Migrant worker centers: contending with downgrading in the low-wage labor market

Mass migration to major USA cities is reworking patterns of ethnic jobholding and labor market segmentation. Employers in a variety of industries have turned to recent migrants, many of whom are not authorized to work in the USA, as a stable labor supply for low-wage jobs. As a result, many migrant workers enter urban economies through precarious jobs in low-wage industries and the informal economy where they often endure routine violations of labor and employment laws. This paper examines the activities of a “migrant worker center” in improving wages and working conditions in migrant labor markets. Through a case study of a worker center located in a port-of-entry immigrant neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side, we examine the geographies of the low-wage labor market and the problems that have arisen for workers who hold jobs that effectively exist beyond the reach of government regulation. We argue that migrant worker centers will likely emerge as a key resource for workers who are drawn to global cities by the promise of economic opportunity yet confront harsh conditions in the local labor markets in which they are employed.     

Social Network Approach to Understand the Ethnic Economy: A Theoretical Discourse<Superscript>1</Superscript>

In this paper we suggest how social network analysis, in contrast to looking at physical space, can be used to trace the social and economic location of ethnic enclaves. Taking skilled workers immigrating to Canada from China as an example, we analyze critically how split labor market theories describe materialist and structural factors that determine immigrants’ limited options. Cultural theories play up immigrants’ interest in using their cultural resources to pull themselves ahead. We propose that social network analysis as a single framework can bring together elements from materialist–structural and cultural theories. The position of people and firms in these networks gives us a view of the kinds of jobs immigrants get and the businesses they set up. To understand the ethnic economy, we discuss how networks of social and economic relations intersect each other. By seeing the ethnic economy embedded in social networks, we can provide a more general explanation of the social space of the ethnic economy in contrast to its physical location. We use three cases of ethnic entrepreneurs to illustrate how the social and economic relations locate their businesses in the enclave and how they are also linked to the mainstream economy. ¹This paper has benefitted from the critical clarifications of Chiu Luk and an anonymous reviewer, and the talented editing of Allen Sutterfield. Lynn Xu Liping helped on an earlier draft.     

Social networks and undocumented Mozambican migration to South Africa

This paper analyses the social networks which facilitate and sustain undocumented migration from Mozambique to South Africa. A key contention is that the migrant social networks are not limited to a spatially bounded area; transcend geography, location and territory; can be considered as spatial conveyors of social capital; and operate transnationally at three different locations: in the sending communities, on borders and in the destination areas. In the sending communities, interpersonal relationships are based on bonds of kinship, and friendship through which the migrants get moral and material support for the movement. At the borders migrants establish connections with border agents, guides, and conveyors who support them in entering South Africa and provide transportation to their preferred destinations. At the destination areas the newcomers have also counted on the bonds of kinship and friendship among former immigrants, who assist them on their arrival with accommodation and food as well as in the process of getting jobs and documentation. In South Africa undocumented migrants were subjected to high levels of xenophobia, exploitation and deportation, structural, sociopolitical forces against which social networks are largely ineffective. However, through the social networks the undocumented Mozambican labour migration to South Africa has become a self-sustained circular process that is difficult to control.     

Foreign minorities from developing countries in Madrid

Spain, which has always been a land of emigrants, is currently a centre of attraction for immigrants, as are other countries in Mediterranean Europe. The proportion is not as high as in other countries with a longer tradition of immigration. In this survey we selected the six nationalities which provide the highest numbers of immigrants from the developing world, and which have the greatest racial or cultural contrast to the native population. We analyse their structural features, whether or not immigrants from the same country are collect in the Madrid Metropolitan Area, the recent mobility of the immigrant population, and the evolution of immigration since the Administration carried out a regularization process, as well as Spaniards' opinion of foreign immigrants.     

Introduction: immigrants and transnational experiences in world cities

Today, in the early 21st century, goods, information, services, financial capital and human beings are flowing across national borders at an ever-accelerating rate. In this context, transnationalism has become a key paradigm in the study of international migration and urbanism. This theme issue on “Immigrants and transnational experiences in world cities” explores these new trends in contemporary international migration, with respect to transnational communities and geographies, in articles grouped according to four themes: international migration and world cities; highly-skilled and low-skilled immigrants; economic impacts; and immigrant experiences in world cities.     

The influence of the early formation of human and social capital on inventiveness: perspectives from a Swedish case study

Analysing life-history narratives of Swedish inventors, this paper explores how family background influences upon the formation of social and human capital and demonstrates how these capital resources affect the creative abilities of inventors. The main findings of the paper are that the socio-economic position one is born into has important implications for the development of human and social capital, and that the nature and extent of an inventor’s capital assets strongly influences the nature of his or her inventiveness. Inventors who come from higher socio-economic backgrounds have greater endowments of formal human capital than those from more modest backgrounds, and the social networks they use in their inventive work link them to other actors with human capital endowments similar to their own. Therefore, inventors with high human capital endowments will benefit from their social networks, as they constitute important means of gaining access to innovative knowledge and business advice. In contrast, inventors from lower socio-economic backgrounds with limited formal human capital resources are more likely to have actors in their social networks who themselves possess limited formal human capital. However, these inventors may become prosperous inventors if they are endowed with great social capital resources from their formative backgrounds because, for inventors, high endowments of social capital can compensate for a lack of formal human capital.     

Recent immigration to Italy: Character,causes and consequences

During the 1970s Italy changed from being a country of mass emigration to one of mass immigration, taking over from Germany the role of Europe's main recipient of immigrants from less developed countries. By 1991 the officially registered foreign population in Italy stood at 860,000; however, clandestine migrants push the real figure above 1 million. Italy was generally unprepared for this immigration and policy has been slow to evolve. Analysis of residence permit data show that the immigrants come increasingly from Third World, especially African, countries, and that there is a relative concentration in the north of Italy. One third of the immigrants are Moslem. Employment data are scarce but indicate that around two–thirds are involved in low-grade service sector activities (street-trading, domestic service, hotel work etc.). There is a high degree of occupational specialisation amongst certain national groups (Senegalese street-hawkers, Tunisian fishermen, Filipino domestics etc.). The immaturity of the immigration is also revealed by marked gender and age assymetry. Five main causes are suggested as being behind the immigration: ease of entry; Italy's increasing prosperity; segmentation of the Italian labour market, opening up specific niches for immigrant employment; dominance of push factors from the countries of origin; and the demographic collapse in Italy. Within Italy, the reaction to immigration has not been very favourable. Opinion polls indicate that Italians have mainly negative and stereotyped views of immigrants and there is disturbing evidence of growing racism. Further inflows of immigrants are likely, whatever policies Italy attempts to put in place.     

Government policies and international migration of skilled workers in Sub-Saharan Africa

Since a central concern of the geography of international migration is to consider how and why stocks and flows of migrants are variable from country to country, the study of skilled international migration must address policies of individual governments towards local and foreign skilled workers. These policies are most evident in immigration and emigration legislation, regulations and practice, but also, less directly but often of more fundamental significance, in policies in education, manpower planning and towards wages and salaries. In Sub-Saharan Africa there is a wide range of experience of recent skilled international migration, driven by direct and indirect policies pursued by individual governments since independence. At an intercontinental scale the deleterious effects of the global division of labour have not merely been passively accepted; within the continent new patterns of skilled-labour migration have been created by increasingly differentiated economic performance and political relationships. A case study of Kenya, a country of small current net immigration of skilled workers, is used to specify some of the processes that establish the relationships between immigration and emigration policies, and how these have been mediated by conditions for skilled workers. The concluding section of this paper sets the general experience and that of the Kenyan case study in the wider context of the role of the state as a factor in the geography of skilled international migration in the Third World.     

Immigrants and world cities: from the hyper-diverse to the bypassed

A relationship between globalization, cities and immigration is increasingly apparent. Whether one is trying to understand Dubai, Toronto, or London, immigrants are culturally, economically, and spatially changing cities in significant ways. This study compares the roster of world cities with that of major urban immigrant destinations. The number of major urban immigrant destinations is growing due to the acceleration of immigration driven by income differentials, social networks and various state and local policies to recruit skilled and unskilled labor and replenish population. This study will present urban-level data on the foreign-born for 145 metropolitan areas of over 1 million people. It will focus on the world’s 19 metropolitan areas with over 1 million foreign-born residents. Analysis of the data suggests that there is a range of destination types. Although not all world cities are immigrant gateways, many are.     

The power of people: social capital’s role in recovery from the 1995 Kobe earthquake

Despite the regularity of disasters, social science has only begun to generate replicable knowledge about the factors which facilitate post-crisis recovery. Building on the broad variation in recovery rates within disaster-affected cities, I investigate the ability of Kobe’s nine wards to repopulate after the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan. This article uses case studies of neighborhoods in Kobe alongside new time-series, cross-sectional data set to test five variables thought to influence recovery along with the relatively untested factor of social capital. Controlling for damage, population density, economic conditions, inequality and other variables thought important in past research, social capital proves to be the strongest and most robust predictor of population recovery after catastrophe. This has important implications both for public policies focused on reconstruction and for social science more generally.     

社会资本定量评价方法及应用——以黑河流域为例

社会资本是促使人们参加集体活动的规范、网络和社会制度.参考国际上社会资本定量评价方法,利用问卷调查的形式,通过构造认知型社会资本和结构型社会资本相结合的社会资本指数,对黑河流域各地区微观水平的社会资本作了相对评价.黑河流域社会资本整体水平不高,只有7%乡镇的社会资本指数在80以上的,32%的乡镇在50~80之间,61%的乡镇在50以下.整体上黑河流域社会资本水平上游高于中下游,认知型社会资本高于结构型社会资本,城市社会资本水平高于农村,经济条件好的地方社会资本水平高于经济条件差的地方.研究为进一步探讨水资源社会化管理奠定了基础.     

Economic refugees in post-apartheid South Africa – Assets or liabilities? Implications for progressive migration policies

While South Africa's political transformation has been lauded internationally, one of the greatest challenges facing the post-apartheid democratic government is undocumented immigration. There has been a xenophobic tendency to stigmatise immigrants, particularly those from other African countries as criminals, as people who undermine economic development and take jobs from locals. The aim of this paper is to critically review changing policies towards undocumented migration in post-apartheid South Africa. More specifically, the paper will present a historical context to migration; question whether there are millions of illegal immigrants in South Africa; identify reasons for the increasing influx of migrants into the country; analyse the rise of xenophobia in the Republic; discuss problems associated with migrants; and assess changing immigration policies. The main reason for leaving their home countries was a lack of employment opportunities. Therefore the migrants could be regarded as economic refugees. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Family strategies in a neoliberal world: Korean immigrants in Winnipeg

South Korean immigration to Canada has increased since the East Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s. Korean immigrants in Winnipeg chose the city for many reasons: the introduction of the Provincial Nominee Program, structural changes in the home country, and individual family strategies to provide better educational opportunities for their children. This article examines how changes in the current wave of globalization, at both global and local scale, have affected the migration of Koreans to Winnipeg, Canada and how individual households chose their immigration destination. This study contributes to understanding of the less popular immigrant destinations of Canada using a multiscalar analysis that includes household level. In addition to economic purposes and children’s education, changes of life style can be an important reason for immigrant location choice. Overall, the neoliberal economy in South Korea has pushed many Koreans to move to other countries, and the globalization of the Canadian economy has pulled nomadic middle-class members from other countries.     

Industry-academe linkages in the Philippines: Embedding foreign investors,capturing institutions?

The global sourcing of services from developing countries has made human capital a key local asset for attracting foreign direct investment. This paper analyses to what extent individual companies engage in linkages and collaborations with universities and how the education sector responds to the new demands of the knowledge economy. Offshore services are generally recognised as ‘footloose’ investments with limited local linkages. A case study of industry-academe linkages in the growing business process outsourcing sector in the Philippines finds that foreign investors engage in active embedding and develop linkages with human resource providers, leading to increased territorial embeddedness. This paper investigates the kind of linkages created, which actors engage in them and their motivations, to understand the resulting implications for local economic development. Interviews with foreign investors and higher education institutions reveal that most collaboration is initiated by large call centre companies and focuses on entry-level skills development for their operations. I argue that multinational corporations have been able to capture local institutions and introduce changes in the education system to supply mainly lower-end skills. While increasing the available talent pool and raising the competitiveness for further investments, this presents challenges for upgrading into higher value-added services and potentially transforms the country into a dependent market economy.     

Global connectivity, local consumption, and Chinese immigrant experience

Acquiring consumer goods and services in the destination country signifies a different type of immigrant experience. This is especially pertinent in world cities where there is a strong presence of ethnic economies and where co-ethnic businesses and mainstream businesses compete against each other. The consumption pattern of immigrants is influenced not only by their pre-migration shopping habits, but also their post-migration transnational behaviour. In this paper, we focus on the consumption experience of Chinese immigrants in Toronto, which hosts one of the largest Chinese ethnic economies outside Asia. Based on a random survey and two focus group discussions, we explore how Chinese immigrants choose between ethnic Chinese and mainstream supermarkets, electronic stores and travel agencies. In theory, Chinese and non-Chinese stores providing similar goods and services are substitutes. The study however reveals intriguing results. Chinese and mainstream travel agencies are substitutes but Chinese and mainstream supermarkets and electronic stores are complements. Such differences reflect the importance of ethnicity and culture in immigrants’ consumption behaviour. The paper provides new evidence on immigrant integration in the domain of consumption and contributes a consumer perspective to the literature on ethnic economy and transnationalism.     

Gender, immigration policies and accreditation: valuing the skills of professional women migrants

Human capital is the most important form of wealth for a modern nation and countries with the most intellectual resources are achieving the highest rates of economic growth. In the drive for human capital, many industrialised countries are giving priority to policies aimed at attracting highly skilled immigrants. The number of skilled immigrants who settle permanently in these countries is not rising but there is a significant level of temporary movement of highly skilled labour from developing countries, particularly in information technology (IT), medicine, nursing and teaching. Women now account for an increased proportion of highly skilled migrants but there are still few analyses of their economic participation. Immigration selection and occupational entry policies are crucial for an understanding of the gendered experiences of migration for skilled migrants. This article draws together material from empirical work and reports/other literature on the situation facing professional women compared to men, both permanent and temporary, in the selection processes for migration and the post-arrival processes of accreditation and recognition.     

Ties that bind: State policy and migrant female domestic helpers in Singapore

Global economic restructuring has not only intensified the shift in reproductive work from the household to the market, but it has been predicated on the international mobility of labour to countries where locals are no longer willing to work in low-paying menial jobs. This paper focuses on Singapore as a country which has drawn upon female migrant workers from neighbouring developing countries to work as domestic helpers in Singapore such that the gainful entry of its own women into the formal economy has been facilitated. Drawing upon a range of secondary sources as well as field data, the paper demonstrates how state policies on labour migration in Singapore have played a crucial role in influencing the uneven employer-employee relationships that migrant female domestic helpers in Singapore households find themselves in. More generally, it argues that the availability of foreign domestic helpers in Singapore and the state discourse on the issue has contributed to perpetuating the patriarchal ideology of housework as women's work and of housework as non-work.     

Transnational ties and intra-immigrant group settlement experiences: A case study of Indian Bengalis and Bangladeshis in Toronto

Transnational theories have established that, after migrating to a new country, migrants often maintain their pre-existing social, economic, and political ties to their home country. The extent to which however, transnational institutional and social connections may affect the residential location and housing experiences of immigrant and refugee groups, and why and how these experiences differ within broadly defined immigrant groups such as the ‘South Asians’ remains unexplored. Building on transnational theory and previous research on the housing trajectories of new Canadians, this paper examines the housing experiences of two recently arrived ‘South Asian’ subgroups in Toronto–Indian Bengalis and Bangladeshis. By highlighting important intra-immigrant group differences, the study reveals how diverse transnational ties affect their neighbourhood choice and the type, tenure, and quality of housing when they first arrived in Toronto.     

Accelerated industrialization and employment opportunities in Malaysia

Malaysia is emerging as one of the most rapidly developing newly industrialized countries in the 1980s, mainly because it has pursued a strategy that is based on highly capital-intensive and export-oriented types of industries, financed by foreign capital and supported by a wide range of fiscal incentives. There has been, however, very little concern for the types and range of employment opportunities available. Based on unskilled labour, low wages and slow rates of employment absorption, this form of “industrialization-by-invitation” will in turn speed up processes or urbanization through rural-urban migration and create socio-economic problems of large city growth in the country.