Masja van Meeteren

Striving for a Better Position: Aspirations and the Role of Cultural, Economic, and Social Capital for Irregular Migrants in Belgium

Drawing upon 120 semi-structured interviews with irregular migrants in Belgium, this article focuses on their aspirations and the resources needed in order to realize these. It is demonstrated that specific aspirations require specific forms of capital. A typology is constructed, based on three types of aspirations with corresponding resources. First, investment migrants, who aspire to return and invest in upward social mobility in their country of origin, require job competencies (cultural capital) and social leverage (social capital). Second, legalization migrants, who aspire to obtain legal residence, require different forms of capital, depending on the marriage market they are active in. Third, settlement migrants, aiming at residing legally or illegally in the receiving society, require both social support and social leverage (combined social capital). These findings indicate it is important to adopt a contextualized approach studying the mechanisms through which various forms of capital lead to different outcomes for irregular migrants.

Understanding Different Post-Return Experiences

Studies aimed at understanding different post-return experiences point at various factors that are involved. In this article, we show the importance of striving for a contextualized understanding of post-return experiences as different factors appear to be important in different cases. Our study sets out to seek the value of the theory of preparedness proposed by Cassarino and simultaneously contribute to further contextualization of this theory through a qualitative study conducted in Morocco. Drawing on 44 qualitative interviews with a diverse set of returned migrants we scrutinize how mechanisms related to intersections between factors commonly found to be important in the literature take shape to make different factors important in different cases. For example, we show how the ability to keep transnational contacts with the destination country after return adds to positive post-return experiences, but only for migrants with specific return motives. In doing so, this article contributes to theory specification and contextualization.

Beyond community: An analysis of social capital and the social networks of Brazilian migrants in Amsterdam

This article scrutinizes the social networks and the social capital invested within these, of a relatively new and understudied immigrant group in the North European context. The study shows how the social networks of Brazilian immigrants in Amsterdam are segmented along strong dividing lines, especially surrounding legal status. This segmentation has different outcomes for migrants, and within these segments, variation also exists. By analysing in-depth interviews with 30 Brazilian immigrants in Amsterdam, the study finds that a Brazilian community does not exist, and that assistance, non-assistance and a commercialization of social relations all take place at the same time among the social networks of Brazilians in Amsterdam. The analysis also uncovers some of the mechanisms related to these processes and hence adds relevant insights to the literature that studies the contexts in which immigrant social networks provide for social mobility and the contexts in which such networks do not.

Living Different Dreams: Aspirations and Social Activities of Irregular Migrants in the Low Countries

The limited literature on the social activities irregular migrants undertake in their leisure time is dichotomised around two positions. The dominant view holds that irregular migrants are busy surviving and have neither time nor opportunity to engage in recreational activities or to be geographically mobile. Challenged by this one-sided perspective, a few scholars oppose this image and describe the various social activities which their respondents engage in. Drawing on participant observation and 164 interviews with irregular migrants, this article demonstrates that there is more variety in the social activities of irregular migrants than is suggested by this dichotomised debate. In addition, it shows that an approach that takes the aspirations of irregular migrants as the central focus of analysis provides understanding of this diversity in their social lives. Future research on the lives of irregular migrants should therefore take their aspirations into account.The limited literature on the social activities irregular migrants undertake in their leisure time is dichotomised around two positions. The dominant view holds that irregular migrants are busy surviving and have neither time nor opportunity to engage in recreational activities or to be geographically mobile. Challenged by this one-sided perspective, a few scholars oppose this image and describe the various social activities which their respondents engage in. Drawing on participant observation and 164 interviews with irregular migrants, this article demonstrates that there is more variety in the social activities of irregular migrants than is suggested by this dichotomised debate. In addition, it shows that an approach that takes the aspirations of irregular migrants as the central focus of analysis provides understanding of this diversity in their social lives. Future research on the lives of irregular migrants should therefore take their aspirations into account.

New Roles for Social Networks in Migration? Assistance in Brazilian Migration to Portugal and the Netherlands

The crucial role played by social networks as facilitators of migration has been well established in migration theory (Massey et al., 1993; Massey et al., 1998; Gurak and Caces, 1992; Fawcett, 1989; Tsuda, 1999; Pellegrino, 2004). They have been conceptualised as the ties that link potential migrants in the place of origin to current or previous migrants in the destination countries (Curran and Rivero-Fuentes, 2003, p. 289). Migrant networks are the ‘sets of interpersonal ties that connect migrants, former migrant and non-migrants in origin and destination areas through ties of kinship, friendship and shared community origin’ (Massey et al., 2005, p. 42). Important feedback mechanisms are generated within these networks in the form of information, resources and support that reduce the costs and risks of migration, thereby contributing to facilitate it. Through these feedback mechanisms, migration becomes ‘a path-dependent process because inter-personal relations across space facilitate subsequent migration’ (de Haas, 2010, p. 1589). According to the DiMaggio-Garip typology used by Garip and Asad (2013, pp. 6–7) and presented in Bakewell, Kubal and Pereira (Chapter 1), it is especially through the social mechanism they define as social facilitation or social learning that ‘network peers (typically family or community members) provide useful information or assistance that reduces the costs associated with migration or increases the benefits that might be expected from it’.