Susan Thieme

Sustaining Livelihoods in Multi‐local Settings: Possible Theoretical Linkages Between Transnational Migration and Livelihood Studies

Worldwide, an increasing number of people are diversifying their income sources through migration. This mobility in most cases involves only parts of the family migrating, and this results in peoples livelihoods taking on a multi‐local dimension. Scholars have been studying this increasing mobility and multi‐locality by applying either a livelihoods approach or one of transnational migration, but they rarely combine the two. However, one major criticism of both approaches is that they do not make the link to other existing social theories and do not therefore permit any fundamental analysis of the relationship between the subject and society, the power relations within a society and the changes human mobility effects to power relations. To address this criticism, I shall discuss existing innovative research and propose Bourdieus Theory of Practice as a means to fill this theoretical gap.

Coping on Women’s Backs Social Capital-Vulnerability Links through a Gender Lens

This article aims to conceptualize the gendered interface between social capital and vulnerability. It emphasizes Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of social capital embedded in his Theory of Practice as a fruitful analytical device for this intersection. The authors’ conceptual thoughts are based on a review of the literature on the role of migration-related social networks from mainly diverse Asian contexts and empirical fieldwork in South and Central Asia.Processes of migration are embedded in social networks, more recently conceptualised as social capital, from sending households to migrants’ formal and informal associations at their destinations. These processes are often assumed to reduce individuals, households and economies’ vulnerabilities and thus attract policy-makers’ attention to migration management. The paper aims to conceptualise the gendered interface between social capital and vulnerability. It utilises Bourdieu’s notion of social capital as an analytical starting point. To illuminate our conceptual thoughts we refer to empirical examples from migration research from various Asian countries. Bourdieu’s theory highlights the social construction of gendered vulnerability. It goes beyond that by identifying the investment in symbolic capital of female honour as an indirect investment in social and, ultimately, economic capital. This gender-differentiated unequal investment and these capitals’ incomplete fungibility, though, makes women not just indirect members of social networks but mere objects contributing as ‘symbolic currency’ within them, often without being able to capitalise on the very relations. Based on Bourdieu’s theory, we suggest a shift from the investigation of women’s exclusion from and gender inequality within social networks to an analysis of masculine domination. It appears to be directly associated with the degree of vulnerability that women experience.

Living in Transition How Kyrgyz Women Juggle Their Different Roles in a Multi-local Setting

Abstract The major destinations for labor migrants from rural southern Kyrgyzstan are Russia, Kazakhstan and Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. As well as searching for better income, younger men and women also migrate for educational reasons and to escape from traditions such as early marriage. Although these migration processes make both women and men vulnerable, women face particular forms of vulnerability that intersect with one another. Middle-aged migrating women do experience a devaluation of their education and struggle to handle the multiple roles and expectations of being breadwinner, mother, wife and daughterin- law, supporting the older and young generation left behind. The youngest generation, born during this transitional period since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, faces its own challenges of trying to take advantage of economic liberalization. Using an approach, which views the multi-local settings of families from women’s perspectives, this article provides insights into perceptions and experiences of migration and their consequences for different generations.

Financial self-help associations among Far West Nepalese labor migrants in Delhi, India

Labor migration to India is the most important source of income for people in Far West Nepal. To better understand the effects of labor migration, a research analyzing why and how migrants invest their money in financial self-help organizations was undertaken. Fieldwork was conducted in the communities of origin in Nepal and migrant communities in India. Based on the study, the paper provides an overview of the existing financial self-help associations, their strengths and weaknesses, accessibility and possibilities of benefits and losses for the migrants and their families. The major conclusion is that migration helps to improve income or security but can also undermine a households financial situation by perpetuating debt and dependency.

An International Degree, Social Ties and Return: When International Graduates Make a Career Back Home in Kyrgyzstan

Student mobility is increasing worldwide, and Kyrgyzstan is no exception. This study looks at students who returned after their degree and highlights the increasing transnational, networked character of professionals, emphasizing not only the phys ical presence of migrants, but also the value of knowledge transfer. Transnationalism can be maintained without moving physically, for example through interaction with international donor agencies in the country or through an in-depth application of the knowledge gained abroad. However, it is not just the education or cultural capital abroad that allows these students to make a successful return and position them selves in the labour market, but also their network or “place-based social capital”. The study also highlights the structural settings and socio-economic and political environments that influence the way skills and knowledge can be applied. Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-101523 Published Version Originally published at: Thieme, Susan (2014). An international degree, social ties and return: when international graduates make a career back home in Kyrgyzstan. Internationales Asienforum = International Quarterly for Asian Studies, 45(1-2):113-128. Internationales Asienforum, Vol. 45 (2014), No. 1-2, pp. 113-128 An International Degree, Social Ties and Return When International Graduates Make a Career Back Home in Kyrgyzstan

Institutional transition: Internal migration, the propiska, and post-socialist urban change in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, there has been remarkable enthusiasm for theorising how transitional processes have unfolded in post-socialist cities. In seeking to extend literature that uses the post-socialist condition as a tool for theory building, we draw attention to the ongoing processes of institutional change in post-socialist cities. In doing so, we reject a ‘top-down’ perspective and examine how these institutional transitions are shaped through processes of ‘domestication’, negotiation and contestation between different interest groups in the city. We develop our argument, by drawing attention to the local political debates surrounding the propiska in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The propiska developed throughout the Soviet Union to control internal migration and is still used today in a less restrictive form. By discussing our case study, we hope to foster attention towards the ongoing contested processes of institutional transition in post-socialist cities.

Educational consultants in Nepal: professionalization of services for students who want to study abroad

Abstract International student mobility increasingly constitutes a desirable livelihood strategy specifically for middle-class youth and their families in Nepal. Applying the notion of migration infrastructure hints at the fact that it is not just students who migrate, but constellations consisting of actors, regulations and technologies. Brokers, known as ‘educational consultants’, are actively mediating this process. Findings challenge the ambivalent image of the broker. Rather profit and social orientation often intersect in work routines. Negative cases initiated the foundation of a business association. The analysis of the operation of this association serves as example how educational agents work to professionalize their business and respond to their ambivalent reputation. They actively shape their role in the migration infrastructure to make their services irreplaceable so that they can remain in the market.

Negotiating one position: Switzerland at the Global Forum on Migration and Development

The paper explores intra-governmental processes in migration policy-making, using the example of Switzerland and examining its preparations for chairing the Global Forum on Migration and Development 2011. Switzerlands “one joint position”, presented at the forum, required intensive negotiations and cooperation between different Swiss federal offices. The paper highlights how and why Switzerland achieved this joint position. It analyses the intra-governmental tensions between national securitisation and global migration and development debates and how they were overcome. This experience of a “whole-of-government approach” offers an insight into politics underlying migration and development debates within donor countries, and its implications for global migration debates.

Banning women from migrating

This short essay is a summary of a longstanding research engagement on labour migration in South Asia by a group of Researchers from Switzerland and Nepal

Where to return to? Rural Urban Interlinkages in Times of Internal and International Migration

Economic and social activities of migrants transcend internal and international as well as rural and urban divides. Migration circuits are not bipolar but rather develop towards amulti-local network of family members putting into question “return” as an often assumed conclusion to a successful migration. This briefing explores the multi-local migration patterns of Kyrgyzstan’s mobile population placing return in a wider context and providing recommendations how to facilitate circular migration and ties to places of origin and new places of work and living.