Suchergebnisse

Freedom of circulation within the EU has made the borders inside the EU space less important for citizens, for those who have a legal status or come from visa-free countries. For others, the controls have tightened and most have to rely on different economic, cultural and other networks capable of circumventing the restrictive border-management regimes.In this text I will highlight the experiences of migrants who use borders and mobility as a resource in order to improve their social, political and economic condition.

Résumé Alors qu'il est plus courant de s'interroger sur les raisons des silences en ce qui concerne les femmes en migrations, je m'intéresse dans ce texte aux origines et à la nature de la nouvelle visibilité de celles qui furent longtemps invisibles. Seraient-elles plus nombreuses, leur profil aurait-il changé — comme semble le suggérer l'adhésion généralisée à l'idée de la 'féminisation des flux' ? Ou, grâce à un long processus de 'visibilisation', sommes-nous devenu·e·s plus aptes à voir ce qui fut à l'ombre ? L'article propose d'abord une interrogation de cette 'féminisation'. Puis il analyse les processus de 'mise en visibilité' des femmes migrantes dans la recherche et dans les politiques publiques. Il montre comment les recherches sur les migrations et celles sur le genre se font écho. Deux figures focalisent l'attention : la victime et la travailleuse domestique. Mais d'autres restent dans l'ombre, comme celle des migrantes ayant leur propre stratégie, éco-nomique ou matrimoniale.

La construction du champ de recherche qui place le genre au cœur des migrations a connu plusieurs étapes et a permis d'établir progressivement les passerelles entre deux domaines de recherche qui ont longtemps évolué sans se croiser et sans se connaître : celui sur l'immigration privilégiant l'homme comme le réfèrent universel d'une part, et celui sur les femmes et les rapports sociaux de sexe de l'autre, se voulant porteur, lui aussi, du message universel. Les travaux sur les femmes immigrées et plus tard la perspective du genre, marginalisés d'abord, ont contribué à renouveler les questionnements dans ces deux domaines, longtemps en quête de reconnaissance scientifique eux-mêmes. Dans ce texte, je vais revisiter les années soixante-dix et quatre-vingt afin de rappeler les conditions/étapes de ce renouvellement et la lente construction d'un champ de recherche désormais au croisement des travaux sur la migration et de ceux sur le genre.

Women have always taken part in migrations, but their presence varied
depending on their origins, on the labour market situation both in the areas
of origin and in the target areas, as well as the migration policies in the
immigration areas. Their presence was not always visible and did not attract
as much scholarly and political attention as today. What happened, how can
one explain such an interest lately, whereas only few years ago the subject
was marginal, in the shadow of the "mainstream - malestream", i.e. migration
as a phenomenon which focuses on geographic mobility of men, while women are
not considered as equal protagonists, they either follow or remain at home.
Could the so called "feminization" of migration explain the great and sudden
interest for women and gender in migrations? This text critically examines
the notion of "feminization" considered today as one of the main dimensions
of global migration flows. Drawing on trends both globally and in specific
countries, it shows that "feminization" is neither a new nor a sudden trend
and entails variations depending on the origins, level of development and
maturity of migration flows. In some groups men were primo-migrants and with
a gradual feminization the flows reach a balanced sex ratio. There where
women migrated first, or became numerically predominant, one observs the
opposite trend: a "masculinization". Some authors rightly refer to "gender
transition", the term which covers both trends. It is argued in the
conclusion that the visibility and growing interest for women in migration
and, more recently, for a gender perspective in migration, is not only due to
the changing migration patterns and profile of migrants but also to the
renewal of theoretical perspectives in migration and gender studies in a
context that largely facilitated that renewal. The focus of our attention
today on specific aspects of migration is triggered not only by genuine
changes in migration trends, but it is also a result of a long process of
visibilisation in the academic production on migration, women and gender.
These trends may have existed earlier in the migration history but had
remained in the shadow of categories defining, recording and analyzing
migration.

The end of the bi-polar world and the collapse of communist regimes triggered an unprecedented mobility of people and heralded a new phase in European migrations. Eastern Europeans were now not only ' free to leave' to the West but more exactly 'free to leave and to come back'. In this text I will focus on gendered transnational, cross-border practices and capabilities of Central and Eastern Europeans on the move, who use their spatial mobility to adapt to the new context of post-communist transition. We are dealing here with practices that are very different from those which the literature on 'immigrant transnationalism' is mostly about. Rather than relying on transnational networking for improving their condition in the country of their settlement, they tend to 'settle within mobility,' staying mobile 'as long as they can' in order to improve or maintain the quality of life at home. Their experience of migration thus becomes their lifestyle, their leaving home and going away, paradoxically, a strategy of staying at home, and, thus, an alternative to what migration is usually considered to be — emigration/immigration. Access to and management of mobility is gendered and dependent on institutional context. Mobility as a strategy can be empowering, a resource, a tool for social innovation and agency and an important dimension of social capital — if under the migrants' own control. However, mobility may reflect increased dependencies, proliferation of precarious jobs and, as in the case of trafficking in women, lack of mobility and freedom.

Dans ce texte, nous examinerons l'ampleur et le profil des migrations vers et à partir de la Serbie-Monténégro depuis 1990 jusqu'à présent. Le pays est confronté à un double défi : d'une part, intégrer des centaines de milliers de réfugiés tout en insistant sur leur droit au retour ; d'autre part, garder ou rétablir les contacts avec les expatriés sans toutefois pouvoir empêcher le départ des meilleurs. Sur place donc, une population, le plus souvent venue sans rien et en pleine détresse, qui accroît le nombre déjà considérable des sans-emplois et de ceux qui vivent au-dessous du seuil de pauvreté. Hors du pays, surtout en Occident, une population dispersée et hétérogène que l'appellation toute récente de « diaspora » voudrait rassembler en mobilisant ses membres autour de leur identité nationale serbe ou serbo-monténégrine. Ces citoyens expatriés sont des médiateurs dont on a toujours apprécié le potentiel économique et qui, désormais, revendiquent un rôle politique.

En repoussant ses frontières à l'est, l'Union européenne (UE) s'ouvre et se ferme à la fois, elle inclut tout en excluant. La perception des migrants comme constituant une menace et les politiques de la peur qui en découlent ont inspiré le contenu des conditions imposées aux futurs adhérents en matière migratoire. Mais ces craintes ne semblent pas être fondées. De plus, l'impact de l'élargissement que l'on craignait déstabilisant pour l'Union en termes de flux potentiels semble être plus déstabilisant pour les nouveaux membres de l'UE, notamment en ce qui concerne leurs relations avec leurs voisins exclus de l'élargissement. Paradoxalement, la nouvelle « frontière Schengen » et les mesures restrictives, en empêchant la circulation des personnes, risquent aussi d'encourager l'illégalité.

The European Union is confronted with the biggest enlargement in its history: ten states, among them eight middle European - the so called "buffer zone" in the new European migration landscape - will become members in 2004. Other candidates hope to join in the coming years. For all Eastern and Eastern European countries, including those that are not candidates, the end of the bi-polar world meant a hope of "return to Europe". When shifting its borders to the East, the European Union both includes and excludes. The final objective to achieve Europe as "a space of freedom, security and justice", is conditioned by the capacity and necessity to control the migratory flows. The prospect of free circulation for the citizens of the new Union members entails also fears: the EU countries are afraid of the consequences the enlargement would have on migratory flows from the countries of the Central and Eastern Europe and which transit through that area. The perception of migrants as a threat inspired the conditions that the Union imposed on the candidate countries concerning migration policy issues and which mostly focus on the protection of its Eastern borders. For the future Union members however, protecting of the thousand of kilometers of their Eastern border, implies a number of quite different problems. These countries are afraid of the impact the restrictive measures they are obliged to implement would have both on many economic and family ties which have been maintained since the socialist period and on more recently engaged cooperation with the neighbours which are not candidates. The challenge of enlargement is different therefore for the EU members, for the candidate countries and for those who are for the moment excluded from the process. The fears do not seem to be always grounded. Thus, the impact of enlargement which, it was feared, could have been so destabilizing for the Union because of potentially large migration flows, is more likely to be destabilizing for the new candidate countries, especially concerning their relations with their neighbours excluded from the enlargement process.

Movement of scientific élites from the Other Europe : exodus or circulation ?
The aim of this text is to explain the dynamics of migration in which scientists from Central and Eastern Europe figure, sometimes prominently, as social actors and to suggest a typology of situations, given both the global and the specific transformations in that part of Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The geographic field of our investigation was delineated by theoretical considerations about international migration in general, and the migration of "brains" in particular : the analysis centred on Poland, Russia, Croatia and Serbia and was based on the empirical evidence and secondary analyses available to us. Our research revealed certain overall tendencies : firstly, science seems to be everywhere in a paradoxical situation. Challenged by high expectations as an important factor of transformation, it is at the same time jeopardized in that same function by its own transformation ; whatever the country, the situation in which science finds itself, the status and working conditions of the scientists are the driving forces behind emigration (less massive than it is believed to be, internal migration being more frequent than emigration abroad). Secondly, as far as migration is concerned, the situation is different from that observed during the cold war period : the possibility to leave and to return, i.e. the chance to circulate, replaces a situation where, in most Central and Eastern European countries, emigration abroad implied expatriation for good. These global tendencies can, however, have a different meaning in each country. Our theoretical framework draws on the opposition between a dynamic approach to international migration versus the push-pull approach, and the "nationalist-internationalist" dilemma as far as brain drain and mobility are concerned. We have pinpointed two situations as "ideal types" : the first directly reflects the changes in Central and Eastern Europe, and is represented by Poland and Russia, where a relative freedom of movement is gradually replacing departures which used to be rare and permanent ; the second is one of confinement and restricted mobility, in other words a break between the worlds of departure and arrival, represented in this study by the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Serbia. Unlike the first situation, it takes the place of an earlier period of openness and relative freedom of circulation enjoyed by the citizens of former Yugoslavia. Our assumption was that, in the first case, the departure and the mobility of scientists contribute to the multiplication of links between Poland, Russia and the rest of Europe, whereas in the second, the departure of top scientists deprives the countries in question of an élite necessary for the rebuilding of the country and its democratization.