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2 - Liquid Migration: Dynamic and Fluid Patterns of Post-accession Migration Flows
- Edited by Birgit Glorius, Izabela Grabowska-Lusinska, Aimee Kuvik
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- Book:
- Mobility in Transition
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 12 December 2020
- Print publication:
- 17 June 2013, pp 21-40
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Summary
Introduction
In her study, Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe since 1650, Moch (1992) analyses three centuries of migration and distinguishes four crucial periods. The periods comprise pre-industrial Europe c. 1650-1750, the early industrial age c. 1750-1815, urbanisation and industrialisation c. 1815-1914 and the twentieth century c. 1914-1990. In order to analyse the central characteristics of these specific periods, Moch categorises migration systems into four groups according to the distance and the definiteness of the break with home (see Tilly 1978). The first is local migration. Crucial for this system is that people move within their local markets of labour, land and marriage. The second is circular migration. This system is based on the premise that people return home after a specific interval, especially after harvest work. The third system is chain migration. Established migrants bring their family to the new destination or support newcomers to settle by finding jobs and housing for them. The final system is career migration. The needs and geography of ‘hiring institutions’, for example, the church or the state, prevail over the needs of families or the local communities in this system. The hiring institutions, for example, church personnel or schoolteachers, determine the timing and destination of migration.
Moch argues that in each period all four migration systems were present, but that the balance among the various kinds of migration was different. In the pre-industrial world people moved in systems of local, circular, chain and career migration, but local migration was the most dominant migrant system. In the age of early industry, the dominant patterns of local and circular migration were complemented by new forms of chain migration that led to permanent settlement in new destinations, especially to the growing cities. The nineteenth century was an age of urbanisation and industrialisation, a very mobile age in which a shift away from rural migration to circular migration systems, chain migration to urban areas and career migration took place. Migrants travelled over longer distances and even crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Moch (1992: 160) writes:
In the end, the men, women, and children who took to the road produced a very different population in 1914 than a century earlier. This was a free, urbanized, and proletarian population.
6 - ‘A van full of Poles’: Liquid Migration from Central and Eastern Europe
- Edited by Richard Black, Godfried Engbersen, Marek Okólski, Cristina Panţîru
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- Book:
- A Continent Moving West?
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 03 February 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 July 2012, pp 115-140
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Summary
Introduction
In May 2004, Ireland, Sweden and the United Kingdom opened up their labour markets to citizens of the new member states in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In the summer of 2006, Greece, Portugal and Spain also allowed workers from the new accession countries access to their labour markets. The Netherlands followed in May 2007. For Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU in January 2007, a transition period is in force. Workers from these two countries still need a work permit in order to work in the Netherlands. The Netherlands could be described as a ‘third phase’ country, in that it did not allow CEE migrants immediate access to its labour market. However, it is incorrect to imply that there was no labour migration from CEE countries to the Netherlands before May 2007. The Netherlands was the second main destination of choice for migrants from the provinces of Opele and Silesia, which formerly belonged to the Prussian empire. Due to their dual Polish-German citizenship, the ‘German Poles’ have enjoyed free access to the Dutch labour market since the early 1990s (Pool 2004; Pijpers & Van der Velde 2007). Furthermore, under specific economic sector agreements, ‘Polish Poles’ and migrant workers from the new member states were already working in the Netherlands, more specifically from the early 2000s on. Polish workers dominated this labour force. Apart from this regular labour migration, from the early 1990s, there were also a significant number of irregular labour migrants from CEE who were employed in agriculture, horticulture and construction (Burgers & Engbersen 1996).
In other words, before the opening up of the Dutch labour market in May 2007, regular and irregular forms of organised labour migration could be observed in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, the European Union's enlargement has led to an accelerated growth of CEE migration to the Netherlands. The figures presented in this chapter will show that the largest category of CEE migrants arriving in the Netherlands come from Poland. The numbers of immigrants coming from the other CEE countries are still relatively small. However, we do not have complete insight into the volume of temporary and irregular immigration from the CEE countries to the Netherlands.
5 - Debating Cultural Difference: Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam and Women
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- By Erik Snel, Femke Stock
- Ralph Grillo
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- Book:
- The Family in Question
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 26 January 2021
- Print publication:
- 27 August 2008, pp 113-134
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Summary
Introduction: ‘Clash of Cultures’?
After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., on 9/11, there was an increasing tendency to interpret our world in terms of a ‘clash of cultures’ or civilisations, more specifically between the ‘West’ and the world of Islam (Snel 2003). The notion of a ‘clash of civilisations’ (Huntington 1996) was, in its time, very innovative. Huntington understood that the world after the fall of socialism was not essentially peaceful, as observers of international politics thought, but stressed that the main contemporary political tensions and conflicts were of an ideological nature, related to cultural or religious identities. This was a far-sighted analysis. Ten years later, international politics is indeed dominated by conflicts between the Western world and the world of Islam. Moreover, this alleged cultural clash occurs not only in international politics but also within societies in the Western world. We increasingly understand our contemporary multicultural societies in terms of homogeneous, autonomous, competing or even conflicting cultural formations, between which processes of mutual adjustment seem to be impossible.
The so-called Danish cartoon controversy in early 2006 again immensely popularised this notion of a cultural clash, but also showed the limitations of the notion. The publication of cartoons that directly linked Islam to terrorism brought about a wave of (often violent) protests all over the Muslim world. In reaction, Western newspapers and television widely debated the assumed contradiction between the West and the world of Islam: human rights and freedom of expression versus religious orthodoxy and intolerance. However, as so often happens, a clear-cut dichotomous worldview conceals more than it makes clear. First, it masks the heterogeneity in both worlds. The US government, for instance, clearly distanced itself from the cartoons saying that freedom of expression has its limits when religious feelings of others are violated. But there were also great differences in the Muslim world; between the uncontrolled outbursts of violence in some Muslim countries and the essentially peaceful protests of Muslim communities in most European countries. Secondly, and more important, the notion of a ‘clash of cultures’ obscures the point that individuals do not coincide with (alleged) ‘communities’ and ‘cultures’. Portraying a contradiction between ‘Western’ values such as freedom of speech and ‘Islam’ denies the fact that individual Muslims may identify with both. As a Dutch member of parliament of Moroccan descent put it: ‘Muslims and immigrants are only seen as a collective.