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This open access book analyses the strategies of migration intermediaries from the public and private sectors in Switzerland to select, attract, and retain highly skilled migrants who represent value to them. It reveals how state and economic actors define “wanted immigrants” and provide them with privileged access to the Swiss territory and labour market. The analysis draws on an ethnographic study conducted in the French-speaking Lake Geneva area and the German-speaking northwestern region of Switzerland between 2014 and 2018. It shows how institutional actors influence which resources are available to different groups of newcomers by defining and dividing migrants according to constru...
This open access book provides insight on current patterns of migration in Switzerland, which fall along a continuum from long-term and permanent to more temporary and fluid. These patterns are shaped by the interplay of legal norms, economic drivers and societal factors. The various dimensions of this Migration-Mobility Nexus are investigated by means of newly collected survey data: the Migration-Mobility Survey. The book covers different aspects of life in the host country, including the family dimension, the labour market and political participation as well as social integration. The book also takes into account the chronological dimension of migration by considering the migrants’ arrival, their stay, and their expectations regarding return. Through applying conclusions drawn from the Swiss context to the migration literature on other European and high-income countries, this book contributes to new knowledge on current migration processes in high-income countries. As such it will be a valuable reference work to scholars and students in migration, social scientists and policy makers.
Transforming the Politics of Mobility and Migration in Aotearoa New Zealand is a future-focused edited collection that formulates alternative paradigms that can lead to a more just and ethical politics of mobility and migration in Aotearoa New Zealand. Examining a variety of topics, the book addresses the challenges of structural discrimination, integration and migrant rights framed within larger regional and global concerns. Collectively, the contributors advance perspectives on social justice and migrant rights, specifically addressing issues of ethics, collective well-being and solidarities. The collection brings together leading and early career scholars paired with practitioners in the migrations sector. Developing conceptual knowledge in migration studies, it fills a gap in the sparse literature on the politics of migration in Aotearoa New Zealand. While theoretically engaged and of value to the research community, the book also follows recent calls to better communicate the complexities of migration to policy makers, with accessible chapters that address a range of issues faced by migrants and speak to a wide audience.
Migration, mobility, and globalization are transforming ways of working and living. Business activities, relationships and a sense of belonging are often not tied to any one place. This book explores biographies of highly mobile startup founders who often run startups that have been called „born global“. It describes how they move, how they orientate and perceive themselves, and how migration and mobility play a role beyond the physical act of ‘moving’. Presenting current ethnographic research, the book critically discusses approaches in migration and mobility studies and the research field of the „migration of the highly skilled“.
Selecting migrants based on skill has become a widely practised migration policy in many countries around the world. Since the late 20th century, research on 'skilled' and 'highly skilled' migration has raised important questions about the value and ethics of skill-based labour mobility. More recent research has begun to question the concept of skill and skill categorisation in both government policy and academic research. Taking the view that 'skills' are socially constructed categories and highly malleable concepts in practice, this edited volume centres the discussion on the following questions: Who are the arbitrators of skill? What constitutes skill? And how is skill constructed in the ...
Moving, slowing down, or watching others moving allows people to cross physical, symbolic, and temporal boundaries. Exploring the imaginative power of liminality that makes this possible, Liminal Moves looks at the (im)mobilities of three groups of people - street monkey performers in Japan, adolescents writing about migrants in Italy, and men accompanying their partners in Switzerland for work. The book explores how, for these ‘travelers’, the interplay of mobility and immobility creates a ‘liminal hotspot’: a condition of suspension and ambivalence as they find themselves caught between places, meanings and times.
Wie gestalten sich die Arbeits- und Lebenswelten von jungen UNO-Beschäftigten in Zeiten des Postfordismus? Ausgehend von der Perspektive junger Beschäftigter an den UNO-Standorten in Genf und Wien befasst sich das Buch mit der zunehmenden Flexibilisierung und Arbeitsplatzunsicherheit. Die Studie legt ein besonderes Augenmerk auf mikrostrukturelle Machtpraktiken und die individuelle Agency. Sie zeigt, wie UNO-Beschäftigte ihre persönlichen Erzählungen mit dem in den vergangenen Jahren und Jahrzehnten kreierten Organisationsbild in Einklang bringen, und in welchem Wechselspiel die prekären Beschäftigungsverhältnisse mit einem moralischen Überlegenheitsgefühl stehen. Dabei wird deutlich, dass diese Entwicklungen keinen Widerspruch darstellen, sondern zwei Seiten derselben Medaille sind. Das Buch zeigt am Beispiel der UNO auf, wie flexible Beschäftigungsverhältnisse in Zeiten des kognitiv- und affektbasierten Kapitalismus auf Biographien wirken. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Stretching 1,200 kilometres across six countries, the colossal mountains of the Alps dominate Europe, geographically and historically. Enlightenment thinkers felt the sublime and magisterial peaks were the very embodiment of nature, Romantic poets looked to them for divine inspiration, and Victorian explorers tested their ingenuity and courage against them. Located at the crossroads between powerful states, the Alps have played a crucial role in the formation of European history, a place of intense cultural fusion as well as fierce conflict between warring nations. A diverse range of flora and fauna have made themselves at home in this harsh environment, which today welcomes over 100 million tourists a year. Leading Alpine scholar Jon Mathieu tells the story of the people who have lived in and been inspired by these mountains and valleys, from the ancient peasants of the Neolithic to the cyclists of the Tour de France. Far from being a remote and backward corner of Europe, the Alps are shown by Mathieu to have been a crucible of new ideas and technologies at the heart of the European story.
Ancien régime France did not have a unified law. Legal relations of the people were governed by a disorganized amalgam of norms, including provincial and local customs (coutumes), elements of Roman law and canon law, royal edicts and ordinances, and judicial decisions. All these sources of law coexisted with little apparent internal coherence. The multiplicity of laws and the fragmentation of jurisdiction were defining features of the monarchical era. Legal historians have focused on popular custom and its metamorphosis into customary law, which covered a broad spectrum of what we call today private law. This book sets forth the evolution of law in late medieval and early modern France, fro...
"Beginning with Cicero and Varro and ending with Statius and Pliny the Younger, this chapter offers a chronological investigation of the ways in which real and literary gardens developed from the first century BCE to the first century CE as a means of elite masculine self-representation and the reactions of elite Roman men to the increased social and cultural power of villa and horti estates and their grounds. Gardens served as powerful symbols of wealth and as creative displays of the cultural aspirations of their owners in ways that challenged traditional definitions of gardens and of Roman manliness. Since these large-scale 'gardens' are primarily associated with leisure (otium), authors are concerned with describing and justifying their activities in these sites as befitting Roman masculine ideals. We can trace a change in attitude towards leisure and the private display of wealth, and consequently gardens, largely attributed to changes in the socio-political circumstances of the Roman elite, in the works of Statius and his contemporary Pliny the Younger, who use laudatory descriptions of extensive villas and grounds as a means of expressing social and literary power"--