The Mediterranean in the Age of Globalization

Migration, Welfare, and Borders

Natalia Ribas-Mateos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780765802576
• eBook ISBN: 9781351479615
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"The Mediterranean in the Age of Globalization is a welcome corrective to the tendency to present globalization as a homogenous concept, and the failure to describe how it operates in specific regions. Ribas-Mateos examines globalization and migration across the Mediterranean, using an innovative, integrated framework so as to map social places by describing how social, political, cultural, and economic forces are embedded within a globalizing environment.The author articulates an original and compelling narrative, mapping the Mediterranean as a global place where international and regional forces are intertwined in multiple threads. In doing so, she identifies two key components of globalization--affecting specifically forms of welfare and issues of mobility--in the context of a weakening European welfare state and the relocation and reinforcement of Mediterranean borders. Nine Mediterranean cities are investigated as ""gateway"" cities, which shape two major effects of globalization: welfare and mobility. The book challenges conventional North-South perspectives, and focuses and systematizes the way international migration should be conceptualized.The originality of the book results from the author's fieldwork, which is rich in descriptive detail, and from a theory centered around global perspectives. Seven case studies in Southern Europe--Algeciras, Athens, Barcelona, Lisbon, Naples, Turin, and Thrace--deal with issues related to migration and the welfare state. She also includes two ethnographies that represent two Mediterranean gateways in the North-South Mediterranean division: Tangiers (in Morocco) and Durres (in Albania), which are mapped as border-cities in the global Mediterranean context. Because of its intrinsically multidisciplinary nature, this superb volume will be of particular interest to academics and social science researchers as well as policymakers and international agencies."

Part 1
Southern Europe

Introduction to Part 1

This first part of the book searches for a general framework in which to situate common indicators for a general immigration model in Southern Europe. The initial interpretative analysis will focus primarily on convergence logics (conceptual part, chapter 1) rather than on the divergences (case-study analysis, chapter 2).

Considering that Southern Europe is frequently excluded from modelization in comparative research (in relation to the welfare state as well as in relation to modes of migrant incorporation), the main aim of this first part of the book is to study the specificity of the phenomenon of recent immigration in Southern Europe, its social context, and the consequences it poses to society and to foreign immigrants.

This first part includes seven case studies in Southern European cities (on issues related to immigration and the welfare state) that identify key components of globalization processes—forms of welfare and issues of mobility—in light of the weakening of the European welfare state. In order to support the argument, the concepts of welfare mix variations are discussed, including explanations and descriptions of the urban and social differences existing in Southern Europe. Consequently, I focus my attention on an exploration of the reinterpretation of the welfare state in the context of the “new migrations.” An explanation is offered as to how economic globalization simultaneously leads to the emergence of new forms of welfare and new forms of mobility in social relations, where traditional research sites are reshaped by cross-national economic integration of different forms and scales. This is discussed in more detail by showing the articulation of the selected city cases. In the Southern European cities the emphasis is placed on changes in forms of welfare in relation to social services to foreign migrants.

The first chapter describes a framework for the analysis of a theoretical convergence in Southern European immigration. This is explained in terms of an interdisciplinary context located in the labor market (especially in the informal sector), civil society (especially in the role of the family) and the state (stressing the growing importance of local policies). Changes in the market (intensification of informal trends of the labor market, particularly in the farming and service sectors, among others) and in the family (in terms of gender and generation structures related to the quality of welfare services) are the pillars for an understanding of the situation of foreign immigrants. The intensification of the already existing informal sector in Southern European cities opens up an interesting labor demand for foreign migrants. However, this labor integration means paying a high cost in welfare terms, when migrants have to face low wages and no protection in contrast with generous welfare coverage in Northern European countries.

At a theoretical level general commonalties are also to be found in relation to global tendencies, the demand for unskilled labor, the reinforcement of gender and ethnic inequalities, strict policies on border restriction, etc. Nevertheless, the empirical findings (fieldwork in Southern European cities) confirm the complexity involved in generalizing about the fragmentation of such Southern European societies—hence the need to focus on locality.

Chapter 1 poses the initial research question following three lines of argument: the recent nature of the immigration phenomenon, its interaction with welfare state dynamics and with a certain type of family structure. Firstly, mass-scale foreign immigration is a new phenomenon if one considers the historical perspective of the region. Labor migrations have arrived in Southern Europe quite suddenly and have brought about substantial changes in these countries. Secondly, the argument is related to the existence of a weak welfare state, in comparison to welfare regimes in Europe. The third line of argument is related to the family context, both in respect to the family system in the host countries and the family structure of foreign migrants, hence the family is conceived here as a “shock absorber.”

Chapter 2 analyzes seven case studies from the southern half of Europe: Athens and Thrace in Greece; Naples and Turin in Italy; Lisbon in Portugal; and Barcelona and Algeciras in Spain. The analysis will show how these cities and places have responded to the challenge of global migration, showing a wide range of responses at the local level. What is striking, however, is how differences are observed in the shaping of welfare provisions, with the organization of multiple systems of dual divisions: migrants, non-migrants, regular migrants, non-regular migrants, etc. Development of the welfare mix seems to be at the center of the restructuring of social policy in relation to immigration and seems to respond to the informal welfare needs of immigrants.

The difficulty in considering Southern Europe as an amalgamation of traits, whether they are common to the whole region, or what makes them peculiar in Southern Europe (in considerations such as the Italian North-South disparities, the changing units of analysis from regions to cities, for example) will be seen throughout all of the empirical cases.

1

Southern Europe in a Migratory Context

The Scope of Comparative Research

Classical studies in sociology show a persistent reference to comparative work. Marx studied different societies of the past in order to demonstrate the specific nature of the production relations of modern society. Weber analyzed the relation between material interests and beliefs for different social groups in order to explain the rational type of social organization for modern society (Bendix 1986; in Samuel 1989). Furthermore, both Weber and Marx refer to an interpretative paradigm of socioeconomic change that is capable of accounting for diversity and discontinuity (Mingione 1991:5).

Today, international comparative research is a defined branch of comparative sociology: “The analysis of the distribution of social facts carries explicitly on more than one society. But not necessarily towards the whole society; in fact the most frequent analysis takes into consideration the observance of a social phenomenon well centered round two or more societies” (Samuel 1989: 2). However, the problem of linearity in comparisons as well as the data normally provided limits our analysis of international comparisons. The large amount of historical, macro-economic, and demographic data available on income, productivity, distribution of occupations, demographic movements and so on gives us the derived variables that the various contexts of social relations have included and on occasions “measured” (Mingione 1991:15).

International comparative research focuses on the study of a relation and it can be based, either on the similarities or differences existing between two or more social processes. Several questions arise then when considering the comparative procedure. Why have we chosen those particular countries and why are they relevant to our topic? Which countries in the North are in direct contrast to the reality of Southern Europe? How do we construct the model we are going to explain, by analogy or by dissimilarity? Which units of analysis should we specifically consider: space, nations, regions, cities or population groups? In our case, how do we take care of the variables of time, varying political systems, different immigrant groups, languages and traditions? Can we articulate the macro-level as well as the micro-level in our analysis? How can we situate the control of ethnocentrism in the chosen countries, especially considering that the analytical tools proceed from outside this region, and that an evolutionist approach to societies is often applied?

The Problem of Linearity

The issue of linearity in comparative work has been one of the main problems when dealing with the evolutionary heritage of the social sciences. According to Mingione (1991: 2) this is both a question of changing social reality and of inadequate instruments of interpretation, raising the question as to whether conceptual instruments have been rendered inadequate by a changing reality or whether they have always been so.

Firstly, the idea of linearity is based here on the existence of a fundamental industrializing trend, which itself is built into the main sociological theories. Therefore, unidirectionality is the point of departure; understanding that socioeconomic change moves in a single direction which underlies all the different variants, giving them a more or less standardized form. As Mingione states, “as a result, the changing social picture is composed of features typically found in all industrial societies. In the first place, it is not entirely a platitude to observe that sociological paradigms have developed in parallel with Western industrial societies and have always exhibited a greater capacity to explain these rather than other kinds of societies. The other side of the coin is that sociologists have incorporated the assumption of a ‘fundamental industrializing trend’ into their theories because, in some cases and for a long historical period, it has constituted an effective way to simplify social complexity” (Mingione, 1991: 5).

Secondly, the idea of linearity can also be applied to the assumed role of the welfare state in the later capitalist era. The modelization of welfare typologies finds its essence in the expansion of the regulatory capacity of the state in capitalist societies that assumes two main forms: the welfare state at the center of the world system (especially Northern Europe and Canada) and the developing state on the periphery and semi-periphery of the world system (in relation with weak democratic systems and different forms of socialization).

The main problem here is that the work attempts to extend comparative sociological tools to other less well researched realities, in our case some countries in the northern Mediterranean; thus, we are constantly forced to deal with the assumed linearity of industrial capitalism. It is a fact that the hegemonic concepts in social sciences have been mostly developed in Northern Europe and in the United States. I have already proved through analysis in the Mediterranean South, especially in the Maghreb region, how difficult it can be to export sociological concepts to other realities.¹ As we will see here the convergence logics we apply are based on the idea that the proximity between different realities can help the discussion more than other comparable societies, which cannot take as axes similarities or contrasts.

Linearity problems are not only present when taking into account variations in time and space but also when the emphasis is placed on continuity, and which includes the idea of the continuity between the economic, political, and social spheres involved in understanding changes in Southern Europe. Consequently, the very nature of this work is highly interdisciplinary. In a way it creates fuzzy borders between issues often approached from a hermetic sociological perspective: sociology of the family, sociology of migrations, social policy. Moreover, by taking classical forms of invisibility like the gender dimension of the welfare state or the feminization of international migration, the task can become even more arduous.

Logically, social changes bring with them changes in comparative work. For example, in the 1960s comparative research in Europe focused mainly on economic structures. In the 1990s, there was a major debate on the welfare state regimes, while more recently, the social services approach has become more important. According to Antonnen (1998) these changes are related to new demands, new theoretical changes and new political responses.²

Apart from the context of social change as a transforming challenge for comparative work, a further issue for review is the way changes and the concepts used to analyze them can actually travel. Consequently, a key point for consideration will be not only to determine if international comparative research can help to develop a tool for social policy—particularly when taking into account quantitative data and the difficulties often found in obtaining them—but if the different concepts, terminology, and categories used can also present a difficulty to assess comparative tools.

Comparative Problems in Migration

We will consider here comparative issues in the light of the main references selected for comparative purposes when considering different migration contexts. Many texts have pointed out the different terms used in national discourses in an attempt to highlight the importance of context and terminology in this kind of work. In this line, Lloyd (1995) indicates that whatever the scope of comparison, one can agree that it involves identifying both universals and differences. The central task for the comparative procedure will be definition, use of concepts, and the identification of variables. In the research agenda on European immigration, two contexts have been established as the main references for comparative work: those of the North American and the Northern European one, modeling how to study other differing realities (see also the identified problem above on linearity in research). Moreover, in welfare typologies the specific context of the studies was often how Anglo-Saxon countries and the experiences of these countries were interpreted in terms of universals (Sainsbury 1994: 2).

Schnapper (1992) highlights the following as being most important variables for European comparisons in immigration: the national setting, the political tradition, the demographic situation, and economic needs. In our case, when setting the variables for comparison we will have to also add the heterogeneity of immigrant populations (including origins, migratory projects and different chronologies of migratory flows) and the type of rights (from citizenship to social benefits) they benefit from. In all four countries the starting point is an examination of social integration policies. Nevertheless, they cannot be understood without the general framework given by immigration control policies.

Portes (1997) points out that what we have today is an amorphous mass of data on immigration in different countries and a series of concepts whose scope seldom exceeds that of a particular nation-state. In that respect, he stresses the need for comparative projects that focus on research topics at a higher level of abstraction than those guiding policy concerns that employ a common cross-national methodology. Systematic cross-national research can be useful for three purposes: firstly, to examine the extent to which theoretical propositions “travel,” that is, are applicable in national context; secondly, to generate typologies of interaction effects specifying the variable influence of causal factors across different national contexts; and thirdly, to produce concepts and propositions of broader scope. Portes (1997) mentions four major issues that he considers appropriate for such comparative analyses: the rise of transnational communities, the adaptation process of the second generation, gender cleavages and household strategies, and the enactment and the enforcement of state immigration laws.

Even though local differentiation is taken into account through the urban setting this is not always the rule in migration research. For example, when considering the case of Thrace (Ribas-Mateos 2000) as a region we are obviously not talking about a city in the sense that we have analyzed the cases of Turin (Caponio et al. 2000), Naples or Athens. If one thinks about population indexes, those in Thrace are not even half of the Athens population. Consequently, research problems are first and foremost linked to the idea of representation, because the geographical unit is not limited to the city alone, but is far more diffuse and extends to the whole of the region, implying a major difficulty in drawing any type of comparison. This will generate future comparative dilemmas such as the dilemmas involved in contrasting this particular case with other European countries. Secondly, there is the assumption of the representation of social actors. For example, in Thrace there are hardly any associations and social workers and mayors are more represented as interviewees.

The comparison of the social realities of different countries implies much m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Southern Europe
• Part 2: Border Cities
• Conclusion: The Global in One Sea
• References
• Index