Suchergebnisse

Ninna Nyberg Sørensen: The Global Family – Disintegration or Transnationalization of the Family?

The identification of the family with the domestic group has given rise to various analytical problems in migration research. Many researchers have argued that family separation due to migration leads inevitably to family disintegration. Prediction of such negative outcomes has been conspicuously salient in work dealing with migrant mothers who leave spouses and/or children behind. Nevertheless, the proliferation of long-distance and sometimes long-term transnational family ties challenges conventional notions of the family. This article, which is based on qualitative interviews with Latin American migrants in various European countries, discusses two related issues. The first concerns the question of whether the feminization of particular migration streams translates into new and distinct transnational family relationships. The second concerns the roots and consequences of spatially fractured husband-wife/ parent-child relations. The article concludes that migration transforms, reorients and reprioritizes family relationships, but not necessarily in the way predicted by conventional demography or migration analysis.

This article analyses the possible effects of the introduction of the category of 'internally displaced people'— IDP — in the context of violent conflict in central Peru. It gives an account of the ways in which the IDP category has been introduced and appropriated by local NGOs, people affected by violent conflict and displacement, and by the governmental organization, PAR, set up to facilitate return and repopulation after the declared end of the armed conflict. The category has facilitated and given leverage to a national organization of IDPs. However, the agencies and programmes that work in support of IDPs tend to regard existing mobile livelihood practices as an impediment for advocacy and longer‐term development strategies. This article suggests that, instead of considering displacement (and return) as an absolute break with the past, a focus on networks and mobile livelihoods may be a better way to help people affected by violent conflict to move beyond emergency relief.

In September 2001, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs commissioned a study of the present and potential links between migration and development. In January 2002, the new Danish Government announced a decision to enhance the links between its aid and refugee policies as part of the overall focus on poverty reduction. The present paper provides a state–of–the–art overview of current thinking and available evidence on the migration–development nexus, including the role of aid in migrant–producing areas. It offers evidence and conclusions around the following four critical issues:Poverty and migrationPeople in developing countries require resources and connections to engage in international migration. There is no direct link between poverty, economic development, population growth, and social and political change on the one hand, and international migration on the other. Poverty reduction is not in itself a migration–reducing strategy.Conflicts, refugees, and migrationViolent conflicts produce displaced persons, migrants, and refugees. People on the move may contribute both to conflict prevention and reconciliation, and to sustained conflicts. Most refugees do not have the resources to move beyond neighbouring areas, that is, they remain internally displaced or move across borders to first countries of asylum within their region. Aid to developing countries receiving large inflows of refugees is poverty–oriented to the extent that these are poor countries, but it is uncertain what effect such aid has in terms of reducing the number of people seeking asylum in developed countries. Furthermore, such aid may attract refugees from adjacent countries experiencing war or political turmoil.Migrants as a development resourceInternational liberalization has gone far with respect to capital, goods and services, but not to labour. International political–economic regimes provide neither space nor initiatives for negotiations on labour mobility and the flow of remittances. There is a pressing need to reinforce the image of migrants as a development resource. Remittances are double the size of aid and target the poor at least as well; migrant diasporas are engaged in transnational practices with direct effects on aid and development; developed countries recognize their dependence on immigrant labour; and policies on development aid, humanitarian relief, migration, and refugee protection are internally inconsistent and occasionally contradictory.Aid and migrationAid policies face a critical challenge to balance a focus on poverty reduction with mitigating the conditions that produce refugees, while also interacting constructively with migrant diasporas and their transnational practices. The current emphasis on aid selectivity tends to allocate development aid to the well performing countries, and humanitarian assistance to the crisis countries and trouble spots. However, development aid is more effective than humanitarian assistance in preventing violent conflicts, promoting reconciliation and democratization, and encouraging poverty–reducing development investments by migrant diasporas.The paper is a synthesis of current knowledge of migration–development dynamics, including an assessment of the intended and unintended consequences of development and humanitarian policy interventions. We examine whether recent developments in the sphere of international migration provide evidence of a "crisis", as well as the connections between migration, globalization, and the changing nature of conflicts. We summarize current thinking on the main issues at stake and examine available evidence on the relations between migration and development. Then the consequent challenges to the aid community, including the current debates about coherence and selectivity in aid and relief are discussed and, finally, we elaborate on the four conclusions of the overview.