Beyond Networks

Feedback in International Migration

Oliver Bakewell, Godfried Engbersen, Maria Lucinda Fonseca, Cindy Horst, Oliver Bakewell, Godfried Engbersen, Maria Lucinda Fonseca, Cindy Horst

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781349554393
  9781137539205
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137539212
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

This edited volume explores migration movements to Norway, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Portugal from Brazil, Morocco and Ukraine, focusing on how the migration processes of yesterday influence those of today. The central analytical tool for this undertaking is the concept of feedback. This volume identifies various feedback mechanisms that initiate, perpetuate and reverse migration movements. It pays attention to the role of personal networks, but it also moves beyond networks by analysing the role of institutions, macro-level factors and forms of broadcast feedback operating through impersonal channels. Based on extensive surveys and in-depth interviews, it changes our understanding of how and why patterns of international migration change over time.

1

Introduction: Feedback in Migration Processes

Oliver Bakewell, Agnieszka Kubal and Sónia Pereira

Introduction

The story of the pioneers setting off on an adventure into distant places, building new lives and then calling on people back home to join them has been told in many different ways over generations. Such tales of journeys and migrations lie at the heart of many narratives of national origin. For example, this is seen very clearly in the foundations of the United States, with the European ‘discovery’ of the New World and the subsequent mass migration across the Atlantic away from the desperate poverty of Europe. Today, it is commonly reflected in debates about the growth of migrant populations across the world. The idea of migration stimulating further migration is also well established in migration studies (de Haas, 2010; Massey et al., 1998). However, this process is often taken for granted and there is very little analysis of how and why this should happen, or – perhaps equally importantly – we are lacking the in-depth exploration of cases where it does not occur or when the process appears to be reversed so that initial migration actually hinders further migration.

This is the starting point for this volume. In this book, we examine how migration at one time affects subsequent patterns of migration. Inevitably, this leads to a concern with understanding how the presence of one group of migrants may influence the decisions and actions of those who come later. We need to go beyond the simple correlations that can indicate the possibility of a relationship between an independent variable (migrants already present) and an observed outcome (new migrants arriving) to unpick the social mechanisms that operate to create these links across time and space. Throughout this volume we ask, how does this work?

We describe this mechanism as feedback, drawing on a metaphor long used in migration theory and derived from broader theories on social systems (Mabogunje, 1970). In this Introduction, we present the broad themes running through the volume, starting with our basic research questions and showing how these led us to focus on feedback as a social mechanism through which migration at one time changes subsequent patterns of movement. While this idea of feedback is frequently invoked in the migration literature, we argue that too often it is elided with the analysis of migrants’ social network. We then move on briefly to present the empirical basis for the volume – the findings of THEMIS, a project exploring the evolution of migration systems in Europe – and explain the other elements of our conceptual framework that were developed in this project. In the final section of this Introduction, we show how the various chapters contribute to these debates in different ways.

The questions and the main focus of this volume are unashamedly theoretical. At the same time, our work is grounded in particular empirical settings: the movements between a set of three origin countries (Brazil, Morocco and Ukraine) and four European destinations (the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the United Kingdom). While we are not aiming to provide exhaustive empirical analysis of the movement between any of these origin/destination pairs (or migration corridors – see the following), the chapters present new empirical evidence that illustrates important migration processes taking place in each corridor. Some of these have already been the subject of considerable volumes of research; for example, there is extensive literature on Moroccans in the Netherlands (e.g., see De Haas, 2007; van Meeteren et al., 2013) and Brazilians in Portugal (e.g., Malheiros, 2007; Góis, 2009; Padilla, 2006). There is much less material on some of the other corridors, such as Brazilians in Norway or Moroccans in Portugal, and the volume can offer some tantalising glimpses into these little-explored movements. The discussions of the changing economic, social and political contexts for migration in the different countries aim to serve only the theoretical arguments in the various chapters. We are aware that this may disappoint those who seek detailed analysis of migration in the different corridors, but to include that would have made for a very different volume.

While the focus of the volume may be theoretical, there are important implications for policy and practice, especially at this time of heightened concern about migration in Europe and many other parts of the world. This idea of feedback has permeated into the policy arena, where there is a widespread assumption that the presence of migrants from one origin area is likely to stimulate the arrival of more migrants from the same area. To some extent this has been institutionalised in policies of family reunification, developed in response to human rights’ obligations. It is also seen in public policy concerns about the development of ethnic enclaves, integration and transnational engagement and identifications. The concept of feedback is rarely explicitly invoked in these discussions, but it can be clearly seen to underlie the widely held view that migration begets more migration. In addition, these contemporary policy debates have been focused on migrant networks as if they were the primary cause of further migration, rather than exploring the broader range of factors that shape migration patterns. Moreover, the discussion about feedback, qua social networks, tends to be restricted to particular subsets of migrants, in particular low-skilled labour migrants and irregular migrants. The differential operation of feedback across various social and economic classes and groups is rarely considered. While this book cannot hope to bring solutions to these problems of policy, it can help by developing a more substantial foundation of social scientific knowledge on which policies can be designed.

The origins of this book: From systems to feedback

This volume is the product of extensive collaboration among an international team of researchers based in four academic institutions: the University of Oxford, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the University of Lisbon and the Peace Research Institute Oslo. In 2010, we set out on a research journey to explore the evolution of migration systems, drawing on empirical case studies of migration to Europe. This project, Theorising the Evolution of Migration Systems in Europe (THEMIS), was funded for four years by the NORFACE research programme on Migration in Europe – Social, Economic, Cultural and Policy Dynamics. The central aim of THEMIS was to explain how and why migration between particular origins and destinations waxed and waned. Why is it that sometimes the movement of a few people to a new destination heralds the beginning of a new pattern of migration that may expand and become well established? For example, we can think of the movement of Polish migrants to the United States in the late 19th century (as described by Morawska, 2011). Under what conditions do such patterns start to break down? Or why do we sometimes see no such patterns being formed? Here examples are less well documented as social scientists and policymakers have not been concerned with the non-story of somebody migrating and little more happening as a result.

As we debated how to get purchase on these questions, it rapidly became clear that we needed to understand how the experience of one group of migrants mediated their influence on and the relationship with any people from the same origins who contemplated migration at a later date. We were inspired by the work of Mabogunje (1970), Kritz et al. (1992), Massey (1990), Faist (2004) and the critical perspective on migration systems offered by de Haas (2010).

Although the project was originally framed in terms of migration systems, it soon became clear that the idea of the system would make a poor guide for our empirical endeavours. Given that we were interested in understanding both when systems are formed and when they are not, we could neither make migration systems the object of our enquiry nor take them as the unit of analysis for the study. Moreover, coming from our different backgrounds and disciplinary perspectives, there was no clear consensus on the definition of a migration system or even the analytical value of the concept (see Bakewell, 2014, for a much more detailed discussion of migration systems). Hence, it was also impossible to set the migration system as the outcome to be explained; after all, lacking a consistent definition, it was not clear how we should recognise a system when we saw one. However, recalling our research questions, our collective interest was not so much in identifying and defining systems as observing when migration flows started to show systemic properties or exhibited systemicity.

The notion of feedback emerged as a central theme in our search for systemic properties and social mechanisms that could explain the various dynamics of migration movements. We see feedback operating when it is possible to trace a path from the observation of migration from A to B at one time to changes in the patterns of migration from A to B at a later time. Feedback can operate in either direction on a broad continuum – to encourage further migration or to dampen down movement. In other cases, it may be impossible to discern any feedback. It is important to emphasise that this does not mean that migration does not occur nor even that it may be expanding, but we cannot find a plausible link that relates that change in migration patterns to earlier movements. For example, if a new industrial centre is developed, it will attract new migrant workers, who continue to be drawn in by news of sustained economic growth rather than any contact or knowledge of those earlier migrants. In system terms, this would be considered migration being stimulated by a change in the wider environment – the economic conditions (Bakewell, 2014).

This conception of feedback draws on the growing literature on social mechanisms in broader sociological theory (Bunge, 2004; Gross, 2009; Hedström and Ylikoski, 2010). Merton saw social mechanisms as ‘social processes having designated consequences for designated parts of the social structure’; he argued that the main task of the researcher is to ‘identify’ those mechanisms and to establish under which conditions they either ‘come into being’ or ‘fail to operate’ (Merton, 1967; Hedström and Swedberg, 1996, pp. 43–44). In the light of this, we see feedback as a social mechanism of the middle range, to be explored by ‘an intermediary level of analysis in-between pure description and storytelling, on the one hand, and universal social laws, on the other’ (Hedström and Swedberg, 1996, p. 281).

If we can understand the operation of feedback, we know the means by which migration at one time has a causal relationship with subsequent migration patterns (or not). Moreover, we seek some degree of generalisation of these feedback mechanisms so that we can relate what we observe happening in one setting to what we might expect to observe in another. At the same time, feedback is not directly observable in itself. It is not sufficient simply to observe the correlation between migration at one time and that at another. Our focus is on what underlying social processes are at work to bring this link about.

The task of this volume is to pull apart feedback as a middle-range social mechanism in migration – to understand better its different components and configurations and how they operate in a range of contexts. As we explain in the next section, our central critique of the existing research on feedback in migration processes is that it has been largely conflated with the analysis of migrants’ social network, which is often poorly specified, and tends to downplay the role of other factors, such as the changing immigration regimes, the migration industry of travel and employment agencies, class relations and so forth, that shape migration patterns.

Feedback in migration processes

We make no claim to be first to analyse this feedback as a social mechanism shaping migration patterns. Ravenstein’s laws of migration published in the late 19th century (1885; 1889) brought to the forefront the observation that migration in one direction stimulates movement in the opposite direction. Nearly a century later, in his article on rural–urban migration systems in Africa, Mabogunje (1970) explicitly introduces the concept of feedback. He understood feedback as the flow of information sent to the area of origin about the success (or failure) of specific migration projects. This was assumed to influence potential migrants’ decisions about following the footsteps of the first migrants and put in motion more stable migration patterns, often independent of the initial conditions for moving.

Massey provides a more systematic analysis of the operation of feedback within migration systems through the idea of ‘cumulative causation’, which he coined to explain how migration between localities can become a self-sustaining process, based on the experiences of Mexican migration to the United States (Massey, 1990; Massey et al., 1987; Massey et al., 1993; Massey et al., 1998). According to this account, the operation of feedback can first be observed when migrants provide information and assistance through their social networks to contacts in their area of origin. This reduces the costs and risks of migration and encourages more and more people to move towards the same location.

As migration expands, the networks expand even more and the process becomes self-sustained, independently from the structural conditions which generated it in the first place. For example, the emigration of the more entrepreneurial and better-educated population may set back economic growth in the area of origin, reducing employment opportunities and making emigration more attractive for others. While the direction of such cumulative causation – to stimulate rather than inhibit migration – has been contested (de Haas, 2010), it does draw attention to a set of feedback mechanisms that lie beyond networks. As a result of this process, migration flows tend to ‘acquire a measure of stability and structure over space and time, allowing for the identification of stable international migration systems’ (Massey et al., 1993, p. 454).

While this account does not restrict its focus to the operation of social networks, it does place networks at the core of its explanation of the emergence of these migration ‘systems’. It is only as the scale of movement increases to such a level that it affects the broader conditions that the reliance on networks diminishes. It is perhaps then little surprise that much of the literature that draws on cumulative causation as an explanation for migration dynamics focuses rather narrowly on the operation of feedback through migrants’ social networks.

What is more surprising is that this emphasis on networks is often not accompanied by a clear definition of these social networks or detailed consideration of the different ways in which they may operate. With notable exceptions (e.g., Paul, 2013; Epstein, 2008; Haug, 2008; Collyer, 2005; Böcker, 1994), there is little attention paid to the wide, and growing, array of forms of network that may be implicated in feedback mechanisms. Simply referring to migrant networks without any further specification gives little clue as to how and why migration patterns change as they do. In general, when the network is invoked, it conjures up images of migrants facilitating their family and friends back home to come and join them. While this may be part of the story (and perhaps the major part in some cases), as we show in this volume, there is a much more complex set of inter-relationships. In showing the operation of feedback as more complex and nuanced, we thereby challenge simplistic formulations such as ‘[w]hat matters for the rate of migration is the number of people who are related to new migrants and who are prepared to help them’ (Collier, 2013, p. 41 emphasis in original).

DiMaggio and Garip (2012) have proposed a more sophisticated analysis of the role of migration networks in shaping migration patterns. They suggest three social mechanisms that lead to network effects in migration, which could be conceptualised as corresponding with the main sources of feedback:

• social learning or facilitation (Garip and Asad, 2013) – offering support and advice that reduce the risks and costs of migration;

• normative pressure or influence – which shapes people’s views of migration and may support or discourage subsequent movement;

• network externalities – the pool of common resources created by previous migrants, institutions such as smuggler gangs, migrant business associations, migrant support groups and hometown associations.

This is a useful starting point for breaking down the feedback mechanisms operating through social networks, but the empirical work presented in this volume suggests it could be refined in at least three ways. First, this approach does not examine the different spatial operations of these mechanisms; for example, where does the social facilitation occur – at origin or destination, or transnationally? This is important when we think about how feedback operates and what effects it has. Intuitively, feedback processes seem to belong to the now-established and celebrated transnational social field (Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2004); however, we argue that they are not confined to this sphere only. Social learning among migrants may facilitate their settlement in the destination, but it may only start to operate when a new migrant arrives and finds co-nationals. Thi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction: Feedback in Migration Processes
• 2. Exploring 12 Migration Corridors: Rationale, Methodology and Overview
• 3. New Roles for Social Networks in Migration? Assistance in Brazilian Migration to Portugal and the Netherlands
• 4. Online Feedback in Migration Networks
• 5. The Impact of Class on Feedback Mechanisms: Brazilian Migration to Norway, Portugal and the United Kingdom
• 6. The Economic Crisis as a Feedback-Generating Mechanism? Brazilian and Ukrainian Migration to Portugal
• 7. From Bridgeheads to Gate Closers: How Migrant Networks Contribute to Declining Migration from Morocco to the Netherlands
• 8. Making and Breaking a Chain: Migrants’ Decisions about Helping Others Migrate
• 9. Broadcasting Migration Outcomes
• 10. Migration Mechanisms of the Middle Range: On the Concept of Reverse Cumulative Causation
• 11. Beyond Networks: Insights on Feedback and Mechanisms of the Middle Range
• Index