Patterns of labour migration

Diversification

Globally, both the volume and patterns of economic migration have undergone important changes during the last decade.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Europe constitutes the region with the largest volume of migrant workers (27.5 million or 34%), followed by Asia with 22.1 million or 27% foreign labour. In Europe and elsewhere, demographic, economic and labour-market related trends have resulted in the increased demand for skilled foreigners (e.g. in the health and care sector) and the revival or intensification of temporary (‘guest worker’) migration schemes. At the same time, rising numbers of undocumented migrants working in lower skilled jobs, often in specific sectors, can be witnessed as for instance in the UK. Migrant workers’ specific location within labour markets and the temporary or undocumented nature of their migration status entail specific legal, social and economic constraints. This is likely to have implications also for rights advocacy by civil society organisations.

From a global perspective, we can observe a trend toward increasing diversification, resulting in highly stratified migratory movements. ‘Diversification’ can refer to intra-group differences as well as to inter-group differences (more nationalities have appeared on the migration ‘scene’ than before; there is also more diversity with regard to the temporal component: migrants of a specific nationality might migrate either on a long-term or short-term basis to the same destination; and immigrants engage in a diversity of socio-economic activities, ranging from being entrepreneurs to civil society advocates). In all of these roles, they make important contributions to society.

Diversification also plays out geographically: recent studies on newly arrived migrants in the UK have shown that the preponderance to concentrate in the South/Southeast of England is less noticeable today than in the 1990s and more migrants now reside and work in smaller towns and rural countries of the UK, including Wales. These changes can also be observed with regard to internal migration which shows a reverse trend from rural-to-urban involving increasingly urban to rural flows. All of these changes pose new challenges as well as opportunities to local communities, regional and national governments as well as to the im/migrants themselves.

Urban-rural migration

Keith Halfacree’s migration research interests, overlapping with other interests in rural studies and social theory, lie primarily in drawing out the diverse currents informing counter-urbanisation, promoting a cultural perspective on migration more generally, and appreciating how migration helps to structure institutions such as the family and place.

Three projects reflect this interest.

Going back-to-the-land in millennial Britain

A Leverhulme Trust funded project (August 2007-July 2009) with Dr Lewis Holloway (University of Hull) and Dr Larch Maxey (Swansea University), which is examining both the extent to which and the ways in which people involved in ‘back-to-the-land experiments’ interact on a daily basis with the land. To what extent do they get their hands dirty and how important is this work within their lives generally? We are outlining the characteristics of people attempting back-to-the-land experiments; discovering their motivations and underlying belief systems; investigating how much they ‘work the land’ on a daily basis; finding out the extent to which they develop deep relationships with the land, its animals, plants, soil, etc.; comparing and contrasting communal experiments with those at an individual household scale, and those starting today with those established in the 1960s/1970s; placing the lives, experiences and practices of back-to-the-landers within debates about the future of our countryside.

Alternative visions for the post-productivist countryside

Using in particular ideas drawn from the work of the late Henri Lefebvre, this ongoing project attempts to engage with debates about the changing structure of rural places, especially in the global North.

The rural within counterurbanisation

This is a longstanding project that seeks to draw out the cultural representations of the rural in the UK and elsewhere and to show how they are linked to and even underpin the migration-led practice of counterurbanisation. This project also underpins research efforts both to expand what academics understand by ‘counter urbanisation’ and to promote an explicitly cultural understanding of migration.

For further information contact Keith Halfacree

Temporary and Agency work of European Migrants in the UK

TEMPO

Swansea University together with Prof. Stephen Drinkwater (University of Roehampton) is developing a programme of research focused on Temporary and Agency work of Eastern Europeans in the UK. There has been a large increase in the number of migrant workers entering the UK in recent years. This has particularly been the case following EU enlargement in 2004, with the accession of eight Central and Eastern Countries (commonly referred to as the A8 or the EUA8). Migrant workers from Poland in particular, the biggest of the EUA8 countries, have arrived in very high numbers in the wake of the decision to allow migrants from these countries to access the UK labour market more or less without restriction. Moreover, a relatively high proportion of this migration has been undertaken on a temporary basis, with EUA8 migrants often spending short periods of time working in the UK and engaging in a variety of temporary forms of migration activity including migrating on a circular or seasonal basis. The project aims to use an array of existing and new datasets to explore the causes and consequences of temporary migration from the perspective of both source and the destination countries.

For further information contact Stephen Drinkwater