The cage of freedom: Mobility and labour in contemporary Bangkok

Michael Collyer, University of Sussex, gives a talk for the COMPAS Hilary 2016 term Seminar Series entitled: Open the Way: Understanding the Refugee Crisis on 4th February 2016.

Heaven Crawley, Coventry University, gives a talk for the COMPAS Hilary term 2016 seminar seires; 'Open the Way: Understanding the Refugee Crisis' on 21st January 2016.

Yasmin Gunaratnam, Goldsmiths College, gives a talk for the COMPAS seminar series.

Melanie Griffiths, University of Bristol, gives a talk for the COMPAS seminar series. For academics, politicians and NGOs alike, the issues seen to relate to irregular migrants, especially if they are male, tend to revolve around questions of legality, criminality and mobility. Little concern is generally afforded to their emotional lives and wellbeing. Drawing on qualitative research conducted with UK-based precarious male migrants with British or EU citizen partners and children, this talk considers the effect of having family ties in the UK on the men’s experience of the immigration system, as well as the impact of immigration concerns on family life itself. A variety of repercussions are identified in relation to the formation and sustainability of partnerships and families, including in terms of suspicion over motives, the threat of enforced separation and other relationship strains. Particular attention is given to immigration detention and the prohibition of employment as examples of ways in which the immigration system reaches into the heart of family life and produce gendered implications for the men’s ability to be the parents and partners they wish to be. The talk also considers the wellbeing of the British and European women in mixed-citizenship couples, exploring the impacts of the immigration struggles of their loved ones on the women’s sense of security, privilege and belonging as citizens. Considering wellbeing in the context of relationships illuminates the significant and wide-ranging impact of the immigration system on family lives and gender roles. Laying bare the fallacy of migrant/citizen binaries, such impacts not only affect irregular migrants, but also the citizens close to them, who are not themselves subject to immigration control but whose lives are nonetheless shaped by immigration objectives.

Peter Dwyer, University of York, gives a talk for the COMPAS seminar series. Conditionality matters for migrants. First, in a broad sense i.e. the ways in which UK immigration and welfare policies intersect to establish and structure the diverse rights and responsibilities of different migrant groups living in the UK. Second, in respect of more focused understandings of welfare conditionality and the linking of an individual’s rights to social welfare benefits and services to specified behavioural requirements. This seminar explores how these two aspects of conditionality play out in migrants’ interactions with welfare agencies. Discussions will draw on early analysis of new qualitative data generated in first wave interviews with 54 migrants who are one cohort within a larger, repeat qualitative longitudinal panel study being conducted as part of the ESRC funded ‘Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions Support and Behaviour Change’ project (see www.welfarecondtionality.ac.uk)

Jonathan Darling, University of Manchester, gives a talk for the COMPAS seminar series. In this seminar I draw on my current research looking at how dispersal has worked across four UK cities historically, and how changes with the privatisation of provision has affected relations between asylum seekers and cities, between private providers and local authorities, and between local authorities and the Home Office. I will link to some of my past work around sanctuary, responsibility and generosity in terms of discussing spaces within cities that challenge the tensions of current governance structures and that enable different relations between asylum seekers and cities. Part of the story here is of the significance of local relations and contexts that are too readily ignored in top down dispersal processes and plans, so being able to speak across four different cities should enable some of these more hopeful stories to come to light.

Osea Giuntella, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, gives a talk for the COMPAS seminar series. Despite a lower average socioeconomic status, recent immigrants in many advanced economies have better health outcomes than the incumbent residents in the hosting countries. Paradoxically, this initial health advantage erodes with time spent in the destination country, despite immigrants’ socio-economic assimilation. In the talk I will discuss the role of selection, acculturation, socio-economic and occupational characteristics in explaining immigrants’ health trajectories presenting evidence from some of my recent work on migration and health in the US, UK, and Germany. Furthermore, I will examine different mechanisms through which immigration can have effects on the health of incumbent residents. First, immigration has important effects on the allocation of tasks and job-related risks in the labour market. Second, immigration can have effects on healthy behaviours by affecting both the demand and the supply of healthy products and by increasing product variety and access to healthy options in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

This paper uses a UK nationally representative data set to examine the extent to which family migration history helps explains inter-ethnic variations in subjective well-being. By Cinzia Rienzo, National Institute of Economic and Social Research [NIESR].

Rob McNeil, COMPAS, University of Oxford, gives a talk for the Immigration and democracy in the UK COMPAS Seminar Series. Rob McNeil looks at the nature of migration in the media and why it looks as it does. What is truth in this context? He also considers what that means from a policy perspective.

Claudio Sopranzetti, University of Oxford, gives a talk for the Arrival Cities COMPAS Seminar Series. This talk analyses the transformation of labor and internal migration structure in Thailand since the 1997 economic crisis. In particular it shows how, since the restructuring of the Thai economy along post-fordist lines, both processes have been re-organized through discourse and practices of "free" flexible labor. The speaker focus specifically on a group of informal urban workers: motorcycle taxi drivers who, as migrant workers from the provinces, allow Bangkok to function. While many of these migrants used to work in factories before the crisis, since then they have decided to join the ranks of "free" transportation entrepreneurs, gaining easier mobility between the city and their villages but also renouncing to social security and other services, not unlike millions of workers around the world. This talk analyses this process both in its emancipatory and exploitative dimensions to explore the duplicitous nature of mobility in contemporary Thailand.