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E-book Doing Family on the Move : Highly-Skilled Migrants in Switzerland and Germany

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Penilaian

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This study asks the question how highly-skilled migrants cope with professional careers on the one hand and family life on the other. To answer to this ques-tion, I conducted 36 interviews with highly-skilled migrants and seven other interviews with key informants in the Lake Geneva region, Switzerland, and the Frankfurt Rhine-Main region, Germany. The main finding resulting from the interviews is that highly-skilled migration has specific constraints, which are currently not assessed in the scientific literature. It is neither a “free move-ment in a flat world” (D’Andrea, Ciolfi, and Gray 2011, 150) nor a “friction-less mobility”, but a mobility whose constraints are differently tracked (Favell 2014, 135). When at least one of the partners is mobile for professional reasons, I argue these constraints emerge for the other partner, as a consequence from the mobility of the former. By identifying which partner initiates a move, I devel-oped a framework structured around two types of mover: the “primary-mover” (who takes the initiative of relocating) and the “secondary-mover” (who reacts to it). Through this model, I show not only that the female partners are more often the “secondary-movers”, but also that the “secondary-movers” face unique challenges after a migration. This distinction is a useful tool to understand better the emergence of gendered gaps in achievement and wage. The experience of highly-skilled migration differs between men and women when it comes to com-bine (1) family life, (2) upward professional career, and (3) mobility (or, more precisely and as we shall see, “motility” (Kaufmann, Bergman, and Joye 2004; Flamm and Kaufmann 2006), which is the capacity to be mobile). While men can have them all, women can only have two of them simultaneously. It is the central insight of this study: to consider the construction of gender inequalities and gender hierarchies not only per se but through a mutually exclusive model.To come to this result, I examine the decision and the consequences of the partners’ (multiple) move(s) on their distribution of responsibilities between care work and work in the labour force, using the approach of “doing family” (Jurczyk, Lange, and Thiessen 2014; Baldassar et al. 2014). “Doing Family” is an approach which analyses the practical production and organisation of per-sonal and affective relationships between the members of a family. This implies looking at the ways the partners divide the care work and the work in the labour force and the relationships of interdependencies linking different generations; relationships involved in care work such as emotional work or housework. According to this approach, families are (re)constructed and performed daily by their members in relation and in reaction to their environment, incorporating the social resources available, such as kindergarten.As I will speak a great deal about families, couples, and skills in this work, it is useful to propose starting definitions of these terms which I can work on. These definitions are temporary; I shall refine and deepen them further in this work. I refer to highly-skilled migrants to underline either a tertiary educational achievement or a position in the labour force requiring it. Furthermore, what distinguishes a family from a couple are the intergenerational linkages between certain members and the relation of dependency between them. Thus, a family usually assumes the presence of children, implying care work. It raises acute questions of organisation in a mobile context. A couple does not imply the pres-ence of children, but still implies coordination between the partners and care work, such as housework. The present study deals with the families and the couples of highly-skilled migrants adopting the approach of “doing family”. For families and for couples, I pay special attention to the relationships between the partners and the different constraints which hinder and/or favour their mobility.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

304.82 TIS d

Penerbit

Switzerland : Peter Lang International Academic Publishers., 2020

Deskripsi Fisik

360 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783034339872

Klasifikasi

304.82

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Emigration, Immigration

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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