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A Continent Moving West? EU Enlargement and Labour Migration from Central and Eastern Europe Laura Wiesböck
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University of Vienna Published online: 16 Jan 2013.
To cite this article: Laura Wiesböck (2013) A Continent Moving West? EU Enlargement and Labour Migration from Central and Eastern Europe, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39:3, 522-523, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2012.753014 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2012.753014
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522 Reviews The final set of chapters represents a further scale enlargement to the city. Three globespanning multi-sited ethnographies trace diasporic, economic, political and affective connections: between hometown associations in London and various locations in Cameroon and Tanzania (Ben Page); the encounters of Greek migrants and returnees in Berlin, New York and Athens (Anastasia Christou); and Ethiopian diasporic linkages between Addis Ababa, Washington DC and other onward-migration locations in the US. These are in many ways the most complex and challenging chapters, since up-scaling to the city leaves in place the micro-locales of people’s everyday pathways, vividly illustrated by Page’s journey with a British-national Cameroonian woman returning from commuter-town Harlow to home-town Bali Nyongo, outside Douala. The volume is rounded off by a thoughtful concluding chapter by Michael Peter Smith, whose work on transnational urbanism and translocality has given inspiration to this book. Smith carefully picks his way through what he sees as the strengths (many) and weaknesses (few) of the assembled chapters, and introduces a number of integrating angles of analysis to reframe the various contributions: the tension between mobility and sedentarism in studies of transnationalism and translocality; the multi-scalar imagination; social constructions of home, belonging and return; translocality and social mobility; and the politics of translocal place-making. For him, it is the social construction of space as place, and the uncontestable relevance of power in the politics of space and place, that are the key issues which make the study of translocal geographies so fascinating. Russell King University of Sussex Email:
[email protected] # 2013, Russell King
Richard Black, Godfried Engbersen, Marek Oko´ lski and Cristina Pant¸ˆıru (eds), A Continent Moving West? EU Enlargement and Labour Migration from Central and Eastern Europe Amsterdam: IMISCOE/Amsterdam University Press, 2010, 344 pp., t 54.50 pb. (ISBN 978-908964-156-4) This valuable collection provides an in-depth overview of contemporary labour migration trends influenced by the accession of countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to the European Union. It covers a wide range of relevant
themes including the socio-demographic selectivity of migration, development prospects and modernising factors for the acceding countries, as well as effects on the receiving country’s welfare state. The volume begins with a substantive introduction by the editors, Richard Black, Godfried Engbersen, Marek Oko´lski and Cristina Pant¸ˆıru, outlining the complex interaction between historical transformations, the legal framework and migration processes in Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of the communist regimes. The editors stress that permanent oneway migration is becoming less and less significant, and that temporary movement is the dominant contemporary mobility pattern. The first part of the book concentrates on economic aspects of post-accession migration to the UK, Norway and the Netherlands. Jon Horgen Friberg examines the influence of new policy measures on the segmentation of the labour market for Polish construction workers and domestic cleaners in the Norwegian capital. Difficulties in enforcing policies governing different categories of migrant workers, the author argues, result in a rather gendered and differentiated labour market. Joanna Napierala and Paulina Trevana point out that the migration of Polish construction workers to Norway is a rather subregionalised phenomenon, and that both networks and recruitment agencies play a significant role in channelling flows. In turn, Kriztina Csedo¨ examines the career entry patterns of highly skilled Romanian and Hungarian migrants in London and finds that ‘home-oriented’ migrants rely on signalling through the market rather than through professional ties. The analytical focus of the second part is on characteristics of migration patterns from and into Poland. As Marta Anacka and Marek Oko´lski observe, post-accession migration from Poland is characterised by changing patterns of selectivity: Britain rather than Germany became the main receiving country, regional selectivity was strengthened and the selectivity of young males with tertiary education increased enormously. According to Pawel Kaczmarczyk, the mobility of highly skilled workers does not necessarily lead to negative economic effects in Poland, since welleducated migrants tend to originate from rural areas or small towns, where labour markets cannot provide them with professional opportunities. However, he refers to potential problems in the outflow of medical professionals which can be addressed only through thorough public health reform.
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Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Part 3 of the collection focuses on specific emigration patterns and their economic and socio-cultural effects on the two newest memberstates, Bulgaria and Romania. Vesselin Mintchev and Venelin Boshnakov elucidate the importance of remittances to the macro-economic stability of the Bulgarian economy, due to their role in keeping households out of poverty. Swanie Potot and Dumitru Sandu deal with migration as a modernising factor and convincingly argue that Romanian migrants contribute to transformations in their home country not only economically but also culturally through the investment of behaviour, knowledge, attitudes and skills that reflect modernity. In the final part of the volume, Krzysztof Nowaczek shows that there is no evidence for the ‘welfare migration’ that was frequently discussed in the pre-enlargement debate. He finds that migration from new member-states to the UK, Ireland and Sweden is motivated by employment more than other sources of income. Wolfgang Ochel, in contrast, demonstrates that ‘welfare migration’ between Poland and Germany may be encouraged by non-gainfully employed EU citizens’ access to Germany’s social system. However, he acknowledges that non-financial incentives also play an important role in driving migration decisions. The volume represents a valuable set of both qualitative and quantitative case studies, with
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several authors cross-referencing each other. The focus lies on Poland, which plays a key role in both low- and high-skilled labour export within the European Union. A strength of this edited collection is its interdisciplinarity, with perspectives ranging from sociology, demography and economics to social policy. It considers a broad range of factors driving migration decisions, including public policies, labour market mechanisms and social networks, as well as financial incentives and recruitment processes. It would have been useful to include a summary in order to draw conclusions from the individual case studies. Furthermore, the chapters could have been complemented by a theoretical contribution to reflect critically on established conceptual frameworks in migration theory, e.g. current concepts of transnationalism or the neoclassical model, which are touched upon in the volume’s articles. Still, the collection deserves a broad readership of scholars from various disciplines interested in the complex mosaic of temporary migration flows from Central and Eastern Europe, their linkage to policymaking, and modernisation perspectives. Laura Wiesbo¨ck University of Vienna Email:
[email protected] # 2013 Laura Wiesbo¨ ck
