Keywords

6.1 Introduction

In the summer of 2019, I met IbrahimFootnote 1 and his brother, Hafiz, in a small village in Sweden. I had first met Ibrahim (48) and his family – his wife Noor (47) and their three children – in 2015, when I started my fieldwork in the Netherlands. Noor and her mother arrived in the Netherlands as asylum-seekers in 1999. At around the same time, Ibrahim had also arrived there seeking asylum. They met and married in the asylum-seeking camp in the Netherlands, where they waited around 8 years to obtain their refugee status. Once this was granted, Ibrahim, Noor and her mother moved to social housing and began receiving social assistance until, several years later, Ibrahim was able to validate his university degree and find work as a doctor.

Eleven years later, having acquired Dutch citizenship, Noor and Ibrahim decided to move to the UK as EU migrants with their two children. This was because, like many Sudanese, they felt that the Dutch education system discriminated against their children because of their migration background. In fact, research has shown that, in the Netherlands, teachers often underestimate the potential of migrant students, which hinders their access to university (see Klooster et al., 2016; OECD, 2016). In Sudan, however, a tertiary education is both a source of prestige for the family and a sort of old-age insurance in that well-educated children are expected to have better job opportunities and thus to be better able to provide for their ageing parents in the future (Gasim, 2010; Serra Mingot, 2020a). In addition to this, until the late 1980s, many northern Sudanese arrived in the UK to study or as professionals, business people or academics (IOM, 2006). Having a British education often led to highly-paid jobs in Sudan or the Gulf, which gave migrants and their families a much higher socio-economic status.

In 2010, Noor and her children moved to the UK, while Ibrahim stayed in the Netherlands to finish his registration as a doctor. In fact, although he had a medical degree from an Eastern European university, it took him several years to validate it and be able to work in the Netherlands. When Noor and her children arrived in the UK, they moved in with her brother-in-law, Mustafa, who was studying there. Soon after, Noor discovered she was having complications with the pregnancy of her third child. While, in the Netherlands, she had been kept under close observation and given the necessary treatment, in the UK, the public healthcare service did not meet her expectations and she returned to the Netherlands in a somewhat weaker state of health.

During one of my visits to their house in the Netherlands, Ibrahim told me how they were thinking of moving to Sweden. According to him, this Nordic country gave him more chances to grow professionally as a doctor and there was less discrimination. Ibrahim complained of how he was tired of the anti-migrant discourse in the Netherlands and, after having visited Sweden several times to test the waters, he felt it was a better choice. Noor, however, did not think the same. After having spent so many years in the Netherlands, she felt like she had grown used to the country, she had her friends, she spoke the language well and she did not really feel like starting over again in Sweden. As for the children, Ibrahim told me, they were fine moving to Sweden because, for them, it was like an adventure, like going on holiday. By mid-2017 the whole family had moved to Sweden.

When I met Ibrahim and his brother Hafiz in Sweden in 2019, however, things had not been going as expected. They had struggled to find accommodation; people were kind, he explained, but very closed and overall they felt very isolated. Ibrahim was still willing to give it a try for a bit longer but, in January 2021, they all had moved back to the Netherlands. As Ibrahim explained, the feeling of isolation had become stronger and their children had been experiencing discrimination and bullying in school, as a result of which they had packed their bags and returned to the Netherlands, where they were still living when I was writing this chapter.Footnote 2

In past decades, the arrival of refugees in the industrialised countries of the Global North went hand-in-hand with negative connotations attached to the word ‘refugee’ or ‘asylum-seeker’. The concept of ‘force’ linked to these migrant groups implies a lack of choice, which tends to disregard their agency and aspirations (Ghorashi, 2005). Refugees are often depicted as powerless victims in need of protection and who are highly dependent on welfare-state provisions (Ghorashi, 2005; Ludwig, 2016). This is actually one of the arguments why generous welfare systems are often speculated to be an important driver for (onward) migration decisions (Borjas, 1999; De Jong & de Valk, 2019). This idea also leads frequently to an expectation of a certain degree of gratitude for any help given to migrants. In fact, refugees who do not conform to emotional expectations – appearing to enjoy themselves too much or travelling ‘home’ too often – are sometimes viewed as suspects and their status as true refugees questioned – indeed, a lack of agency and aspirations is an expected characteristic of refugees (Graham, 2002).

Migrants and refugees’ aspirations, however, are complex (see Paul & Yeoh, 2020) and do not always align with the receiving state’s ideas on what they are supposed to aspire to and when. For example, in some European countries, such as the Netherlands, asylum-seekers are not encouraged to aspire to too many things. Although asylum-seekers’ basic needs (e.g. accommodation, a weekly allowance and medical and other costs) are provided for by the state, they have very limited access to the formal labour market and education during the asylum process – the latter of which can often take years (see also de Hoon and van Liempt, Chap. 3, on the situation of Somalis in the Netherlands). Even when refugee status is granted, they must go through a process of re-socialisation into the host society (Ghorashi, 2005; Van Heelsum, 2017; Serra-Mingot, 2018). Such re-socialisation, together with the lengthy asylum process, limited personal development and interactions with society, means that many refugees can only apply for a job for the first time at a relatively advanced age in a very competitive labour market (Serra-Mingot & Mazzucato, 2019). Yet, while refugees are rendered dependent on the state for several years (Ghorashi, 2005; Bakker et al., 2014), they are blamed for such dependency when, after being awarded refugee status, they are not able or willing to do any job for which they are often overqualified.

Despite the different institutional constraints throughout the asylum process and later – be this when they become refugees or are undocumented – asylum-seekers and refugees do have a certain degree of agency, as the opening vignette of this chapter has shown. In fact, the story of Noor and Ibrahim shows the multi-sited transnational strategies of a Dutch-Sudanese family (moving from the Netherlands to the UK, back to the Netherlands, onwards to Sweden and then finally back to the Netherlands again) to fulfil their aspirations at different migration and life-course stages. The different degrees of agency at these stages play a crucial role in shaping the migrants’ aspirations, which are intrinsically linked to the context in which they live and to their individual views on their personal options, preferences and expectations, shaped by the cultural, political and socio-economic conditions ‘back home’ (Allsopp et al., 2014). Moreover, the meaning and content of migrants’ aspirations change within their migratory projects, since they are at a crossroads of personal, collective and normative dimensions (Carling & Collins, 2018).

This chapter illustrates the onward migration strategies in which Sudanese migrants engage in order to overcome the constraints that macro structures (e.g. migration and welfare systems) exercise over their aspirations throughout their life-course, which is expected to develop in a certain way according to the ‘refugee’ label which they have been assigned. Through the lens of an aspirations–capabilities framework (De Haas, 2021), this chapter explores how migrants navigate institutional limitations with family obligations, individual aspirations and capabilities. Here, aspirations are defined as future plans, ambitions or goals, inspired and formulated in the present social context, with a varying degree of clarity or vagueness (Quaglia & Cobb, 1996; Gutman & Akerman, 2008), while capability refers to the ability of individuals to lead lives which they value and to enhance the options they have (Sen, 1999).

This contribution draws on ethnographic data collected for a bigger research project on transnational social protection for Sudanese migrants in the Netherlands and the UK and their families back home. Rather than looking at the individual migrant, this research took extended families as the main unit of analysis. This allowed us to uncover not only trans-national aspects of aspirations but also trans-temporal ones. Indeed, looking at migration not only as a geographical but also as a trans-temporal process helps us to see how nation states also impose control through time in very powerful ways – for example by prolonging family separation or by limiting future job expectations (Coe, 2016). Drawing on the life stories of Dutch-Sudanese migrants in the UK (or elsewhere), this chapter contributes to our understanding of the links between aspirations, capabilities and onward migration by looking at mobility as a multi-sited longitudinal family trajectory through which to fulfil aspirations throughout the life-course. In doing so, this chapter casts some light on three methodological issues encountered multinational migrations studies, namely: complexity, multispatiality and extended temporality (Paul & Yeoh, 2020, 356).

6.2 Being Pushed to, Wanting to or Simply Being Able to Move?

In recent decades, migration studies has remained a somewhat under-theorised field of inquiry. To date, most migration theories have focused on trying to come up with generalised explanations for migration (Castles et al., 2014; De Haas, 2021). Rather than theory development, we have witnessed an increase in the number of empirical studies on migration which, abandoning the big-picture migration theory-making, have shown us a huge diversity in migration experiences across different ethnic, gender and class groups (De Haas, 2021). As a reaction to state bias and so-called ‘methodological nationalism’ (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002), recent anthropological research has aimed at conceptualising the transnational lives and experiences of migrants from a migrant-centered perspective. At the same time, economists, sociologists and demographers have increasingly focused on quantitative analysis to explain the causes and impacts of migration, very often along the lines of ‘push–pull’ theories (De Haas, 2021). Neither qualitative nor quantitative approaches have been able to properly capture the role of structural factors (e.g. inequality, power and states) in shaping migration processes nor to develop an insightful idea of human agency that goes beyond the opportunistic-utilitarian assumptions of neo-classical models or the portrayal of migrants as passive victims of capitalism (De Haas, 2021).

For the purpose of this chapter, agency is understood as people’s more or less limited ability to make independent choices and to impose these on the world, thus forming the structures that shape people’s opportunities (De Haas, 2021). In this regard, structures refer to patterns of social relations, beliefs and behaviours. Factors and institutions such as class, religion, gender, ethnicity, networks and markets sustain inequalities and limit the opportunities which people have, as well as the socio-economic and cultural resources which they can access. This constrains not only their agency but also their ideas, knowledge and self-consciousness of what can be done (De Haas, 2021). In fact, people’s access to economic (material), social (other people) and cultural (ideas and knowledge) resources shapes their ability to move, their preferences and aspirations (to move or stay), their choice of destination and their ability to find a job or housing (De Haas, 2021).

People’s life aspirations are defined as future plans, ambitions or goals – inspired and formulated in the present social context, with a varying degree of clarity or vagueness – which are affected by culture, education, personal disposition and imaginaries (Ray, 2003; Gutman & Akerman, 2008; De Haas, 2021).

Aspirations not only vary hugely across different social and cultural contexts but also tend to change as people move through their life course. In fact, people’s life aspirations and their perceptions of opportunities ‘here’ and ‘there’ may trigger a desire to migrate (Carling & Schewel, 2018). The extent to which changing preferences lead to migration aspirations depends on the degree to which people feel that their needs can be fulfilled (or not) locally (Carling & Collins, 2018).

In fact, migratory agency is often associated with the act of moving and settling in another country. Yet, real agency also involves the option to not act and to remain in situ (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). From this perspective, migration is defined by de Haas (2021, 17) as:

a function of aspirations and capabilities to migrate within given sets of perceived geographical opportunity structures, in which migration aspirations are a function of people’s general life aspirations and perceived geographical opportunity structures [and] migration capabilities are contingent on positive (‘freedom to’) and negative (‘freedom from’) liberties.

Several studies have highlighted the ability of migrants to defy government restrictions and discrimination by migrating over closed borders, by buying in the services of a myriad of migration intermediaries and brokers, by forging new networks or by establishing communities and their own economic structures in destination countries (Agunias, 2009; Ambrosini, 2017). It is thus as unrealistic to depict migrants as victims fleeing situations of despair as it is to depict them as totally rational and free actors who make calculated cost–benefit decisions. This shows that it is thus crucial to simultaneously account for both structure and agency in understanding processes and experiences of migration (Serra Mingot & Mazzucato, 2018, 2019; De Haas, 2021).

With very few exceptions (see Wang & Collins, 2020), most studies on migration and aspirations to date have tended to focus on space, disregarding the role of time (this point is particularly emphasised by Erdal et al. in Chap. 2). Besides inevitably involving geographical movements, migrationFootnote 3 is a crucial biographical event that often leads to disorder in one’s timeline. In traditional accounts of migration, time is often understood as linear and compartmentalised in a series of normal stages, starting with pre-migration, followed by the migration itself and finishing with either settlement or return. This view assumes not only that migrants can foresee their future trajectories but also that they have complete agency over their migration decisions and can therefore plan their migration strategies accordingly (Carling & Collins, 2018). Even though migration projects are informed by migrants’ aspirations and priorities, migration trajectories are subject to constant change, where decision-making is ongoing and ever-evolving (Cojocaru, 2016). The meaning of human action depends on its timing and particularly on its timeliness – namely, its occurring at the right or wrong moment according to personal understandings (Bourdieu, 1972). Yet, the management of a person’s time to fulfil specific aspirations – at particular life stages – is not simply an individual matter, since it develops in a specific social context.

Migration aspirations cannot be separated from public temporal norms about appropriate life-course evolution and the right timing of migration (Wang & Collins, 2020). In industrialised countries of the Global North, the welfare state plays a crucial role in organising people’s life courses in a life-long biographical pattern, since they define clear-cut situations (e.g. childhood for education, adulthood for work and old-age for rest) and roles – e.g. men have traditionally been assigned the role of head of the family and breadwinner, while women’s time has been organised less rigidly, focusing more on the domestic sphere and care-giving (Guillemard, 2005). Most welfare states, however, have been assumed to address the needs of their citizens living within the geographical borders of the nation-state. Therefore, in the context of migration, aspirations are not only shaped by biographical events (e.g. (un)employment, divorce, having children and retirement) but also by current migration and geographically fixed welfare regimes which migrants must navigate to accommodate their life plans but which may not fit in the institutional context of the receiving country. States thus play a crucial role in the timing of migration by establishing, for instance, time-based eligibility requirements (e.g. age), time limits on visas or on how long asylum-seekers must wait until they are allowed to work. Under these circumstances, migrants need to either reshape their aspirations and tailor them to new circumstances or aim to fulfill them by moving on to another country (Ahrens et al., 2016; Scheibelhofer, 2018).

Migration can lead to new conceptions of the temporality of the life course; however, the other way around, personal conceptions of the temporality of the life course often lead to migration (Coe, 2016). For example, migrants who intended to remain permanently in a host country can suddenly decide to return to the origin country or move elsewhere when certain life-course events happen (e.g. a sick relative back home, a divorce, educational needs, etc.). Similarly, receiving states, especially those with stricter migration and welfare regulations, have the power to impose their own temporal order on migrants’ lives, preventing the latter from orchestrating their lives according to their own individual aspirations and socio-cultural expectations. The ways in which states – through their migration and welfare regulations – control the development of migrants’ life courses often lead to the latter’s further onward mobility to fulfil certain aspirations. Migration, thus, is temporally relevant because it is filled with uncertainty, a time during which migrants must continuously re-imagine their future aspirations and adjust their trajectories (Cojocaru, 2016).

Yet, to date, most approaches addressing the links between welfare and migration have looked mostly at the financial aspects, overshadowing the dynamic interplay with the individual life course (De Jong & de Valk, 2019). The life-course approach is built around five principles: life-span development, agency, time and place, timing and linked lives (Elder et al., 2003; Levy & Buhlmann, 2016). Each of these principles is grounded in the idea that individual lives are embedded within transtemporal and translocal webs, stressing the dynamics that bind individual lives to structural conditions (Bailey, 2009). Indeed, the impact that macro-level circumstances – such as the welfare system and the migration regime – have on migration decisions may vary over a person’s life (De Jong & de Valk, 2019). In this chapter, I follow Coulter and his colleagues’ conceptualisation of life-course links and connections by distinguishing two levels: the micro level – where the principles of agency and linked lives highlight the fact that life trajectories are configured by a person’s individual choices, ties and obligations with other people in their social networks – and the meso/macro level, where the principles of timing, lifespan development and time focus on the connections binding individual lives to structural conditions (Coulter et al., 2016).

Migrants’ aspirations, as well as the national welfare and migration systems in which they are shaped, are not gender-neutral. Gender norms concerning the roles of women and men at a given time and place influence women’s and men’s aspirations (Elias et al., 2018). The cases presented in this chapter show that personal aspirations can also challenge gender norms. As feminist scholarship has demonstrated, migrants’ aspirations are linked to socially gendered norms and expectations – e.g. men as the main breadwinners (Charsley & Ersanilli, 2019) and women as care-givers (Scheibelhofer, 2018) – which, at the same time, presents them with gendered challenges and opportunities (Carling & Schewel, 2018; Scheibelhofer, 2018). Migration involves some degree of dislocation from the cultural and social contexts in which gender ideals and practices are generated, which may result in a loss of power and status. In particular, work and family are key domains in which tensions around gendered aspirations arise (Charsley & Ersanilli, 2019). For example, the downward mobility experienced by many migrants may result in them taking lower-status jobs or being unemployed, which undermines their ability to fulfil a breadwinner role (Charsley & Ersanilli, 2019). Under these circumstances, however, migrants might choose to be ‘strategically flexible’ with their gendered aspirations if the ‘trade off’ is agreeable to them – for example, accepting a job beneath their own or indeed their families’ aspirations, may reap other benefits, such as the ability to financially support their families (Batnitzky et al., 2009).

6.3 Data and Methods

The data presented in this chapter are part of a bigger research project, based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork with Sudanese migrants in the Netherlands and the UK and their families back in Sudan, conducted during 2015–2016. It is important to point out that, although the full-time fieldwork, so to speak, finished by December 2016, I maintained an active contact with several respondents until the end of 2019. This multi-sited research was conducted using in-depth biographical interviews, informal conversations and observations with 21 and 22 respondents in the Netherlands and the UK, respectively, and with 19 of the migrants’ matched family members (mostly parents and siblings) in Sudan. Several respondents in the UK had moved from the Netherlands so that, in some cases, matched samples spanned across the Netherlands, the UK and Sudan. This allowed for a more complete view of how migrants navigate different social protection systems. Using a matched-sample methodology is especially suited to studying social-protection strategies for transnational families, since it allows the researcher to better understand the migrants’ family needs as well as their particular socio-economic and cultural contexts. This becomes crucial to understanding the management of gendered and generational expectations.

The research participants were recruited through multiple gatekeepers and snowball sampling with different starting points. The sample included roughly half men and half women of ages varying from their early 20s to their late 50s, including single men, married couples and divorced parents with children. Although many arrived in Europe with a tertiary-education degree, experiences of downward mobility were common. Interviews and observations were conducted by me in English and Arabic, in familiar environments for the respondents, mostly in their homes. The interviews lasted between 2 and 4 h, while observations ranged in duration, from attending specific events with the participants to spending a full week living with them in their homes. At the request of the respondents, most interviews were recorded through note-taking. The in-depth interviews and observations allowed me to construct the life histories of the different family members and to place individual experiences and attitudes within the extended family, capturing a living picture of family constellations across time and space.

Sudanese migration to Europe is a relatively recent and somewhat under-studied phenomenon (Abusabib, 2007). Prior to the late 1980s, a relatively small number of doctors, engineers and academics started to arrive in Western countries, especially the UK (IOM, 2006). However, it was not until the Islamist military coup in 1989 that the arrival of Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers became more visible. Moreover, in the last 20 years, regional conflicts, increasing inflation and conflicts in neighbouring countries have resulted in thousands of Sudanese moving outside their country to be able to sustain their families (IOM, 2015). Thus, the Sudanese diaspora is a diverse group in terms of legal (e.g. documented labour migrants, family migrants [mostly women], refugees, asylum-seekers or undocumented migrants), ethnic and socio-economic status.Footnote 4 Such heterogeneity allowed for a maximum variation sample, to investigate the role of different socio-economic and legal statuses in the social protection arrangements in which the migrants and their families ‘back home’ engage.

The selection of the UK and the Netherlands was based on three reasons. First, the different welfare and migration policy systems in these countries were expected to inform the role which more-or-less-restrictive policies have in the form of social protection that migrants engage in. Traditionally the Netherlands belongs to the so-called continental regime (Esping-Andersen, 1990), which has been described as highly inclusive, structured and one of the most generous in the world for all its legal residents (Zorlu, 2011). The British welfare regime, however, is part of the Anglo-Irish or liberal group, characterised by means testing, little redistribution of incomes, modest social-insurance plans and the primacy of the market, which leads to greater social inequality (Esping-Andersen, 1990). In the last few years, however, the two countries have acted to reduce asylum numbers, and the associated costs, by adopting deterrent approaches to asylum support – e.g. restrictive access to benefits, employment and housing (Bakker et al., 2016).

Second, the fact that the Sudanese community in the UK is bigger and longer established than in the Netherlands was expected to have an impact on the way in which migrants engage in personal social networks to make their social protection arrangements. Third, many Sudanese living in the Netherlands have family members or close friends living in the UK. While some of them moved directly from Sudan to the UK, others moved after living in the Netherlands for some time. This allowed me to explore the links between intra-European mobility, welfare and aspirations throughout the life course.

6.4 Whose Aspirations?

The opening vignette of this chapter illustrated how a Dutch-Sudanese family makes use of their capabilities to move onwards and fulfil their life aspirations. The following paragraphs elaborate on other onward mobility cases which illustrate the intersection of two phenomena: the capability to fulfil one’s aspirations by moving onwards and the role of the family in these multi-sited strategies. The life stories of these men and women, their life-course needs and their onward-migration strategies were encountered in different forms and combinations in most Sudanese families in this research. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a rich account of how mobility is used as a tool to fulfil the migrants’ aspirations rather than to explain its prevalence. These particular cases also show how aspirations are shaped by a range of intersecting factors, including gender, the extent to which the migration is forced or voluntary and sociocultural understandings of what could or should be achieved by the migratory experience (Allsopp et al., 2014).

Like Noor and Ibrahim, in the UK I met many Dutch-Sudanese who had moved there for their children’s education. Yet, sometimes finding the ‘best place’ for children was not so straightforward. Yassir was also a Dutch-Sudanese man who had moved to the UK in 2008 because of his children. Yassir and his wife, Boutheina, thought that it would be better for them to grow up in a bigger Muslim community with English as their main language. Soon, however, they found out that the UK was probably not the best place for their children. Shortly after arrival, one of Yassir’s children started to misbehave in school and the teacher arranged for a meeting with Yassir. During this meeting, Yassir slapped his child when he was rude to the teacher. What Yassir saw as a form of discipline, the teacher saw as a form of abuse, as a result of which, after a long process, Yassir not only lost his job but also received a criminal record. In view of the difficulties of disciplining their children in the UK, something which, according to Yassir and his wife, was leading their children to grow up without values, in 2010 Boutheina and the children went to Sudan to put them ‘on the straight path’. In Sudan, however, Boutheina found the same problem that they faced in the UK: while it was easy to control the girls, the boys spent the whole time on the streets. Therefore, in 2012 they returned to UK again where, at the time of the interview, their eldest son was about to be placed in a young offenders’ institution.

Another significant number of my respondents, mostly men, had moved for a different, yet family-related, reason: being able to start a family. Ismail (45) is a good example. I met Ismail at an open-air music festival in the Netherlands in the autumn of 2015. He was a friend of one of my gatekeepers, who joined us at the event. Together with us there was also Eisam (Ismail’s brother) and Samir who, as my gatekeeper explained, had spent 20 years unsuccessfully applying for refugee status in the Netherlands.

That very evening at the venue, Ismail told me how frustrated he was when, having finished his Master’s in Agriculture at a renowned Dutch University, he had not been successful in finding a job in his field. Ismail had arrived in the Netherlands in 2003 as an asylum-seeker. He had spent over 5 years in and out of the Dutch asylum system, a time during which he was only allowed to work under very limited conditions. In the Netherlands, the basic needs of asylum-seekers are provided for by the state. Yet, their access to the formal labour market and education is quite limited (Bakker et al., 2016). Despite the difficulties, Ismail started to work picking apples for a few hours a week, as he saw this opportunity as a way to get to know the Dutch language and society, which would facilitate his future life in the Netherlands.

After several rejections and appeals, he was officially granted refugee status in 2008. Although Ismail received social assistance in the Netherlands, which was enough to sustain him, he had to combine this with different informal jobs, because he was still responsible for providing for his extended family back home. Even though the family is the core focus of the welfare state, welfare support is directed solely at citizens and legal residents of a particular country – in this case, the Netherlands. This becomes sometimes problematic for migrants and refugees, whose family members are often abroad, in countries where the state does not have a strong and institutionalised social-security system that covers its citizens’ basic needs. For instance, whenever an emergency or event happened in Sudan (e.g. a wedding, a funeral or a medical emergency), Ismail, like many other respondents, was expected to support them financially even though the social-assistance money he received was not enough to take care of his extended family back home.

In our second interview, Ismail told me that he was going to Sudan for the first time in more than 12 years. Although he was happy to see his family again, he was also worried about his family’s expectations and the huge financial investment. In fact, his trip to Sudan was going to be more than just a visit. In fact, at 42, Ismail was supposed to be getting married.

In January 2016, when I met Ismail again, he was already a married man. Whereas at our previous meeting he had always been concerned with finding a ‘good job’, his aspirations had now changed and his main priority now was to bring his wife to Europe. He was worried, however, that it was not going to be possible to do so in the Netherlands due to the country’s immigration regulations, which required him to have at least a one-year contract with a minimum monthly salary of around €1500.

One month later, in February 2016, I met Ismail again and he told me he was going to Sudan. ‘I bring her, and then what? … without a job, without anything…’. With a mixture of resentment, anger and hopelessness, Ismail said that, after weighing up the different options, the best was to go back home, where he could maybe have some opportunities. At this time, moving to the UK was out of the question, especially when, after having been there several times to explore, he had realised that many of his Sudanese friends there were highly educated but had ended up working as security guards.

In the summer of 2017, I met Ismail again in the Netherlands. Despite his efforts, he had not succeeded in find a job in Sudan. Therefore, in the end he decided to pack up his things and move to the UK in September. Ismail was not looking forward to moving to the UK, where he would probably have to put an end to his career aspirations. Yet, ‘in the UK they give you more space to do whatever you want’, he said and that was his priority, especially because his wife was pregnant.

This is a paradoxical situation, since the UK has, in theory, a higher minimum income threshold for family reunion than the Netherlands (see Kofman, 2018). In practice, however, the experiences of the respondents in this study pointed to a much easier process. According to Ismail, for instance, all he was asked to provide when applying for family reunion in the UK were three monthly income pay-slips. ‘If you have a contract, it is fine; otherwise, you can work with zero [hour] or open contracts. I just need to show that I’m working and earning a minimum for three months’, Ismail said. As he pointed out, as an EU citizen the most important thing was to have a National Insurance Number, a formal address in the UK and a British bank account. The strict and more controlled Dutch migration and welfare system thus becomes much more problematic for those men who wish to start their family in the way that was expected of them (e.g. marrying a relative from Sudan).

Ismail’s circumstances were not unique. During my fieldwork in the UK, I encountered several Dutch-Sudanese men who, despite their wish to remain in the Netherlands, had had to move on to another country to fulfil their basic life-course aspirations, such as marriage or starting a family. Like Ismail, none of the other respondents in a similar situation aspired to move to the UK. On the contrary, they all talked fondly of the Netherlands and the values and benefits the country gave them. For these migrants, leaving the Netherlands and moving to the UK was mostly due to the life-course aspiration (and family expectations) to start their own family. In fact, as several respondents explained, they would probably not have left if they had been able to reunite their family in the Netherlands. The life aspiration of getting married and starting a family was therefore ‘put on hold’ by national structural constraints, which actually pushed many of these people to move to another country.

Since he arrived in the Netherlands as an asylum-seeker, Ismail’s opportunities to fulfil his aspirations (e.g. deciding where to live, what to study and what to do for a job) had been constantly constrained by different state mechanisms. As forced migrants, refugees are not expected to have major aspirations to perform highly-skilled jobs, therefore many of them are pushed to do vocational training and start working as soon as possible. In fact, the personal aspiration to better develop oneself professionally was another of the main triggers for onward migration, especially for women. Hanadi’s case is a good example of this. Hanadi (47) arrived in the Netherlands as an asylum-seeker in 1995 with her then husband. Their asylum process took over 2 years, during which time she had her first daughter. While Hanadi was waiting for her legal status she found that asylum-seekers were not allowed to work or volunteer, which was very frustrating for her, since her aim was to quickly learn Dutch and continue with her studies and her career as a lawyer. Once refugee status was granted, she soon realised that studying or working was not an option for her because she had a baby. In the Netherlands, it was only in the late 1980s that the traditional male-breadwinner model was restructured, bringing more women into the labour force. However, the new system created a ‘one-and-a-half-earner’ model, restructuring women’s time while leaving men’s untouched. The high childcare costs and employment being mostly part-time encourages mothers to withdraw from employment or to work part-time (Evertsson et al., 2009). This was a situation faced by many of my female respondents in the Netherlands who, due to the dispersal policy for refugees, often lived in small villages where they lacked the social networks which could potentially help with childcare. Moreover, the gender role of care-giver also aligned with the Sudanese ideal of child-rearing, which is mostly performed by women (see Serra Mingot, 2020b). For Hanadi, this situation increased her frustration of having to be at home, even though her aspiration was to work and grow professionally. Therefore, 5 years later, once they obtained their Dutch nationality, they moved to the UK.

Looking back at her life in the Netherlands, Hanadi felt that the Netherlands, with a better social security system, more generous benefits and superior housing quality, allowed for an overall better lifestyle. Yet, it was in the UK that she had managed to accomplish her aspirations. Besides her feeling of discrimination in the Netherlands and the difficulty of the language, she pointed to the excessive control of the Dutch system as a major problem: ‘In the Netherlands, even if you want to work in a supermarket, you have to go through one year of training […]. I was ambitious to do more and more but the system puts you down’.

In fact, while in the Netherlands neither she nor her husband had ever been able to have a formal job, in the UK Hanadi became a successful social worker (since 2008) and her (now) ex-husband had started his own company. As soon as she arrived in the UK she started English lessons. Although she would have liked to join a BA degree as soon as possible, she had to wait 3 years before she could apply for a study loan. While she waited, however, she worked as a catering assistant in a school, as a part-time interpreter for the NHS, and took a preparatory course to become a social worker. From 2005 to 2008 she studied full-time and worked part-time.

6.5 Discussion and Conclusion

The different cases presented in this chapter have illustrated how migrants navigate institutional limitations with family obligations, individual aspirations and capabilities. From the lens of an aspirations–capabilities framework, the chapter has investigated the links between aspirations and onward migration within the current European migration and welfare regimes. In labelling refugees as passive victims in need of help, these regimes largely ignore their agency and aspirations, thus creating a situation that perpetuates social dependence and enhances further migration as a way to fulfil life aspirations. Moreover, this idea that refugees are vulnerable victims and do not (or should not) have too many aspirations, together with the long asylum and integration processes and the strict migration and welfare regulations, lead to disruptions in their life-course aspirations.

The cases presented here have shown how migrants with a refugee background, rather than being passive actors, often have a clear set of objectives when they arrive in the first country of asylum – a combination of their own aspirations and their families’ expectations. In this regard, a multi-sited matched-sample methodology becomes crucial if one is to better understand how certain aspirations and expectations must be fulfilled. For example, conducting research with Noor’s and Ibrahim’s family members in the UK and Sudan allowed me to have a more nuanced understanding of (family) mobility decisions in order to fulfil intergenerational needs, both now and in the future (see Serra-Mingot & Mazzucato, 2019). The fulfilment of such aspirations and expectations, however, does not take place in a void. On the contrary, they are shaped over time in response to the institutional structures in the country of migration, which have not been designed to accommodate the needs of transnational populations. Therefore, for many migrants, the timely realisation of personal aspirations collides with a series of institutional limitations in the receiving country, which sometimes leads them to move onwards to another country.

Drawing on the specific cases of Sudanese migrants across the Netherlands and the UK, this chapter has shown that both life aspirations and the capability to realise them are not simply an individual matter but often a family decision. The cases presented here have demonstrated that moving onwards is closely related to the family’s needs at particular life-course stages. For some, after having spent many years waiting in the asylum process or trying to find a proper job, moving onwards seems to be the last resort if they are to be able to take their spouses with them and start a family. For others, moving onwards is seen as a means to improve themselves personally, which has a direct impact on their families. Finally, for yet others, moving to the UK is done for their sake of their children in order to give them a better education which will pay off in their old age.

This study has empirically illustrated the influence of structural factors on the onward migration decisions of refugees seeking to fulfil their personal aspirations. This has several implications for the study of aspirations and migration decisions. First, theories that address international (forced) migration as a one-time, life-long move are not appropriate when assessing the patterns of onward migration seen in this chapter. Especially in the cases of forced migration, refugees are often seen as devoid of agency and aspirations and are therefore expected to remain in the country in which they are given asylum or to move back to their home countries if the situation there improves. Yet, refugees have very clear educational and occupation aspirations, which are often put on hold or even abandoned altogether in the receiving country. Onward migration may thus become the means to achieve such aspirations. Therefore, in order to address these migration patterns, a life-course approach should be better integrated in conceptual models on international migration.

Although studies of onward migration have made invaluable contributions to the literature, the temporal aspect needs to be better developed. Following Ibrahim’s and Noor’s family for over 6 years allowed me to better understand the links between family members’ aspirations, their onward moves and their capabilities to do so at the different migration stages. In fact, onward migration has mostly looked at migrants who move to a third country (in this case Sudan–the Netherlands–the UK). Yet, what this chapter has shown is that there might be a fourth and a fifth country and then a return to the first country of migration. In this case, it might be more useful to talk about multi-sited trajectories, which would avoid the idea of (more or less temporary) settlement that the concept of migration evokes.

Second, the chapter highlights the importance of family strategies and inequalities in the study of migration aspirations. This is an important contribution to the conceptualisation of onward migration which, to date, has mostly focused on the individual migrant. Multi-sited matched-sample ethnographic methods allow for a better understanding of ‘the bigger picture’ of onward moves. As the cases have shown, moving onwards for the sake of the family (be it directly or indirectly) has a different impact on the various family members, depending on their age, gender and resources (e.g. financial, educational, social, etc.). In fact, to fulfil the aspirations of a particular family member, the others might suffer or have to make sacrifices. This is especially the case for the children in the family, who are often ‘moved around’ based on the parents’ ideas of what is actually best for them and where this can be best achieved. Addressing onward mobility from a family perspective rather than an individual one might provide relevant insights into intra-familial conflict and inequalities. Future research could address how aspirations within families are negotiated: who gets to decide where to go and when? And most importantly, who ends up suffering the consequences?

Finally, an important methodological remark must be made. As studies have highlighted, conducting research on onward or multinational migration presents researchers with three main methodological problems: complexity, multispatiality and extended temporality (Paul & Yeoh, 2020). In other words, understanding these complex migration dynamics, where different interconnected people (e.g. families) move across multiple countries, due to a myriad of life-course-related reasons, throughout a relatively long period of time requires a remarkable investment of time, money and personal effort. This particular study was only possible thanks to the generous funding throughout the 4 years that allowed the researcher to travel across different locations for a relatively long period of time. Unfortunately, however, this is often not the reality for many researchers, therefore alternative and less expensive methods should be further explored. Last but not least, the personal toll that this type of research takes on the researcher must not be underestimated. On the one hand, having to be constantly on the move from one location to another is highly disruptive (e.g. having to sometimes pay for two accommodations simultaneously, dealing with migration incompatibility issues). On the other hand, keeping in contact with the respondents throughout the years is emotionally and psychologically draining. While conducting research in an ethical manner has a great deal of importance in most current funding schemes, such ethical concerns should also consider and address the individual researcher’s physical and psychological needs.