Jennifer McGarrigle

Islam in urban spaces: The residential incorporation and choices of Muslims in Lisbon

ABSTRACT This paper examines processes of residential settlement and incorporation of Lisbons Muslims arriving first in the post-colonial period and later as international labour migrants. Issues related with Islam in the city are under-researched and seen as unproblematic in Portugal due to lower levels of segregation and the contemporary narrative of Portuguese tolerance. Based on an analysis of the spatiality of Islam in the metropolitan area and the individual accounts of 102 Muslims, this paper explores processes of incorporation, residential choice and belonging. The fragmented mosaic of Muslim settlement in local communities shows the role that religion can play alongside culture in creating spaces of belonging producing multiple experiences of the city. In three different localities—the inner city, an inner suburb and on the urban margin—I investigate the ways in which the cumulative action and agency of Muslim migrants over time transform local spaces and emerging structures for consecutive migrants. This paper argues that urban diversity and temporality provide a lens through which to reconceptualise the traditional choice and constraint debate to better understand the complexity of minority residential patterns and their outcomes.

Emplaced mobilities: Lisbon as a translocality in the migration journeys of Punjabi Sikhs to Europe

ABSTRACT The arrival in Portugal of recent migrants from the Indian subcontinent is normally a secondary movement from within Europe tied to the search for a regular pathway into legal integration in the EU. However, as favourable migration policy is not paired with easy economic integration onward migration is common. We argue that such complex migration strategies cannot be amply explored through an origin–destination model; instead we suggest that a translocal perspective provides a framework to examine connections and experiences of emplacement in places of passage/reception like Lisbon. Through a qualitative study of the migration journeys and emplaced practices of Punjabi migrants in Lisbon, our findings highlight relationality between multiple scales, elucidating how agency and structure interact at micro and macro levels in shaping migration experiences and outcomes. We show how the materiality of local community structures ensures the navigation of daily life in the city and provides pathways toward legality contributing to wider mobility regimes. Moreover, we illustrate how onward migration represents an individual strategy to realise different aspects of integration in other EU destinations challenging nation-state-bound understandings of citizenship/settlement and integration.

The Economic Crisis as a Feedback-Generating Mechanism? Brazilian and Ukrainian Migration to Portugal

Migration researchers have demonstrated the central function that feedback plays in the perpetuation of migration flows between a specific origin and destination region (Massey et al., 1998; de Haas, 2010; Mabogunje, 1970). Feedback mechanisms are the changes in the constituting elements, for example organisations, strategies or flows of people, which are fed back into the migration system, regulating its functions (Bakewell, 2014). Thus, the system’s behaviour is modified by the information that is incorporated back by the actors, nurturing, or not, the continuation of the migration process due to its impact in the areas of both origin and reception (Mabogunje, 1970; Massey et al., 1998; Bilsborrow and Zlotnik, 1995). The literature has pointed to the central role of migrant networks in transmitting feedback. These are a form of social capital composed of “institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition or in other words, to membership in a group” (de Haas, 2010, p. 1589). As Massey et al. (1998) explain, the support provided by informal migrant networks for successive migrants decreases the costs of migration, easing the process of migrating and settling in the destination.

Moroccans in Portugal: The Role of Networks with the Home Country in Migration and Integration Processes

Moroccans are a recent and small migrant group in Portugal, yet they are significantly represented in the agricultural sector. Over 30% are concentrated in Algarve, the most southern region of the country with a more recent presence in Lisbon. Given their recent presence in Portugal, little is known about their process of integration or their migration experiences. This chapter has two main objectives. First, we provide a reading of the characteristics of Moroccan migrants in the Algarve and their integration. Second, we explore the role that network ties have in perpetuating migration to Portugal. In particular, we examine the role of current migrants in providing feedback and assistance to new/potential migrants considering migrating to Portugal. According to migration theory, migration increases over time as networks and social structures are established to sustain it (Massey et al. 1998). Such ties link migrants and non-migrants between origin and destination countries and may be helpful for organizing the process of migration and integration. To examine these processes, we draw on a survey conducted with 207 Moroccan migrants in the Algarve and 51 semi-structured interviews with Moroccan migrants and key informants conducted in the Algarve and Lisbon regions in the scope of the THEMIS (2011) and MEDCHANGe projects (2014/2015). Our findings identify important factors that have structured Moroccan migration including collective hiring schemes in agriculture and social networks. However, the effects of the economic and financial crisis seem to be resulting in stabilization or even decline of the migratory flow.

What motivates international homebuyers? Investor to lifestyle ‘migrants’ in a tourist city

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the economic crisis, Lisbon has ascended on to the urban tourism and international property market with a velocity that is transforming the city. Investor immigration programmes and fiscal policy have met their objective of attracting wealthy third country and intra-EU migrants to invest in housing in the city. To date, there is a dearth of empirical and theoretical analyses that explicate the motivations and aspirations of international overseas residential investors. Situated at the intersection of the literature on investment and lifestyle migration, and based on 20 in-depth interviews with experts in the intermediary elite economy, our objective is to understand buyer motivations and the current attraction of the city. We present our results in the form of a typology of new transnational urban homeowners revealing complex forms of mobility that intersect in the city. Our results reveal the continued importance, both directly and indirectly, of lifestyle motivations related with quality of life, culture, amenities and climate. Yet, economic motivations are the most significant, even if diverse, among the residential investor typologies with some seeking a safe haven and others geoarbritage or income optimization. Moreover, our results suggest that the success of government incentives (immigrant investor programmes or tax exemptions) to attract foreign second home buyers are dependent on prospects of city economic growth, rent legislation and the perceived attractiveness of the city/region for tourists making them difficult to replicate across contexts.

Diversifying Motivations of International Second Home Owners

During the last two decades, it has become increasingly popular to buy a second home, with a significant number of these acquired abroad. Several factors explain this trend, including: general growth in households’ income; more leisure time, longer holidays, part time employment; more flexible employment including remote working; the housing wealth effect; lower barriers of distance; greater mobility; the liberalisation of financial markets; domestic technology innovations; and new forms of hyper consumption (Paris, 2009). The demand for second homes by foreign buyers in Portugal has been increasing since 2013, in some cases surpassing pre-crisis demand. The motives of this new wave of foreign buyers in Portugal seem to have undergone significant changes. Before the crisis, the key motivations driving second home ownership by foreign buyers were leisure or lifestyle (holiday and or retirement) and investment (to let investment and resale potential and investment diversification) (King, Warnes and Williams, 2000; Janoschka and Haas, 2014). While increasing international investment in the Portuguese property market has attracted media and public attention, there are few studies that try to understand new buyer motivations. Similarly, there is a lack of both empirical and theoretical analyses that elucidate the way in which foreign second homeowners affect housing market dynamics. This paper aims to fill this gap through a comparative triangulated analysis of pre- and post- crisis motivations. We draw on a unique survey sample collected in 2006-7 of British overseas second homeowners. To understand the processes instigating post-crisis shifts, we draw on qualitative fieldwork conducted in 2016/2017 including semi-structured interviews with real estate professionals and other key actors. Alongside new motivations, our results reveal the continued importance of lifestyle mobility related with quality of life, lower costs of life, proximity, climate and security (Sardinha, 2013; Torkington, 2012, O´Reilly, 2007). Today, however, new incentives and strategies, related with taxation and immigration policy, are driving the increasing trend of second home buying in Portugal. We conclude that macro and micro factors related with changing economic and political factors provide the structural opportunities for a diversifying group of residential tourists, investors and migrants in Portugal and reflect critically on the sustainability of this trend.

Modes of neighbourhood embeddedness in three multi-ethnic neighbourhoods in Lisbon: an exploratory analysis

The role of urban neighbourhoods in social cohesion has been extensively debated in recent times, both in academic and political circles. This paper explores different modes of coexistence and neighbourhood embeddedness in three multi-ethnic neighbourhoods in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Using factor and cluster analysis, with data collected in a survey of the native and immigrant population and drawing upon complementary qualitative data from focus groups with key actors in each neighbourhood, five modes of neighbourhood embeddedness are identified. These modes serve to enhance our understanding of the nature of social interactions and social networks between and within groups. A geographical perspective is adopted incorporating possible effects relating to the characteristics of the neighbourhood as well as the socio-ethnic and demographic profiles of the respondents.