.