Nick Dines
Nick Dines is research fellow at the European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies.
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Dear all, thanks for your interesting reflections!
Do remember, as we underlined at the beginning of the course, that there is no one 'big' theory that can explain something as complex and multifaceted as migration. The theoretical explanations that we are covering in this course can together contribute to make better sense of, and to draw connections... -
Great links, thanks!
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Nick Dines replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]
Thanks both for raising these points.
Even though the meanings of the English words "expatriate" and "migrant" overlap (insofar as they both refer to people who have relocated to another country), they have different connoations and are used in different contexts. "Ex-pat" usually refers to those from Western or wealthy nations, either retirees with... -
Welcome to everyone! It’s great to see such a geographical variety among learners and to read your comments on a range of cities. This course has been specifically designed to offer an introduction to the relationship between migration and cities and how this relationship might encourage us to reframe the ways in which we think about international migration,...
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Nick Dines replied to Lorna Gleasure
We fully understand your position, Lorna. The assessment is an option for learners and does not prevent you from getting to the end of the course.
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For those of you interested in migration to the Gulf states, we explore the role of migration in Doha (Qatar) in our other course "Migration and Cities", which will be running again on 30 September 2019: https://www.futurelearn.com/admin/courses/migration-cities/3
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Remittances is a huge topic which we cannot fully cover here. This step is primarily an introduction to the issue, which if people find interesting, may encourage further research. There is also a link to an open-access report on remittances in the list of readings at the end of this course
Regarding the order of the steps: the course follows a similar... -
You can view the transcript by clicking the link under the video screen on the left. This video introduces the topic - it is followed by an article in the next step
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Thanks for your valuable insights, Natalia.
Bear in mind that the majority of Albanians migrants in European countries are actually regular. In Italy, for instance, they represent the second largest national group after Romanians, with around 450,000 regularly resident and 'integrated' in the country. -
Yes, but bear in mind that the anti-fascist protestors who successfully prevented the march by British fascists through East London in 1936 (the Battle of Cable Street), included many Jewish and non-Jewish people from the local area (the former were mainly descendents of migrants who had arrived from Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century). In fact, the...
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Thanks Cristina. You're right to underline the important role but also the limits of social media.
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Nick Dines replied to Amanda M
You're quite right, Amanda, that love (but also the opposite!) can sometimes be a key motivation for people to migrate. In fact, scholars have recently called for greater attention to be paid to the role emotions play in people's migration projects, and opportunities and restrictions that different people face when they "follow their emotions". Here's a link...
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Nick Dines replied to L B
Thanks for this! For those of you outside the UK: the Empire Windrush was the name of a ship that docked at Tilbury port near London in 1948 with around 500 West Indians aboard and is considered a foundational moment in postwar multicultural Britain. The "Windrush Generation" generally refers to Caribbean migration to the UK between 1948 and 1973, prior to...
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Thanks Sandy - this is the same sense I got when I visited Cape Town last year: the histories of past free and forced movements are widely commemorated in the city's museums, but I could find no reference to the African migration since 1994, apart from a couple of cartoons on the xenophobia issue in a temporary exhibition in the National Gallery.
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Nick Dines replied to Sandy Mitchell
I've visited the Slave Lodge too! Extremely powerful place, and to think that under Apartheid it was turned into a postal museum!
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You are right to point out the tensions between the different levels of governance - in fact these were faced in Utrecht as well, but the project moved forward despite the difficulties you mention, precisely because they were able to provide vital services not offered by anyone else.
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Thanks for pointing this out, Aadeeba!
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Yes, this is an important point. As noted in a comment above, and as Richard states here, the improvement in sanitation in some European cities (but not all) during the 19th century leads to a drop in urban mortality rates, and so for the first time we begin to see natural growth in cities. Prior to this point cities were very much "death traps" as Richard...
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Good point, Richard. You're right to raise the historical relationship between rural and urban areas. Unfortunately due to space it is not possible to go into much detail here.
It is perhaps worth just noting that the common idea of a timeless rural world versus the rapidly changing industrial city of the nineteenth century is not accurate or helpful. In... -
Thanks Sandy. Cape Town, like many former colonial cities, has a fascinating history of migration!
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Thanks for points, Richard. You're certainly right that there was migration to rural areas, and especially in US people chose to move to farms. The point that I want to convey is that very often the *mass* unfree movements during the modern era went to rural areas (plantations, mines), whereas the majority of "free" movements, particularly in the nineteenth...
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Thanks Leslene for your points. You point to an important issue about how we classify who a "migrant" is, and this often reflects local circumstances. For instance, in Italy anyone who is not "ethnically" Italian tends to be defined as a "migrant" - or perhaps "second/third-generation migrant" - which reflects the restricted access to Italian citizenship....
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Hi Noxolo and Sandy, good to know that there are people here from Cape Town, where I've recently done some research. We will be considering some aspects of migration to South African cities next week.
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Nick Dines replied to Barbara C
Hi Barbara, just to let you know that we will consider the impact of globalization on migration to cities next week.
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Nick Dines replied to Shirley Gourgaud
Thanks Shirley for an interesting set of points. While this course dsoes not deal with the issue of 'ideal-sized' cities and infrastructure, hopefully it will give you a clearer sense of why people - be they 'economic migrants' or 'refugees' - very often decide to move towards cities - and not just for work opportunities, but also for the social networks and...
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2. Regarding Lagos, you're right and see above. Chicago is used as a paradigmatic historical case. History is the focus of this week, and while most of the cited examples are from the US and Europe, one step will look at two cases of urban-bound migration outside the West: Rabat and Tokyo.
3. The idea "migration makes cities" is to underline the fact that... -
Hi Juan Carlos, thanks for your points and questions. The questions raise a whole series of complex matters that can't be adequately answered here, but here are some general things to consider.
1. As you are probably well aware, there are many major economic imbalances across the world, between countries, but also within most countries, between rural and... -
Welcome to everyone! It’s great to see such a geographical variety among learners and to read your comments on a range of cities. This course has been specifically designed to offer an introduction to the relationship between migration and cities and how this relationship might encourage us to reframe the ways in which we think about international migration,...
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Nick Dines replied to Sheri S
To answer your question: the majority of Rohingya were, until the recent refugee crisis, in Myanmar. The Rohingya have ben present along the east coast of the Bay of Bengal for hundreds of years, and there has been a Muslim presence in the same area since at least the 8th century AD. In anycase they preceded the creation of the state of Burma, later renamed...
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Nick Dines replied to Sheri S
Unfortunately, the software does not allow for written text to be inserted into the transcript. It is for this reason that we put the question clearly below the video.
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Thanks for your comment, Isabel. One of the issues worth stressing here is that administrations that speak about getting 'tough' on irregular migration are not necessarily the same ones that carry through with the 'tough' actions (in fact, ironically more deportations occurred under the supposedly pro-migrant Obama's administration than any previous one). I...
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Nick Dines replied to R S
Thanks for your comments. Please bear in mind that this interview was originally conducted just before the presidential elections at the end of 2016. We bring the issue up to date in the next step.
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Thanks for your questions, Sheri. The answer in both cases is yes. Many Filipino women, but also men, migrate via government programmes not just to Singapore but also to other destinations such as Hong Kong and the Gulf States, often as workers in the domestic service sector.
Regarding the second case, many women who migrate from South America (as well as... -
There has been a long history of economic migration from 'developed' countries to 'slightly less developed' ones. During the colonial era, Europeans migrated southwards for job opportunities and benefit from their unfair advantage over local people in labour markets. For instance, when Morocco became a French protectorate in 1912 there was a sharp rise in...
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Many of the Indians worked for the British colonial administration in Burma during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading to anti-Indian resentment among many locals, and to some Indians returning to India, especially following Burmese independence in 1948. Today, according to estimates, there are about 1.2 million people of Indian descent living in...
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Thanks John, and well spotted. This is a typo: it should read 1.5 million. I'll change it now!
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Good example, Rogerio. Just to let you know that one of the case studies in week 3 will specifically look at Indian migrants in the Gulf region.
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Thanks for your comment, Rogerio. What you say is very true, and your examples are well chosen.
The "rights revolution" can be considered first and foremost a global political transformation that has been occurring around the world since the late twentieth century: while this revolution has certainly not been consistent everywhere - as you point out - it...
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Thanks for your comments. Yes, this course focuses primarily on theories of economic migration. In part, this is because a rich range of theoretical approaches to economic migration have developed in recent decades, which indicate both the complexity of the phenomenon and the need to be wary of single explanations. The decision to focus on economic/labour...
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Nick Dines replied to Bibian Christine Baralemwa
You're very right, Bibian. Please see my reply to your similar point at the beginning of this week.
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This interview was originally conducted just before the presidential elections at the end of 2016. We bring the issue up to date in the next step.
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Hello Bibian, thanks for your comment and you're right that migration within Africa provides important perspectives upon international migration. Unfortunately we do not directly address Africa in this course, but we do deal with the continent in our other two courses - "Migration and Cities" which looks at cases and issues in Morocco and South Africa (this is...
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Nick Dines replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]
The 75% recognition rate refers to the fact that in order for a citizen of a particular country to be eligible for relocation in Europe, at least 75% of asylum seekers from the same country need to have their right to asylum recognised across the the EU. In the first instance, this only applied to Syrian asylum seekers. I hope this makes it clearer!
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Nick Dines replied to paul Twambley
Yes, you're both right to question the connotations associated with a term like 'flow'. Certainly, everyone has their own stories and motivations that can not be reduced to a mere 'flow'. Bear in mind, however, that this is part of the language of migration management, which is precisely concerned with governing migration as a collective phenomenon, rather...
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Nick Dines made a comment
Following from my previous post, here are some useful links providing information on the current shifts in migration across the Mediterranean Sea:
Total arrivals in Southern Europe since Jan 2015 to 1 October 2018: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean
On the western Mediterranean route:...
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Nick Dines made a comment
Over the last year, there has been a continuing decrease in Mediterranean crossings and they are now only a fraction of the numbers that arrived in the peak years of 2015 and 2016. One major recent change has been the rise of people using the western route between Morocco and Spain. Many of these are Moroccans from the poor Rif region in the north of the...
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Thank you for your comment, Bibian. Migration is indeed an extremely complex phenomenon and, as you note, is more so when one considers questions of race, but also gender, religion and so on. In this course our aim was to provide an overview of some broader, underlying issues in the world today. In week 3 we go into greater depth with some case studies around...
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Nick Dines replied to Anna Ketola
Thanks for you comment Anna. Just to let you know that we have designed two other courses on migration for FutureLearn: "Why do people migrate? Facts" and "Why do people migrate? Theories". The first one is currently running, while the second one will begin on 5 November.
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Nick Dines made a comment
Apologies for anyone who tried to view the video between 12.30 and 13.00 CET - I mistakenly removed it when I corrected a word in the subtitles, but it's back on line now!
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Thanks for noting this, Mick, and apologies for the misunderstanding. You're right, it's not clear. I've listened to the audio again carefully, and I'm now pretty sure that Jan actually says 'non-variable', which makes more sense - i.e. a final decision has been made on the rejection of an asylum application, all appeals have been exhausted, and so the ...
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Thanks Alex. You are right to point out that not all migration is concentrated in cities, although the majority of international migrants across the world tend to remain in urban areas (if not major cities) and, in many contexts, moving to the countryside is neither a pratical nor a desirable option, e.g. due to more limited work opportunities. This said,...
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Yes, Naples has always had this impact on foreign, but also Italian visitors!! The differing views that you quote here are typical of travel websites, but also have a long history that stretches back to the time of Grand Tour in the eighteenth century.
The interesting thing is that the many migrants I have spoken to over the years also have their own...
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The important general point to underline is that urban neighbourhoods with sizeable migrant and post-migrant populations are far more dynamic and complex than the reputations that they may acquire through media coverage, be these negative or positive (as in the case of The Guardian map).
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Based on research colleagues and myself conducted a few years ago, Bangladeshis who were leaving the East End of London for more surburban areas were largely moving to the boroughs of Waltham Forest and Redbridge, to places like Gant's Hill, Woodford and Loughton, although destinations may have changed in the meantime. For the benefit of those who don't know...
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This is an interesting question. In Europe, it really depends on the particular national context. For example, Germany has adopted a dispersal policy for asylum seekers and refugees in recent years, which has seen many being settled in small towns and rural areas. The logic of this approach has been to distribute arrivals, as far as possible, across the...
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Nick Dines replied to Marie B
Thank you Marie, and well spotted! I will change the subtitles now
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A small portion of the French population remained in Rabat after independence in 1956. Due to its ongoing status as capital of Morocco, Rabat today has a sizeable European and North American population of around 10,000 people, the majority of whom are from France. The city also has a growing permanent community of sub-Saharan Africans, most of whom are from...
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Good question. Rabat has grown more than tenfold since the colonial administrative capital was built in the 1920s, but there are still clear physical and social differences between the "traditional" medina and the "French" area, which is similar to other Moroccan cities such as Fes and Meknes. The French city, today called Hassan, is the site of major...
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Yes, New Delhi is another classic example of a colonial city built for a new colonial administrative class.
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Hi! This is a good question: why Chicago? Certainly people moved to other emerging cities in North America during the mid and late nineteenth century. For example, St Louis was another city that grew rapidly during the same period.
One of the key reasons for Chicago's particularly spectacular growth in the 19th century was that, besides the good transport...
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This is certainly true, Alex.
With this video we wanted to show how different types of migration have constituted the present-day population of a city. Rome and it's relatively short history as an Italian city (147 years) seemed a helpful case because it is often not known that Rome was a relatively small city when it became the capital of Italy in 1871...
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Thanks for your points Savitri.
Yes, there is certainly a correlation between rural to urban migration and urbanisation (i.e. the increase of the proportion of people living in urban areas). One could argue that migration has always been a factor for urban growth, or put another way, "migration makes cities".
The aim of this video is to introduce the...
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As you mention Prato: next week there will be a step regarding the Chinese community in Prato, one of the largest Chinese communities in Europe. For those who don't know, Prato is a small city close to Florence in Italy with around 200,000 inhabitants. In other words, while the question of migration and cities may bring to mind large metropolises, such as...
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Nick Dines replied to Penny Lean
The meanings of "expatriate" and "migrant" overlap, but it is important to bear in mind how they are differently used to categorize/perceive groups of people living in countries that are different from their countries of origin. "Ëx-pat" usually refers to those from Western or wealthy nations, either retirees with disposable income to live abroad, or else...
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As suggested in my previous post: one of the underlying questions that runs throughout this course is the following: does our understanding of migration change if we approach it from the perspective of the city (rather than the nation), and if so, in what ways?
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Welcome to everyone! It’s great to see such a geographical variety among learners and to read your comments on a range of cities. This course has been specifically designed to offer an introduction to the relationship between migration and cities and how this relationship might encourage us to reframe the ways in which we think about international migration,...
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Thanks Semi for your comments and reflections.
Bear in mind that irregular migrants actually pay billions of taxes in the US every year. In 1996 the US Internal Revenue Service created the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) precisely to allow undocumented migrants to file taxes on any income they earned.
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Thanks for your comments. The interview with Philip Martin indeed took place during the election campaign. The next step will consider more recent issues such as the end of DACA and the proposed wall along the US-Mexico border. Among other things, it is worth noting that there was no open amnesty during the Obama administration. Instead the Deferred Action for...
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Hello Linda. This link to a recent article in the UK newspaper The Guardian provides a more global overview of migrant and non-migrant domestic labour, including reference to Australia and links to other reports: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/mar/17/global-plight-domestic-workers-labour-rights-little-freedom-abuse
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Thanks for your comment, Emena. As you and other learners make clear, domestic labour is certainly not an issue confined to the West, but is a global phenomenon.
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Thanks for your comment, Shirley. Your point about retirees moving and settling elsewhere is an important one, because they are often left out of the picture. Indeed, often times in the sending countries (often in Northern Europe) they are not considered migrants at all, but - at least in English - as 'ex-pats'.
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Thanks to you both for your comments. Do bear in mind that this course on theories focuses specifically on labour migration. Unfortunately, given the limited space, it is not possible to cover all theoretical approaches or all types on migration. This said, push and pull factors can be used to think about all types of migration, and for this reason we have...
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Thanks for your comment, Jeremy. The situation in South Africa is certainly complex. In a forthcoming course that will look specifically at migration and cities, we plan to consider the issue of xenophobia in SA cities against African migrants, especially in townships, and how this fits into the longer history of apartheid and post-apartheid.
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Thanks, we will now correct the text
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Thanks Alathea for your comments and questions. I think the point being made in the text you refer to is that irregular migration increases when there are few or no possibilities for regularization, and that removing opportunities for regularization does not reduce migration, but rather increases the rate of irregular migration. It is also a common...
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Thanks for the information, Elizabeth. As you've probably already seen, our next step looks at migration within and out of South America with a particular focus on women. As a number of learners have noted, the issue of migration is vast and every country in the world is involved in some way. Our goal was to present some key contemporary cases also in order to...
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Fair point, Neil, regarding the male focus. Recent Afgan migration, however, has been primarily male. The other part of this course ("Facts") looks at female migration, specifically from South America. Next week will also consider the question of gender in domestic work in Europe.
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Nick Dines replied to Gillian Seager
Hello! We appreciate that this discussion of theories can come across as dense and abstract to people not normally familiar with, say, economic language. In week 3 we will present three case studies from across the world that will hopefully help you see how these theories can be 'put to work' to understand some of the underlying processes of migration.
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Thanks Neil for posting the link to Philip Martin's report. In fact, this and other suggested further readings are listed at the end of week 3, but if anybody wishes to be given references beforehand, please let us know and we will try to oblige!
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Thanks Mohammed for your interesting comments. You may also be interested to see this website called the "Yemeni Project": http://www.theyemeniproject.org.uk/ It is an online archive about one of Britain's oldest Yemeni communities in the small port town of South Shields, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne in northern England. This community has existed since the 1890s,...
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Hi Frank, most of the theories that we will be presenting in this course will indeed mainly address economic migration. We needed to limit the scope given the time restraints. However, if you have not already followed it, the first part of the course ('Facts') deals in greater detail with asylum seeking.
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Here we take a step back from personal and emotional connections with migration, to look at some key theoretical approaches to explaining international migration, particularly 'economic' (or 'labour') migration. As in the 'Facts' course, where we covered a range of migration-related events across the world, here we discuss a selection of some of the most...
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Hello everyone, thanks for your comments about your own experiences and histories of migration. I'm one of the educators for this course. I notice that some of you have already taken the first part of this course "Why do people migrate? Facts" (those of you haven't and wish to do so, a new run starts on Monday 5th February).
For those of you who are new,...
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Nick Dines made a comment
Thanks again for your comments and for keeping the discussion lively and civil! I just wanted to add a note to those people who have referred Australia's rich history of immigration. This article deals with one particular aspect of Australia's migration policy and, as is hopefully clear, it is not meant as a general comment on Australia's relationship with...
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Nick Dines replied to Nick Dines
You are correct that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention were both drawn up after the Second World War and that today's conditions are different, but the international legal framework is still binding and new countries continue to sign up to it. It is very difficult to imagine how a refugee law would work which was not based on...
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Nick Dines replied to Nick Dines
Regarding the question of the "queue", my point was that no such thing officially exists either in Australia or at the international level. The point was not to distinguish between 'more deserving' and 'less deserving' asylum seekers. From a purely legal perspective, this is a problematic distinction to make because according to international refugee law...
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Nick Dines replied to Nick Dines
Hello Barbara. Regarding your first point, this course comprises two complementary parts. This first part - "Facts" - introduces a range of contemporary issues regarding migration through a selection of contemporary case studies from around the world. Obviously it cannot cover every issue or every country. The second part of the course - "Theories" - which...
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Apologies! Question 3 should have started with "From" - this would have made it much clearer!
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Nick Dines made a comment
Thanks for your lively and critical comments.
Regarding the question of 'non-refoulement', this also extends to cases of indirect or 'chain' refoulement via intermediary countries that have not signed up to the Geneva convention on human rights - such as Indonesia - in other words where there is no guarantee that asylum seekers would not be sent back to...
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I've changed the subtitles now so it should be clear. Thanks for letting me know.
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Hello. Apologies! The second 'Mexico' is a mistake and should not be there. The point is that while migration from Mexico has decreased notably, migration from countries such as Guatemala and Honduras have continued to grow.
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Nick Dines replied to Elisa Bird
Yes, you're right Elisa about the other routes to Europe via the Canaries or the Spanish enclaves in Morocco. In this course, we've mainly focused on the 'central' and 'eastern' Mediterranean routes because these have seen a very large number of crossings in the recent years. In contrast, the maritime routes to Spain/Canary Islands had appeared to be in...
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Nick Dines replied to Karin Guinchard
Hi, thanks John for clarifying! Regarding why some Syrians were already migrating to Jordan before the conflict, I've just added a comment to the previous discussion step on Syrian refugees in the Middle East.
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Nick Dines made a comment
Another interesting aspect about the current Syrian diaspora in the Middle East is that even here our clear-cut distinctions between refugees and labour migration are called into question. Yes, the vast majority have fled situations of deadly armed conflict but those who have left Syria have not always crossed the nearest international border: rather they have...
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Nick Dines made a comment
Hello everyone! Thanks again for all your interesting comments. Certainly, as many have you noted, understanding the broader dimensions of the Syrian refugee situation puts a different perspective on the common media and political accounts about migration especially in Europe and North America. In particular, it makes us think about the significance of some of...
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Nick Dines made a comment
Thanks everyone for your contributions! It was very interesting to read all your comments and to see the words you selected for irregular migration and asylum seeking. Some of you chose quite distinct terms, others instead selected the same words in both cases and explained why. From a quick count so far, the most common words associated with irregular...
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I think Mohamed makes an important point about how we label people who move. In fact, there has been considerable debate in the British media recently around the definition of 'expat', which is used to refer to northern Europeans who move to other parts of the world (but not the other way round!). The idea of calling everyone a 'traveller' is certainly...
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Interesting comments. In theory, and in a very few cases, it is possible to seek asylum in an embassy, but it may mean you are then unable to leave the embassy (as in the case of Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, who sought asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London in 2012 and has remained there ever since because if he leaves he will be immediately...
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Nick Dines replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]
Thanks for the link, Dennis, and your interesting reflections.
