Suchergebnisse

Vor dem Hintergrund globaler sozialer Transformationen, erhöhter Mobilität und einer verstärkten Transnationalisierung von sozialen Realitäten tauchen immer wieder neue Phänomene auf, die die Gleichstellung zwischen Männern und Frauen herausfordern. Für diese neuartigen Themen fehlt zu Beginn oft wissenschaftlich fundiertes Wissen, das die Implementierung von konkreten und realistischen Massnahmen erlauben würde. Zwangsheirat ist eines dieser Phänomene, das in verschiedenen europäischen Ländern in letzter Zeit ins politische Kreuzfeuer geriet und für das wir bisher quasi kein gesichertes empirisches Wissen zur Hand haben. Die vorliegende Studie arbeitet diese Forschungslücke auf und schafft auf Sachwissen beruhende Grundlagen: Anhand von ExpertInneninterviews mit Fachpersonen werden die Prozesse und Gründe aufgezeigt, die in eine Vielfalt von unterschiedlichen Zwangssituationen im Zusammenhang mit Partnerwahl und Ehe münden können

Returnee entrepreneurs are often represented in migration and development discourses as agents of development. This assumes that they acquire valuable socio-economic resources abroad which help them to create successful businesses upon return. However, we have scant knowledge of the impact of the geopolitical context on returnee entrepreneurs or their coping strategies. Latin American returnees in particular have received little attention and few studies focus on migrants with 'South-to-South' return trajectories. Emphasising the role of territorial conflicts and the agency of individuals, I use a feminist geopolitical perspective to address these gaps. I contribute to migration, mobility, and development studies by studying whether Colombian migrants returning from Venezuela can reintegrate as successful entrepreneurs. Further, I offer the concept of transmobilities to study the cross-border nature of strategies of reintegration. The 30 returnees studied have a trajectory of repeated forced mobilities, ranging from internal displacement in Colombia, subsequent emigration to Venezuela, and final deportation to Colombia by Venezuela's government. I combine the qualitative methods of multi-sited ethnography, biographical interviews, mental maps, and participatory Minga workshops. The analysis shows that Colombian returnees face intense difficulties in reintegrating despite their strong motivation and entrepreneurial spirit. The geopolitical context of armed struggle, an absent Colombian state, and territorial conflicts between Colombia and Venezuela create an unfavourable environment for returnee entrepreneurs. Consequently, they develop transmobility strategies — including the movement of people, goods, and capital across national borders — at the risk of their own lives. The simplistic discourse of returnees as agents of development needs to be revised.

Research shows that highly skilled migrant women often have poor quality jobs or no employment. This paper addresses two research gaps. First, it provides a comparative perspective that examines differences and commonalities in the quality of employment of four highly skilled groups: migrant- and non-migrant women and men. Four statistical indicators are examined to grasp these differences: employment rates, income, adequacy of paid work, and employment status. The results highlight the role of gender and country of birth: Swiss-born men experience the best employment quality, and foreign-born women the worst. Second, it offers a family perspective to study how the employment trajectories of skilled migrant women develop in time and place in relation to their partners'. The qualitative life-course analysis indicates that skill advancement is more favourable for migrant and non-migrant men than for migrant and non-migrant women. However, skill advancement for migrant women depends greatly on the strategies enacted by domestic partners about how to divide paid employment and family work, and where to live. The statistical study draws on recent data from Swiss labour market surveys. The life-course analysis focuses on 77 biographical interviews with tertiary-educated individuals. Participatory Minga workshops are used to validate the study results.

This article proposes the notion of 'marginalised elites' to examine highly skilled migrant women, a group that has been neglected by feminist participatory research. It asks what principles and methods can be used towards inclusive practices in studies of migration and social exclusion. The paper contributes to the literature by designing and critically evaluating the method of Minga biographic workshops, which create inclusionary spaces of data collection and critical analysis with highly skilled migrant women living in Switzerland. Using this case study, the paper questions notions of privilege, power and positionality commonly used in feminist participatory approaches. Minga workshops enhance spaces of inclusion, become 'spaces of personal transformation', question the perceived inferiority of migrant women, and produce original scientific insights on social exclusion. These results point to the role of academics as facilitators of personal transformation, and the need to closely consider the added scientific value of feminist participatory methodologies.

This paper presents a dynamic model of risk-averse producers' decision to invest in physical capital and to export. The model features irreversible investment, no capital markets and fixed and sunk costs to export. Several features of the distribution of investment rates and export participation patterns observed in firm-level data are closely matched in a calibration exercise. Counterfactual experiments show that large adjustments in total sales associated with entry into foreign markets increase the volatility of total sales for exporting firms.

As in many other European countries, the issue of asylum seeking has become in Switzerland a central issue of public debate, and immigration and refugee policies have become a top political priority. Pressure to make asylum policies more restrictive has increasingly come from right-wing populist parties that have become stronger over the past decade. This paper examines the shifts in policies and state discourses of refugees in Switzerland from the end of the 19th century up to today. The study is based on the perspective of critical discourse analysis, "an approach that specifically focuses on the role of discourse in the reproduction of power, dominance and inequality" (van Dijk, 2004: 20). The practical study of state discourse focuses on three dimensions of analysis: the discourse itself, the context of discourse, and the historical events surrounding the discourse. The paper shows that the evolution of state representations of refugees in Switzerland has evolved from a predominantly humanitarian attitude towards asylum-seekers before the First World War to a mainly defensive attitude, which partly persists today, where asylum-seekers are increasingly perceived as a cultural threat and a financial burden. It demonstrates that imaginations of race, class and political systems have been main factors in structuring shifting state representations of refugees. ; This paper can be downloaded here

The role of state discourses in the construction of `otherness' and in the production of inequality has become a major issue during a time of increasing changes in migration flows, of an increased presence of nationalist parties, and of increasingly restrictive immigration policies in Europe. In this paper we examine historical shifts in the representation of foreigners within Swiss state discourses and the effects of these shifts on the integration of immigrants into Swiss society. As state discourses regarding foreigners significantly changed after the First World War, the emphasis of immigration policies shifted from a facilitating to a constraining approach. Uë berfremdung, the notion that excessive numbers of foreigners can threaten Swiss identity, emerged as one of the most influential discourses in Switzerland and provided the foundation for a quantitative and qualitative strategy of defence against the immigration, settlement, and naturalisation of foreigners. In recent years, however, an agreement on freedom of movement between Switzerland and the European Union has been struck, and immigration policies have once again adopted a facilitating stance. As this applies only to citizens of the European Union, a stratified system of immigrant rights has been continued and perpetuated. At the same time, right-wing parties, which have recently risen to power, have successfully used Uë berfremdung propaganda to persuade Swiss populations to vote against the relaxation of conditions for the naturalisation of foreigners, thus ensuring that immigrants will be excluded from access to citizenship rights over generations. The politics of immigration in Switzerland is above all a politics of national identity. ; Paper can be downloaded here

La migraci6n actual a Europa es predominantemente femenina. El incremento paralelo de los matrimonios binacionales ha sido interpretado como via de escape ala pobreza de la mujer no calificada. Este articulo argumenta que muchas migrantes son altamente calificadas y sus matrimonios binacionales no son principalmente motivados por razones econ6micas sino de relaciones de genero e ideates de pareja. Aqui se expone una vision diferenciada de la mujer migrante y de la migracion por matrimonio, desarrollada a partir de los testimonios de profesionales latinoamericanas residentes en Suiza. Los metodos de estudio incluyen entrevistas autobiognificas, observacion participante y discusiones de grupo. El analisis del grado de integracion profesional de las mujeres muestra, en unos casos, la ausencia total de integracion y, en otros, la integracion por debajo de sus calificaciones. Las raices de esta situacion se encuentran principalmente en la politica de inmigracion y en los discursos discriminatorios los cuales obstaculizan la integracion profesional de las migrantes. Como reacci6n a esta situacion, las mujeres han creado redes sociales de accion las cuales muestran su iniciativa y deseo de participacion y bUsqueda de una nueva identidad en la sociedad suiza. La conclusion es paradojica: mientras que America Latina pierde valioso capital humano, Suiza no aprovecha de su ganancia en capital. ; The article is available here for download