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“Moving up or Down”: Exploring Landscapes of Migration and Employment in Southern Cities
“Moving up or Down”: Exploring Landscapes of Migration and Employment in Southern Cities
Abstract Submissions Closed
Tuesday, 23 February 2021: 09:00-10:30
Location:
RC31 Sociology of Migration (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
Labour mobility—both internal and international—is transforming cities of the Global South. Globally, South to South migration is on the increase with a decline in South to North migration as rise in right wing politics, racism and anti-immigration posturing seem to grip the cities in the global north. The Global North welcomes the migration of specific groups of skilled professionals including engineers, medical and IT workers as advantages where prospects offered by the labour markets exist. In contrast, less skilled workers and unskilled workers, migrate to the Global South in the hope of securing employment prospects and education rather than face ‘underemployment’ at home. For many such migrants out migration is seen as a form of upward mobility. At the same time, migrants are seen to be concentrated in precarious work regimes that are accentuated by the imperatives of ‘world-class’ city making. Migration movements are further linked in a complex landscape spanning the scales of rural, urban, global and local. How migrants in Southern cities perceive, articulate and understand their relationship to city spaces then becomes critical to look at. What networks and occupational choices facilitate and/or constrain migrants’ relationship to city spaces? How do identities like gender, caste, race, region, and ethnicity map onto migratory landscapes? What forms of individual and collective agency emerge in the face of growing precarity? The panel will explore these and inter-related questions at the intersection of migration, work and urban spaces in the Global South.
Session Organizers: