COMPARATIVE IMMIGRATION AND

INTEGRATION POLICY ACROSS EU

An easy access to welfare services, healthcare, education, social and spatial segregation, may
lead immigrants to dependence, not only financially but also regarding their future residence
permit or naturalization chances. issues. Naturalization is a common way in Europe to integrate
immigrants – with its requirements and entitlements to political, economic, and social
advantages. Regimes with strict requirements have good labor market integration outcomes and
fewer social conflicts. In contrary, countries with multicultural policies and a high level of
welfare provisions have difficulties regarding the integration of immigrants in the labor market.

Migration is high on both national and EU agendas. The decline and aging of the European
population has contributed to an increased awareness concerning the need for immigration.
Member States are struggling to find a well-balanced and comprehensive approach to migration
that will serve such diverse objectives as attracting highly skilled migrants, preventing irregular
migration and safeguarding the human rights of migrants. EU Member States are increasingly
offering students the possibility of remaining in the country for a limited period of time after
successful graduation in order to search for a job. The current labour migration discussion and
preferential admission policies are focused first and foremost on highly skilled labour.

Cultural and historical affiliations therefore affect attitudes to migrants from different parts of the
world and encourage selectivity in receiving areas. Initially, while migration is sometimes
welcomed as a means of supplying a labour shortage, migrants are often only offered temporary
worker status and face restrictions on settlement and citizenship/voting rights.

CASE STUDY

2) EDUCATION, LABOR MARKET, SOCIAL

MOBILITY IN THE HOST SOCIETY
EDUCATION

Migrants in the EU in general have lower educational attainment levels than natives. Access to

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education is as good as universally guaranteed for migrant children across the European Union.
The real issue though is another: do migrant children have access to good education catering for
their specific needs linked to socio-economic disadvantages and linguistic challenges? One of the
main challenges is that social and ethnic school segregation often limits this access to good
education, in which sufficient opportunities are given to migrant children to discover and
develop their talents.

Several countries have bilateral agreements on teaching in the language and culture of origin of
migrants. NGOs and religious organizations can especially play an important role in setting up,
financing and organizing diaspora schools, thus creating a transnational educational field.

Education is frequently seen as a crucial policy instrument in the fight against poverty as it may
help individuals to access better jobs that raise their labour earnings and thus contribute to the
improvement of their lives.

Labour market outcomes impacted by education are: wages and earnings, time to the first stable
job, worker’s health. Mechanisms by which education affects labour market outcomes are: Years
of schooling, educational level attained, investments in education.

CASE STUDY

The population of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Switzerland

– There have been three waves of immigration from BiH to Switzerland.

The first two waves (in 1960 and 1980 respectively) were made up of seasonal workers,
unskilled for the most part, coming in response to calls for labour in Switzerland and the lack of
opportunities for social mobility in the former Yugoslavia.

The third wave of immigration to Switzerland comprises BiH nationals fleeing the war.

It is difficult to make a precise estimate of the number of people from BiH in Switzerland.
According to the official statistics for 2010, there are some 35000 BiH nationals, taking all
residence statuses together, although other sources claim almost twice as many, around 60000

The level of education among Bosnians varies. Around half of the Bosnians in Switzerland have
had no further training after completing their compulsory education, often as a result of their
exile or emigration as young seasonal workers. A little more than a third have had some form of
vocational training after their compulsory education.

Many children of Bosnian migrants are now pursuing post-compulsory and even third-level
education. With regard to third-level education, the statistics show low numbers of Bosnian
students. There has been a significant and progressive increase since 2002, with almost 60

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Bosnian students obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in 2010. There has been no such increase in the
number of Master’s degrees, which has remained stable at 20 since 2008. Bosnians completing a
doctoral thesis has remained at between 5 and 10 a year since 2002.

In 2010, 65% of Bosnians in Switzerland formed part of the labour force, a similar rate to that of
non-European nationals but higher than that of Swiss nationals (61.5%) . In the Bosnian
population, 27.8% are not in the labour force, some of which are recipients of disability
pensions.

As to the working population, 6.6% of Bosnians are unemployed.

Given the lack of qualifications of some and the professional downgrading that others suffered
after migrating, most Bosnians – particularly those of the first generation – are employed in the
hospitality sector, industry and construction

LABOUR MARKET

The skills of non-EU immigrants are usually complementary to the skills of native-born workers,
with only a limited impact of immigration on domestic wages and employment, although the risk
of some negative effects appears to be greater for low-skilled native workers. At the same time
immigration can improve the efficiency of labour markets by compensating, at least partially, for
the low mobility of native-born workers and increasing labour-force flexibility. EU consumers
also benefit from immigration, through wider choice, reduced inflationary pressure and lower
prices, particularly for those services corresponding to jobs native- born workers are increasingly
unwilling to fill. The overall share of high-skilled migrants in total employment in the EU
remains low, comparing unfavourably with the shares in other similarly developed economies.
Rather, the EU still tends to attract mainly less-skilled immigrants: almost half (48%) of recent
workingage migrants are low-skilled and only one in five is high-skilled.

SOCIAL MOBILITY

The fates of first and second-generation immigrants are closely linked. Adult immigrants who
fare well in the host-country labor market are in a better position to provide the resources that
will help their children succeed. This has a very important implication: policies that improve the
outcomes of the first generation – by selecting immigrants more effectively or by investing in
their upward mobility – will also improve the second generation’s integration. although many

second-generation groups perform as well or better than their non-immigrant peers, several

countries have immigrant groups from one or more source countries who consistently fare worse,
or whose outcomes do not improve fast enough to bring them level with even low-skilled native

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workers. Appropriate strategies for their economic integration must take into account the specific

reasons for a group’s poor performance (for example, access to education, language difficulties,
or migration motivation).

3) MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT –

MAIN ASPECTS

Migration, both internal and international, is seen as an aberration and if levels of development
in the rural sector or in the developing world could only be improved, then people would not
have to migrate either to cities or to more developed countries development is almost always
associated with increased urbanization, much of which can be attributed to rural-to-urban
migration.

While certain paths of development can generate migration, migration itself can be the facilitator
of profound changes in economy and society that can be considered to be "development".
Migration allows the transfer of goods and ideas from destinations back to origins, and perhaps
the clearest link between migration and development is the sending of money back to the home
area in the form of remittances

ECONOMIC ASPECT

1) Migration and trade

Excluding remittances, the critical economic factor that bears upon migration is, perhaps, trade.
The free movement of goods and services across borders is central to the idea of globalization
and increasing trade impacts on the other factor of production, labour. The distribution of labour
then changes to reflect the demands of the activities created through the new patterns of trade. It
is hypothesized that there can be two principal outcomes.

First, increasing trade creates rising prosperity that can reduce the need to migrate: trade thus
substitutes for migration.

Second, increasing trade strengthens links between places and this is reflected in greater human
interaction between those places and thus more migration: migration and trade are
complementary.

2) International agreements

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The principles with direct relevance to migration were introduced under the General Agreement
on Trade in Services (GATS) and referred to the curiously termed movement of "natural
persons" and is known in shorthand as GATS mode 4. Essentially, these principles recognized
the importance of the movement of labour as an integral part of the international trade in
services. The "movement of natural persons" referred to the rights of individual workers to stay
temporarily in a country for the purpose of providing a service in any of the 161 services
identified in GATS mode 4. The critical benefit to be brought by the GATS proposals is to
increase flexibility into globalizing labour markets that will allow a matching of skills at various
and stipulated levels with available jobs across international boundaries. Existing immigration
legislation is generally not responsive enough to allow the quick importation of the workers
required in specific activities.

There are many types of regional trade arrangements. The most advanced form is the economic
union in which there is a harmonization of all economic policy within the countries of the union,
including the free movement of labour and the removal of all internal barriers to trade

3) Migration of the skilled

In terms of development, however, these migrants have an importance far greater than their
numbers might imply. Just who the skilled are is also a matter for debate. They include those
with advanced degrees, students in tertiary education, businessmen and professional managers
The loss of skills needs to be balanced against gains in the form of remittances (covered in a
companion paper) and against the impact that the loss has on home labour markets. The skilled
may not always be able to

utilize fully their expertise in destination areas, which immediately links the migration of the
skilled with issues of accreditation, home area training and education policy.

a. Impacts on countries of origin

Governments in developing countries can view the migration of the highly skilled from two very
different points of view:

first, that the out-migration of the skilled is detrimental to the development of the country and
every effort should be made to retain the skilled at home so that they may contribute to future
development;

second, that there is a global market for particular skills and it is to a country's advantage to
channel manpower that cannot profitably be used at home into that market so that the country
can tap into outside sources of revenue.

b. Impacts on countries of destination

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Skilled migrants clearly have a developmental impact on countries of destination: they provide
many of the skills required to keep industries and services competitive. However, a discussion
still exists as to how real skill shortages actually are in developed countries and whether private
companies are importing labour to keep salaries low. One element of the migration of the skilled
to the developed world is "skill wastage" where those with particular expertise enter occupations
with much lower skill requirements. The migration of the skilled is clearly not just from
developing to developed countries but includes substantial exchanges of personnel among
developed countries and significant movements from developed to developing countries, usually
on short-term assignment. These movements not only encompass the transfers through company
networks integral to the expansion of commercial and trading activity but also the assignment of
diplomats and the personnel of international organizations and nongovernmental organizations
that are such a part of the whole process of development itself

THE DEMOGRAPHIC DIMENSION

There is perhaps only one universal generalization that can be made about migration: the
majority of those who move are young adults. Thus, the number of migrants in any society is a
function of the number of young adults in that society. This is not to argue that migration is
demographically determined but to make the obvious point that any assessment of migration
needs to take into consideration the supply of those most likely to move in any society. As
societies develop, they tend to move from a situation where fertility and mortality are relatively
high to one in which they are relatively low.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL DIMENSION

Location, resource endowment and physical attributes of relief, climate and vegetation all play a
role, all too often ignored, in how development proceeds. This is not to say that development is
geographically determined but that the physical environment provides the attributes of the all-
important space in which development occurs.

THE POLITICAL DIMENSION

Although the refugee, or that person forced outside his or her state of citizenship through a "well-
founded fear of persecution", is generally considered in a distinct category from the "voluntary
migrant", there is often not such a clear and fast distinction between the two types as is generally
assumed. In the case of refugees, as well as the internally displaced, it is the development of the
political system that is of primary concern although the development and evolution of political
systems themselves are inextricably related to economic development.

In our present era, the nation state is not dead but is undergoing challenges to its legitimacy
through attempting to reconcile liberal democratic ideas of equality and the multiculturalism
occasioned by past and present migrations. The new forms of technology facilitating the
challenges to legitimacy include the information technology that affects everything from flows of

6
capital to the battlefield to the emergence of weapons of mass destruction. The decentralization
of information and the new types of weapons undermine the institutions of the nation state. The
emerging market state, according to Bobbitt, sees much more reliance on international capital
markets and business networks to create stability in the global economy and depends
increasingly on the privatization of security and welfare to bring greater benefits to all members
of society irrespective of ethnicity, class and, ultimately, citizenship. The intricacy of the
argument need not detain us here, but the critical issue is that forms of mobility can be expected
to shift with the evolution of state structures that are themselves a product of changing market
conditions

THE GENDER DIMENSION

The movement of women into the labour force in some newly developed countries has in turn
stimulated a demand for household workers to fill the domestic vacuum that is met mainly
through the migration of women from poorer economies. Gender is also apparent in the political
dimension where policies can be biased against the movement of women virtually forcing them
into irregular migration.

Migration and development a connection

There has been increasing recognition during the last few decades that migration can be a factor
in the promotion of international development. Migrants typically do not cut ties with their
country of origin and their interaction with the household back home and the home community is
the main channel by which migration could benefit development. There can be an important
exchange of money, knowledge and ideas between host and home countries through migrants.

Remittances, the most concrete consequence of international migration for developing countries,
have reached a significant dimension at global levels. These flows have become an important
source of foreign exchange and financing for many developing countries. These international
flows are arguably less volatile than other capital flows such as portfolio investment, foreign
direct investment and official foreign aid

Not every aspect of migration is beneficial for developing countries. Migration may impose a
high cost for developing countries by leaving the country without the human capital necessary to
achieve long-term economic growth. This human capital flight may impose a significant
economic burden for developing countries as migrants take with them the value of their training,
which is often subsidised by governments with limited resources.

While migration impacts development, economic conditions are important drivers of migration.
People migrate for a variety of reasons including the search for better economic opportunities,
education, family reunion and escaping violence.

Poverty and underdevelopment as a driver of migration

7
Differences in income and in living standards in general are important drivers of migration. Yet
not everyone in developing countries migrates to developed countries, even when migration
would imply a significant income gain for a large majority. Africa, the poorest continent on the
globe, has generated relatively small migration flows considering the massive gain that migration
would bring to its inhabitants

While immigration restrictions could potentially be a limiting factor, there is another constraint
that is likely to be even more important: money. Migration is not free and whatever the reason
for moving, migrants need a certain minimum level of resources in order to finance their move.
A simple economics model would suggest that people migrate for economic reasons if expected
lifetime income in the host country, less the cost of migrating, exceeds expected lifetime income
in the home country. However, if the individual cannot access the funds necessary to finance the
move, the expected income gap becomes irrelevant.

There are several implications of this cost restriction for migration.

First, the desire to migrate is higher than actual migration levels, especially among those with
fewer resources.

Second, increases in GDP per capita in many developing countries may lead to an increase rather
than a decrease in migration (Hatton and Williamson 2002). As income rises, those who have a
lot to gain from moving but were not previously able to move will be able to migrate. This is
likely to continue until the home country reaches a certain level of income, migration stabilizes
and potentially decreases thereafter.

The third implication of the cost restriction on mobility is that those who migrate are not likely to
be the poorest. Therefore, development related policies designed to assist migrants and their
families back in the home country do not necessarily benefit the poorest.

Brain drain or brain gain?

It is often the case that those who migrate from developing countries are among the most
educated people. This has caused great concern about a “brain drain” process in developing
countries, where the brightest minds leave for other countries. Developing countries complain
that scientists, nurses, doctors, engineers and other professionals, who were educated with the
limited resources available, go to work in and benefit developed countries.

The main idea is that acquiring human capital (i.e. getting an education) is not free. Individuals
have to forgo earning income (or at least some portion of their income) while they are in school,
and in many cases they have to pay significant tuition fees, study hard and put much personal
effort into their education. Many individuals will make the sacrifice necessary to acquire human
capital only if they are able to be rewarded financially in the future. Salaries for educated people
in developing countries are often low and not sufficient to encourage the acquisition of an

8
education. The possibility of migrating abroad increases the expected salary in some professions.
In this case, individuals also look at the salary expectations in other countries when making
human capital investment decisions. The fact that some may be able to migrate encourages more
people to become educated

The departure of the most educated individuals from a country may also result in the creation of
a brain bank that provides locals access to knowledge built up abroad (Agrawal et al. 2008).
Previous studies also suggest that migrants are in a superior situation to invest in their home
countries because they have specific knowledge that other foreign investors lack

Finally, it is often the case that migration is a two-way occurrence, with many migrants returning
back home after a few years abroad. The return of highly skilled migrants with specialised
knowledge and skills (e.g. engineers and scientists) can help improve research and development
programs in the home country

The impact of remittances

Remittances are transfers of money from an individual in one country to an individual in another
country. The majority of these transactions involve small amounts of money. However, for
households in receiving countries these money flows may represent an important share of their
budget.

Migrants send money for many reasons. In some cases migrants are behaving altruistically
toward the household back home. In other cases, migrants have some self-interested reason for
remitting, such as maintaining their household status for inheritance or other purposes. There is
evidence that some migrants also remit for investment purposes. Finally, some migrants may be
paying loans and other debts to the household, potentially including the money they used to
finance their move abroad.

Some of the evidence suggests that remittances have beneficial impacts on receiving countries
and households. For instance, at the household level there is evidence that remittances increase
human capital acquisition

One the negative side, there is evidence that many remittance-receiving households decrease
their labour market participation. People may tend to rely on these flows and reduce their
participation in the labour market, which ultimately could create dependency on these flows
similar to some type of international “welfare” system. Nonetheless, in many instances a
reduction in the labour supply can lead to a significant increase in quality of life and allow some
members of the household to acquire additional human capital. Hence, the potential reduction in
the labour supply is not necessarily a negative aspect of remittances.

CASE STUDY: Jakobsen, J., & Strabac, Z. (2014). Remittances, Institutions and Development
in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Kostic, R., Ćosić, E., & Babić, B. (Eds.), Migrations in the

9
Function of Development (pp. 11- 21). Sarajevo: Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees of
Bosnia and Herzegovina.

4) FEMINIZATION OF MIGRATION

The real change of the last decades is not in the absolute increase in the proportion of

women migrants but rather in the way they move: more women are now migrating
independently in search of jobs, rather than as “family dependents“ travelling with their

husbands or joining them abroad. The feminisation of migration parallels two other

transformations that affect women: the feminisation of poverty and the feminisation of work.
Feminization of poverty is the phenomenon that women represent disproportionate percentages
of the world's poor. The feminisation of the workplace is the trend towards greater employment
of women. Factors determining female migration: hope for better living conditions, poverty and
inequality, support for their families and children, escape from political chaos, increasing labour

demand on the service market of host country, unemployment, low wages, limited social and

economic opportunities, desire to expand their horizons, patriarchal tradition, fleeing from
domestic violence, discrimination against certain groups of women, marriage purposes .

Migration can contribute to gender equality and empowerment of women by providing women
migrants with income and status, autonomy, freedom, and the self esteem that comes with
employment. Women workers dominate the international migration of care services workers and
tend to be concentrated in the most vulnerable jobs like nursing, domestic work and caregivers.
These jobs are frequently unstable, marked by low wages, by absence of social services and by

poor working conditions. Women can easily become subjects to discrimination, arbitrary
employment terms and abuses, trafficking and prostitution. Data reveals that women use

financial remittances primarily for food and education. The remittances sent by women differ
from those sent by men in their relevant volume, frequency and sustainability over time. Women
send bigger proportion of the salary to home country than men. Women tend to save more of
their salary which leaves no place for investments in education or advancement in their careers.

CASE STUDY

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In terms of remittances, the study revealed specifically that: 54% of remittances received in the
Dominican Republic (through official channels) are sent by women; When a Dominican woman
migrated to Spain, in 90% of cases she left her household in the charge of another woman (in
general a mother or a sister); In 80% of cases, women migrants sent their remittances to other
women in order to be spent on household necessities and family well being; One particularly
significant finding of the study is that 100% of the migrant women who returned from Spain

set up their own business.

5) TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL SPACES

Transnational social spaces are combinations of social and symbolic ties, positions in networks
and organizations, and networks of organizations that can be found in at least two geographically
and internationally distinct places. These spaces denote dynamic social processes, not static
notions of ties and positions. Cultural, political and economic processes in transnational social
spaces involve the accumulation, use and effects of various sorts of capital, their volume and
convertibility: economic capital, human capital, such as educational credentials, skills and know-
how, and social capital, mainly resources inherent in transmitted through social and symbolic
ties. The reality of transnational social spaces indicates, first, that migration and re-migration
may not be definite, irrevocable and irreversible decisions—transnational lives in themselves
may become a strategy of survival and betterment. Second, even those migrants and refugees
who have settled for a considerable time outside the original sending country, frequently
entertain strong transnational links.

The transnational social spaces inhabited by immigrants and refugees and immobile residents in
migration systems thus supplement the international space of sovereign nation-states.
Transnational social spaces are constituted by the various forms of resources or capital of
spatially mobile and immobile persons, on the one hand, and the regulations imposed by nation-
states and various other opportunities and constraints

Transnational social spaces are characterized by triadic relationships between groups and
institutions in the host state, the sending state (sometimes viewed as an external homeland) and
the minority group—migrants and/or refugee groups, or ethnic minorities.

There is a marked difference between the concepts of globalization and transnational social
spaces viz. transnationalization: transnationalization overlaps with globalization but typically has
a more limited purview. Whereas global processes are largely decentered from specific nation-
state territories and take place in a world context, transnational processes are anchored in and

11
span two or more nation-states, involving actors from the spheres of both state and civil society
Social ties are a continuing series of inter-personal transactions to which participants attach
shared interests, obligations, expectations and norms. Symbolic ties are a continuing series of
transactions, both face-to-face and indirect, to which participants match shared meanings,
memories, future expectations and symbols. Symbolic ties often go beyond face-to-face
relations, involving members of the same religious belief, language, ethnicity or nationality.
Social capital are those resources inherent in patterned social and symbolic ties that allow
individuals to cooperate in networks, groups and organizations. Social capital resources function
as mechanisms that enhance cooperation, or by their absence, discourage it. It also serves to
connect individuals to networks and organizations through affiliations.

We can differentiate the following forms of social capital resources:

1) Reciprocity as a pattern of social exchange: mutual obligations and expectations of the

actors, associated with specific social ties and based on exchanges and services rendered in the
past (Coleman 1990: 306-9). These obligations and expectations can be an outcome of
instrumental activity, for example, the tit-for-tat principle.

2) Reciprocity as a social norm: what one party receives from the other requires some return
(Gouldner i960: 160).

3) Solidarity with others in a group who share similar positions (Portes 1995: 16). It is an
expressive form of social transaction. The most important form of solidarity is 'collective
representations' There are three main benefits to be derived from social capital: in general, it
helps members of networks or groups to get access to more economic, human and social capital
Resources that make up social capital have two important characteristics: first, it is very hard to
transfer them from one country to another, they are primarily local assets. Thus, in addition to
political regulations of international migration, this is one of the main causes for the relatively
low, albeit increasing rates of international mobility.

Second, these various forms of social capital are crucial mechanisms for applying other forms of
capital. They provide transmission belts that bridge collectives and networks in separate nation-
states. Resources inherent in social and symbolic ties are necessary to mobilize other forms of
capital, especially among those short of economic capital.

There are at least three forms of transnational social spaces that need to be distinguished:
transnational exchange, reciprocity and solidarity within kinship and friendship systems,
transnational circuits, and transnational communities. Kinship- and community-based
transnational exchange, reciprocity and solidarity are typical for many first-generation labor
migrants and refugees.

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Transnational exchange becomes very visible in the manifold export-import businesses
established by immigrants in the receiving countries, so as to satisfy typical needs of immigrants
communities for mother tongue videos, food, clothing and other supplies.

The establishment of enclave businesses and niche economies, homeland-oriented voluntary

associations, the transplant of homeland political organizations, and the emergence of religious
congregations are regular features of these processes. Reciprocity

Transnational circuits are characterized by a constant circulation of goods, people, and

information transversing the borders of sending and receiving states. Transnational circuits seem
to be most developed in cases of circular international migration. They also typically develop in
a context in which we find often rather successful socio-economic adaptation to the conditions in
the receiving country, or sucessful re-integration in the sending country.

Transnational communities characterize situations in which international movers and stayers are
connected by dense and strong social and symbolic ties over time and across space to patterns of
networks and circuits in two countries. Communities [that is, Gemeinschafi] 'encompasses all
forms of relationship which are characterized by a high degree of personal intimacy, emotional
depth, moral commitment, social cohesion and continuity in time' (Nisbet 1966: 47). For
transnational communities to emerge, reciprocity and solidarity need to reach beyond narrow
kinship systems.

Transnational communities can emerge on different levels of aggregation. The most fundamental
are village communities in sending and receiving countries that connect through extensive forms
of solidarity over longer periods of time. Frequently, investment of those abroad or of returnees
in private and public projects exemplifies this kind of support.

Transnational communities can also be of a larger kind, primarily held together by symbolic ties
of common ethnicity or even nationhood Diasporas can only be called transnational communities
if the members also develop some significant social and symbolic ties to the receiving country

Factors contributing to the formation of transnational social spaces

A necessary prerequisite for international migration to occur in the first place are prior exchanges
in the economic (e.g., foreign investments), political (e.g., military cooperation or domination),
or cultural (e.g., colonial education systems) dimensions. This is why activities in transnational
social spaces do not create such transnational linkages ex nihilo, but usually reinforce pre
existing bonds.

Economic transnationalization:

Political transnationalization:

Cultural transnationalization

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Under propitious conditions transnational social spaces find a fertile breeding ground.
Favourable conditions for the reproduction of transnational ties include (1) modern technologies
such as satellite or cable TV, instant mass communication, personal communication bridging
long distances via telephone and fax, mass affordable short-term long-distance travel, (2) liberal
state policies, such as polyethnic rights and anti-discrimination policies, or the opposite (3)
cultural discrimination and socio-economic exclusion of migrants in immigration states, and (4)
changing emigration state policies which reach out to migrants living abroad for remittances,
investment, and political support. There are four types of transnational spaces: small groups,
particularly kinship systems; issue networks; transnational communities and transnational
organisations.

(1) Formalised transboundary relations within small groups like households and wider kinship
systems, are representative for many migrants. Families may live apart because one or more
members work abroad as contract workers (like the former ‘guestworkers’ in Germany) or as
posted employees within multinational companies. Small household and family groups have a
strong sense of belonging to a common home. A classic example for such relations are
transnational families, who conceive themselves as both an economic unit and a unit of solidarity
and who keep, besides the main house, a kind of shadow household in another country.
Economic assets are mostly transferred from abroad to those who continue to run the household
‘back home’.

(2) Transnational issue networks are sets of ties between persons and organisations in which
information and services are exchanged for the purpose of achieving a common goal. Linkage
patterns may concatenate into advocacy networks2, business networks, or scientists’ networks.
These issue-specific networks engage in areas such as human rights and environmental
protection. While issue networks look back upon a long tradition in the realm of human rights,
and are making steady progress in ecology, they are also emerging among migrants who have
moved from the so-called third countries to the European Union (EU). Among the immigrant and
citizenship associations are, for example, the European Citizenship Action Service (ECAS), the
Migration Policy Group (MPG) – the latter network including the British NGO Justice, the
Immigration Lawyers Practitioners’ Association and the Dutch Standing Group of Experts on
Immigration and Asylum. Some of these networks – usually headed by non-migrant EU citizens
– have succeeded in bringing issues such as discrimination onto the agendas of
Intergovernmental Conferences (IGC), and, ultimately, into the Treaty of Maastricht (1997).

(3) Transnational communities comprise dense and continuous sets of social and symbolic ties,
characterised by a high degree of intimacy, emotional depth, moral obligation and sometimes
even social cohesion. Geographical proximity is no longer a necessary criterion for the existence
of a community, there are ‘communities without propinquity’. Transnational communities can
evolve at different levels of aggregation. The simplest type consists of village communities in
interstate migration systems, whose relations are marked by solidarity extended over long
periods of time. The quintessential form of transnational communities consists of larger

14
transboundary religious groups and churches. World religions, such as Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism existed long before modern states came into existence.
Diasporas also belong to the category of transnational communities. Diasporas are groups that
experienced the territorial dispersion of their members some time in the past, either due to a
traumatic experience, or specialisation in long-distance trade. Jews, Palestinians, Armenians and
Greeks can be named as examples here. Generally, members of diasporas have a common
memory of their lost homeland, or a vision of an imagined one to be created, while at the same
time the immigration country often refuses the respective minority full acknowledgement of their
cultural distinctiveness.

(4) Transnational organizations from small groups like transnational families by virtue of an
even higher degree of formal control and co-ordination of social and symbolic ties. An early type
of transnational organisation – interstate non-governmental organisations (INGOS) – developed
out of issue networks like the Red Cross, Amnesty International and Greenpeace. At the other
extreme there are organisations which are based in one specific country but whose sphere of
influence extends abroad, as with the ethno-nationalist PKK (Partiya Karkarên Kurdistan). The
PKK is not a non-governmental organisation but a parastate association because it seeks political
autonomy for a territory named ‘Kurdistan’. Their goal is mass mobilisation, without which they
cannot succeed. Transnational enterprises constitute a further type of transboundary organisation.
These businesses are differentiated transboundary organisations with an extremely detailed
internal division of labour. the idea of transnational cultural diffusion and syncretism implies the
transboundary movement of

people, symbols, practices, texts - all of which help to establish a pattern of common cultural
belief across borders and patterns of reciprocal transactions between separate places, whereby
cultural ideas in one place influence those in another.

Various responses are possible to cultural diffusion and exchange in transnational spaces.

Possible outcomes include:

1. assimilation: the merging of minorities into the ‘core majority’, i.e. acculturation;

2. cultural pluralism: minorities, by and large, maintain their own culture; often transplanted
from country of emigration to immigration country, or indigenous minorities maintain a core
repertoire of cultural and identity;

3. syncretism allows a dominant culture to co-exist side-by-side with various sub-cultures, while
the latter are influenced by transboundary ties upon the formation of identities.

Transnational spaces carry important implications for the adaptation of immigrants and refugees
in the receiving nation-states. Up until now, theoretical approaches have discerned two main
trajectories available to newcomers: assimilation and ethnic pluralism. Transnational social

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spaces enlarge the range of possibilities. We can differentiate three models of immigrant
adaptation in distinct dimensions of immigrant insertion, ranging from economic over political to
cultural. The first model, assimilation, aptly applies to the U.S.- American situation from World
War One until the end of World War Two, because there was a long period of extremely low
immigration, during which assimilationist tendencies could work. Without necessarily adhering
to the stage-conception of these models—for example, acculturation as a necessary first step
towards social, economic and civic integration—, we could take some of their main tenets to
describe this pattern: in the socio-economic realm it means that immigrants and refugees adapt to
the prevailing occupational status, income levels, and residential patterns shown by the native
population. In the political realm we expect immigrants or, later, their descendants to acquire the
citizenship of the country of settlement and show loyalty, such as in case of war. Cultural
assimilation, especially prevalent among the second generation, can then be seen to exemplify
the tendency towards an eventual full melting with and in the receiving country—not necessarily
excluding a mutual exchange of norms, values and behavioral patterns between the immigrant
and native groups.

Transnational social spaces develop in two stages. In a first phase they are a by-product of
international migration and seem to be basically limited to the first generation of migrants. As a
matter of fact, migration flows are characterized by migrant networks. First, only by the creation
and reproduction of migrant networks do migration flows turn into chain migration and thus
become mass phenomena. Second, migrant networks, interacting with groups and institutions in
the areas of destination and origin, form the raw material for the formation of new ethnic or
religious communities The development of transnational social spaces offers a unique
opportunity to look into the formation of networks, groups and organizations that span at least
two nation-states

CASE STUDY: Istraživanja migracijskih i postmigracijskih fenomena: primjeri migranata iz

Bosne i Hercegovine u Hrvatskoj. Dr. sc. Simona Kuti Dr. sc. Snježana Gregurović

Bošnjaci u Hrvatskoj

• radne migracije iz BiH – znatan dio (i)migracije u Republici Hrvatskoj, 1960-ih i 1970-ih
godina – ekonomske migracije. Radni (i)migranti iz Bosne dolaze u industrijske centre.

• izbjeglički tokovi Bošnjaka u Hrvatsku - tijekom rata u Bosni (1992.-1995.) u Hrvatsku je

stiglo više od 500.000 izbjeglica u tri vala

Operacionalizacija koncepta transnacionalnih socijalnih prostora (TSP-a)

• u uzorku relativna zastupljenost pripadnika/ca druge generacije koji su aktivni u uspostavljanju

i održavanju transnacionalnih kontakata

• putovanje u BiH ima i simboličku vrijednost, važno i za očuvanje identiteta

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• geografska blizina države porijekla – relativno frekventna transnacionalna mobilnost u odnosu
na druge dvije migrantske skupine obuhvaćene istraživanjem utječe na održavanje i kontinuitet
transnacionalnih veza sadržaju provedenih intervjua odsustvo opisa državnih propisa koji
reguliraju ulazak, boravak i rad stranaca u Hrvatskoj u usporedbi s druge dvije migrantske
skupine

• u istraživanju se pokazalo da poredtransnacionalnih veza i aktivnosti i lokalni procesi značajno

strukturiraju svakodnevicu sugovornika u svim migrantskim skupinama (različiti oblici
integracije ali i iskustva s diskriminacijom, na institucionalnoj i svakodnevnoj razini)

6) THE CRISIS OF MULTICULTURALISM IN

EUROPE

WHAT IS MULTICULTULARISM

FIVE ASPECTS:

1. Social Fact

2. An Ideology

3. A way to understand differences

4. A necessity

5. A process

Multiculturalism, the view that cultures, races, and ethnicities, particularly those of minority
groups, deserve special acknowledgement of their differences within a dominant political
culture.

That acknowledgement can take the forms of recognition of contributions to the cultural life of
the political community as a whole, a demand for special protection under the law for certain
cultural groups, or autonomous rights of governance for certain cultures. Multiculturalism is both
a response to the fact of cultural pluralism in modern democracies and a way of compensating
cultural groups for past exclusion, discrimination, and oppression. Most modern democracies

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comprise members with diverse cultural viewpoints, practices, and contributions. Many minority
cultural groups have experienced exclusion or the denigration of their contributions and identities
in the past. Multiculturalism seeks the inclusion of the views and contributions of diverse
members of society while maintaining respect for their differences and withholding the demand
for their assimilation into the dominant culture.

Multiculturalism has been most commonly invoked in societies where different cultural
communities live together: the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Yugoslavia, and,
more recently, Britain, Germany, and France. But the term itself has become, according to one
prominent critic, a “floating signifier” that connotes anything from touchy-feely celebrations of
cultural differences to the political demand for minority rights, from gay and lesbian studies in
the academy to public funding for community projects

Multicultural, according to Hall, describes an on-the-ground situation: “the social characteristics

and problems of governance posed by any society in which different cultural communities live
together and attempt to build a common life while retaining something of their ‘original’
identity.”23 Of necessity, multicultural societies exist in the plural, rather than in the singular.

They most often arise through the movement of peoples who are responding to a wide variety of
factors, including imperial conquest, labor shortage, unemployment, war, and famine.
Multicultural societies are thus produced by a range of historical motors, whether economic,
political, social, or several in combination. In each case, the particular interplay of diverse
“cultural communities” creates its own unique effects and specific manifestations.

CASE STUDY:

Immigrant” has become a kind of epithet these days, and not only in France. Everywhere in
Europe, and also in the United States, immigrants are blamed for all manner of problems: crime,
unemployment, disease, the deterioration of public services, the exhaustion of public funds,
threats to liberal culture and mores. Right-wing populist politicians in nearly every country of the
Western Hemisphere appeal to voters with plans to cleanse the national body of these impure
invaders, to expel them, to build walls to keep them out. References to a “crisis” of immigration
have become a convenient way to talk about many other things as well: race, ethnicity, religion,
gender, and, especially, the human costs wrought by global capitalism and the growing
inequalities it has engendered within and across the nations of the world.

These references to an “immigrant crisis” antedate the arrival of waves of refugees fleeing war
and violence in Africa and the Middle East; the recent refugees have only heightened the
discourse. Rita Chin’s The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe offers a comparative history of
the ways in which politicians in several Western European nations have dealt with growing
numbers of non-Western immigrants from the 1950s to the present. Rafia Zakaria’s Veil shifts
the balance away from white secular Europe toward the experience of Muslim women, mapping

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the stereotypical representations of the veil in Western culture and then reflecting, in an intensely
personal way, on the many meanings that the veil can have for the people who wear it.

Their difference was also seen as a threat to European national identity. It was one thing to
tolerate their presence as a temporary solution to shortages of labor; it was quite another to
consider them and their families as permanent residents with the equal rights of fellow citizens.

As many celebrated the victory of liberal democracy over communism, commentators also began
to point to the “failure” of multiculturalism and its policies of recognition and appreciation of
diversity. But what they meant by “failure” was not that the policies failed to create more
welcoming societies, but rather that Muslim culture simply wasn’t compatible with the national
traditions of European countries. Throughout Europe, “their” culture was defined as antagonistic
to “ours.” To disarm this foe, the states of Western Europe enacted laws and regulations that
ranged from criminalizing certain individual displays of religious affiliation to limiting the height
of the minarets on mosques. In their attempts at containment (euphemistically referred to as
“integration”), these European nations tightened the eligibility requirements for entry and
naturalization, as well as proposed tests of cultural literacy and linguistic mastery for migrants
from Muslim and other non-Western countries

There is clearly a crisis of immigration in Europe. It is evident in the deadlock between an

increasing insistence by politicians on the homogeneity of cultural nationalism, on the one hand,
and the presence of diverse populations within national borders, on the other. It has only
intensified in the wake of the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war-torn and
economically devastated countries of the Global South. We are at a turning point (one of the
meanings, after all, of the word “crisis”): Will those “black people” that we glimpsed from the
train, and who are sequestered in the banlieues, ever be accepted as fully French? Will the day
come when I would react not in surprise but in affirmation to that young woman (“Yes, some
French are black”)? And what of Western feminism? Is there a path away from the binaries of
“West/East” and “sexually liberated/sexually repressed” that might yield a more genuinely
inclusive vision of what emancipation and gender equality could mean?

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