Migration and Inequalities

1. Marek Nowak PhD marek.nowak@amu.edu.pl Institute of Sociology AMU Migration and Inequalities Projekt współfinansowany ze środków Unii Europejskiej w ramach Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego On the base on: (Post)transformational Migration. Inequalities, Welfare State and Horizontal Mobility (M. Nowak, M. Nowosielski ed.)

2. Why emigrate the: banal answer… „The role of economic scarcity in fostering migration was especially underlined by the neoclassic theory of push factors and pull factors. Perceived inequalities, such as the lack of a proper job (in relation to others) or bad living conditions (more generally), can play the role of push factors that make people migrate (Lee 1966)”.

3. What does ‘push factor’ mean? „… focus more on relative deprivation, exacerbated by inequality, as a basic determinant of people’s mobility”

4. GDP (Gross DomesticProduct) in PPS (Purchasing Power Standard) Indexin 2011 (EU-27 = 100) GDP (gross domestic product) is an indicator for a nation´s economic situation. It reflects the total value of all goods and services produced less the value of goods and services used for intermediate consumption in their production. Expressing GDP in PPS (purchasing power standards) eliminates differences in price levels between countries, and calculations on a per head basis allows for the comparison of economies significantly different in absolute size.

5. What does ‘pull factors’ means? Attracting selected groups of the labor force because of local/regional economicdemand.

6. What can sociologists suggest?

7. “Structural conditions” are only a part of the story of migration, particularly because differences and inequalities are social facts, elements of the shape of modern open societies”.

8. „From one side, inequality can be seen as a basic element of competitive society (a sine qua non of capitalist maximalization). From another, it can call up pictures of barriers developing between people—as a consequence of the vertical division of labour, and with the consequence that vertical mobility tends to decrease as result of social barriers—and of a gulf between the “top” and the “bottom” of the society”.

9. What could influence the migration behavior? • The politics which could decrease or increase the tension to emigrate; • The construction of welfare relation (the welfare policy); • Past experiences related to horizontal mobility (as the cultural framework of mobility - generally). • Acceptability of migrations a strategy (which is a part of the social context) • The intensity of social change - deregulation(in the 90s and the first decade of the 21st century).

10. Situational context of Central European migration…

11. The system’s transformation within the context of increasing push factors in Central and Eastern Europe. “the governments of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia were each spending on average about 10–15 percent of their GDP annually on pensions and other social security benefits [...]. This level of expenditure matched or even exceeded that of the more developed western countries, many of which had been struggling to control government spending and to reform their social security systems for more than two decades” (Inglot 2008).

12. The key moment of the Polish transformation process could be the second part of the 90s of the 20th century (1998), where began thefast reorientation of the Polish system of production towards thewest European direction (the so called: Russian crisis ). This could be an important moment for explaining the factors of the mass emigration in the years 2006-8.

13. Subsidiarisation as a context of inequalities and migration „In some cases there was even a kind of a social engineering effort to build the democratic state’s new institutions from the top down, rather than from the bottom up. In both the east and the west, the key notion in this process may be described as an aspect of liberal subsidiarization processes.Which means, it’s worth repeating, bringing responsibility for functions down to a lower level of authority and to the local community”.

14. „In the Polish case, and less so in the case of the Czech Republic, the darker sides of the […] transformation included the dynamic growth of unemployment (in Poland in the first decade of the twenty-first century, ten years after the start of the transformation, more than 20% of labour force was unemployed), and growing differentiation (asymmetric increases in different social segments, and in different positions in class structure) (Tomescu-Dubrow 2007). ”

15. „Looking at the basic indicator of social inequality—the Gini coefficient—at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is clear that the processes of social transformation did not have the same trajectories and consequences in all the involved countries and societies. Although states such as Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland now have a relatively high Gini coefficient […] far above the European average, the position of the Czech Republic is different”.

16. Finally, we observed the different trajectories of „social polarization” (inequalities) in consequence of the deregulation and marketisation in different national/social contexts. These tend to affect the different scale of international labor flow (hipotesis).

17. The Polish case

18. Migration ‘before’ accession to the UE Before accession, in the terminology of Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski,therewas an “incomplete migration” which was invisible from one side, and which from the other side represented a sort of “refrigerator” of a segment of labour power endangered by unemployment (Grabowska-Lusińska, Okólski 2009, pp. 39). They mentioned three main types of migration: (a) circulation migrations; (b) a short period migration; (c) long term migration (emigration in formal nomenclature).

19. Polish migration‘after’ the accession to the EU The migration and emigration (more than 12 months abroad) was much more often, much longer, much more legal, much more common…

20. The ‘typical’ Polish migrant to the UK or Ireland [after 2004]:

21. Polish migrant to the UK or Ireland [after 2004]: relatively young (based on Polish legal statistics, BAEL/OBM data), having in the case of pre-accession migration an average age of 32 years, or in later waves a little more than 31 years; more likely to be a man than a woman (183 men to every 100 women); possessing greater experience in the labour market (relative to the demographic structure of Polish society) than that of the average 20–29 year-old (Grabowska-Lusińska, Okólski 2009, pp. 97).”

22. The reality of migration processes in different countries of the region seemed to be different.

23. Finally… The migration factors seems to not belong to the one simple „scheme” of social reaction, which suggests both: social and cultural answers (thanjust simply the materialdeprivation picture). Reconceptualisation tends to move from „structural condition” (of the differences in income) to the „processual” relations based on socio-cultural facts. Possible elements of an explanation might consider the questions of how market-oriented were particular post communist societies, and how successful was the “gestalt switch”. As we know from social surveys, respondents’ orientations are sometimes very different, and may change over time.

24. Thewayinwhich we couldconceptualizedmotives of emigration… We can describe two aspects which may have an influence on the social mobility: 1) the personal aspect, which relates to individual rationality, individual motives, the individual condition of the person, as well as the person’s social attitudes, education, life expectations, and so on; and 2) the structural aspect (i.e. what are called “push factors” in the theory of migration behaviour), which in the case of Central and Eastern Europe can be very close to the concept of Durkheim-Merton anomy, or Sztompka’s transformational sociocultural trauma (Sztompka 2000), and which describes common labour relations, typical social mobility patterns, and institutional design.

25. The Eurequal project “The purpose of Eurequal was to create and disseminate knowledge that would facilitate the achievement of greater social equality between individuals, social cohesiveness in societies, democratic and market development, and the broader integration of Europe”. http://eurequal.politics.ox.ac.uk/

26. The main questions of Eurequal • How can we adequately measure the multifaceted character of social inequality? • What are the factors at the individual level that are most associated with the patterns of social inequality? • What characteristics of the economic, political and institutional arrangements of nations have the greatest positive and negative impact on social inequality?

27. What are the consequences of social inequality for individual and household economic behaviour, in particular for intra and inter-generational social mobility? • What are the consequences of social inequality for political attitudes, especially towards other social groups, and for political behaviour? • What are the consequences of social inequality for economic growth, democratic consolidation and international integration?

29. Table 2. Average answers to the question of the acceptability of emigration (five point Likert scale, from “definitely accepted” to “definitely not accepted”).

30. Answer to the question: have you ever worked abroad? (N, and in %)

31. Have you ever worked abroad? (N, and in percentages)

32. Table 8. Standard deviation and average answers (Likert Scale from 1 (agreement) to 5 (disagreement)) to questions on expected government intervention (“What in your opinion is a duty of the state?”) in 13 European countries (the five lowest values of standard deviation are indicated by the numbers in brackets, 1 being the lowest).

34. Final statement I. As we know (based on the EUREQUAL data), in postcommunist countries the role of the state in relation to problems of employment, healthcare, and the care of old people being a more active one is relatively commonly accepted. Expectations sometimes tend to construct a whole complex etatist syndrome (as in Hungary, for example), or sometimes it may split into a different vision when the problems of employment, healthcare, or (as in the Polish case) pensions play the crucial role.

35. “welfare policy arguments and institutions exacerbate or ameliorate existing social cleavages and conflicts” (Glass, Marquart-Pyatt, 2007), which in my interpretation may in certain social environments result in more or less high migration tendencies”.

36. II. „Inappropriate solutions in the welfare regime may be one of important factors which can increase structural pressure, but at the same time there are no universal rules, and there are—in my opinion—more conditions which distinguish the positions of the citizens of, say, Estonia (where migration is still at a low level), from its neighbour Latvia, where the level of migration is significantly higher”.

37. III. “The second important factor relates to the more conscious aspects, an element of the comparison of the chances that the whole system will make “progress” (that is, will in the future result in improved conditions for the individual), with the possibilities of misfortunes in the local community where potential migrants live, all of which may—once again—strengthen or weaken the “push” (to migrate)”.

38. III. The third aspect is related to the cultural process of internalizing the “exit” strategy [not „voice” inHirschmanconcept] as an element of universal ideology which creates visions and gives the tools to solve individual problems outside of the context of one society. This is strong in Poland.

39. This third aspect could be either analysed as a much more longue durée factor, and in this sense reinforces the more general atmosphere of emigration as a solution in the way of the “diffusion of innovations”, where migration experiences are collected in individual histories, and become an element of the culture. This third element is in my opinion relatively

40. Politics or policy reasons for emigration(IvetaĶešāne, Emigration as a Strategy of Everyday Politics: the Case of Latvian Labour Emigrants in Ireland) „The free movement of labour gave a legal opportunity to many Latvians to go abroad in order to earn their livelihood, to provide for their families, and also to find self-esteem and fulfilment”.

41. „ An analysis of the post-Soviet societies by Sztompka (2004) demonstrates that the period following transition shows that much was unexpected about the change, and that the society was not prepared for it. This is despite the fact that Latvians largely welcomed the collapse of the socialist regime and the transition towards the west. In reference to Durkheim, Sztompka refers to this condition as the “anomie of success” (Sztompka, 2004; 157, 158)”

42. The politics/policy way of conceptualising emigration the question of governance becomes the question of self-governance in the discourse and technique of emigration.

43. Understanding of power and selfrelation to thepower (governmentality) … „‘governmentality’ implies the relation of the self to itself, and I intend this concept of ‘governmentality’ to cover the whole range of practices that constitute, define, organize, and instrumentalize the strategies that individuals in their freedom can use... (Foucault, 2003: 41)” From the 1984 interview, “Concordia”, Revisita internacional de filosophia 6.

44. Interviews I gave birth to my youngest daughter when I was forty... she finished Gaujienas Secondary School, and then I understood that there’s nothing she can do in Alūksne. There’s nothing to do anywhere (HYAN) I had a good marriage, good education, the children were growing. We were hoping that we would graduate from university and have better salaries. And then everything went to rack and ruin (SLRH)

45. and other… We paid an employment agency to find a job. But it was all totally wrong. In our rural area, where we used to live, two big fish processing factories went bankrupt. That was just because there were no cheaters with golden necklaces there, for example, investors, shareholders, the ones able to subordinate. A lot of money has been lost, everyone suffered financial losses. Maybe that is the reason why...There were practically no ways out anymore... (LMNF)

46. … „ I had entered the Polytechnic Institute and graduated from the Technical University [the name of institution was changed after Latvia regained independence]. That was the last year that people studied for five years [...] And we were the last graduates who were neither bachelors nor masters. Also there were no appointments to jobs, nothing—look for a job yourself!And at that moment nobody needed anything anymore and it was like the Russians used to say, kupiipraday[buy and sell]. The most important thing was to trade, to launder money, and at that moment nobody thought about specialists anymore(KGFC)”

47. … I was working in the fish processing factories as a head engineer. I had a disagreement with the employer. It was an issue with a lawyer and all...There was nowhere to complain. There was just one solution: to find a job somewhere else; back at that time I went to Riga to look for a job somewhere. [...] In Riga, they told me that I’m too old and they can’t take me. We need young, forward looking people! Then they told me that they didn’t need me(LMNF)

48. Finally „… labour emigration from Latvia, at the time of the transition, was for some of the emigrants a type of protest against these new ways of living and the way they were articulated in Latvia, and that emigration provided a mode of “exit” for these people. Moses (2007) ”.

49. The analysis of emigrants’ self-problematization at the time of their decision demonstrates that it is a strategy of everyday politics for the reason that it attempts to resists and evade limitations set by the mode of state governance and instead increasingly relying on self government. …

50. Emigration and inequalities in the destination country(GuglielmoMeardi, Labour mobility, union immobility? Trade unions & migration in the EU) Inequalities and migration in the EU labor market is it the problem?