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‘Settled in mobility’: engendering post-wall migration in Europe

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Feminist Review

Abstract

The end of the bi-polar world and the collapse of communist regimes triggered an unprecedented mobility of people and heralded a new phase in European migrations. Eastern Europeans were now not only ‘free to leave’ to the West but more exactly ‘free to leave and to come back’. In this text I will focus on gendered transnational, cross-border practices and capabilities of Central and Eastern Europeans on the move, who use their spatial mobility to adapt to the new context of post-communist transition. We are dealing here with practices that are very different from those which the literature on ‘immigrant transnationalism’ is mostly about. Rather than relying on transnational networking for improving their condition in the country of their settlement, they tend to ‘settle within mobility,’ staying mobile ‘as long as they can’ in order to improve or maintain the quality of life at home. Their experience of migration thus becomes their lifestyle, their leaving home and going away, paradoxically, a strategy of staying at home, and, thus, an alternative to what migration is usually considered to be – emigration/immigration. Access to and management of mobility is gendered and dependent on institutional context. Mobility as a strategy can be empowering, a resource, a tool for social innovation and agency and an important dimension of social capital – if under the migrants' own control. However, mobility may reflect increased dependencies, proliferation of precarious jobs and, as in the case of trafficking in women, lack of mobility and freedom.

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Notes

  1. 2 I have been observing the developments of the “Polish market” in Berlin since 1989. From 1990 to 1992 two sets of interviews were carried out with Polish informants: 288 interviews were conducted at different border crossings between Germany and Poland. Among the interviewees 21 persons were selected for in-depth interviews which were conducted either in Poland or in Germany (Morokvasic, 1996).

  2. 3 In Germany, every year there are over 300,000 jobs – ‘exceptions’ to the 1974 labour migration stop. They are filled mainly by Polish men.

  3. 4 ‘Social capital is the sum of resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing durable networks of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 95).

  4. 5 Aussiedler (meaning expatriates) are persons of German origin (‘ethnic German’) residing in former communist countries, who could claim the right to ‘return’ to Germany. Since 1993 this right can be claimed only by those from Kasachstan.

  5. 6 The visa-free regime is limited to the citizens of the accession and EU candidate countries.

  6. 7 Given the ‘panslavic’ familiarity in languages, the network may appear to be ‘compatriot,’ yet consists of functional intermediaries of different origins but all specialized in ‘mobility management.’

  7. 8 IOM studies on trafficking in women. In particular: Omelaniuk Irene and Ginette Baerten ‘Trafficking in Women from Central and Eastern Europe – Focus on Germany.’ In Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1999 Review, March 1999. Geneva/Vienna: IOM/ICMPD.

  8. 9 Trafficking in Migrants, Bulletin no. 27 June 2003, IOM, Geneva.

  9. 10 Trafficking in Migrants, Quarterly Bulletin of IOM, Geneva, no. 19, 1999.0

  10. 11 Migrants are increasingly combining personal networks and smugglers for aranging their journey, blurring the boundary between the two channels.

  11. 12 For an excellent critique see Villa (2000).

  12. 13 Potot (2002) states that Rumanian seasonal workers in agriculture in Spain are controlled by the local police only if they are found in public places during working hours (i.e. when they are not where they are supposed to be).

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  1. Mirjana Morokvasic
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1The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, the guest editors and Christine Catarino for their insightful comments.

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Morokvasic, M. ‘Settled in mobility’: engendering post-wall migration in Europe. Fem Rev 77, 7–25 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400154

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