Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia Dipartimento di studi linguistici e culturali
Corso di Laurea Magistrale in
Languages for communication in international enterprises and organizations (LACOM) (D.M. 270/04)
The welcoming system: an analysis of the SPRAR project.
Prova finale di:
Eleonora Vascelli Relatore:
Claudio Baraldi Correlatrice:
Franca Poppi
Anno Accademico 2017/2018
ABSTRACT
The increase of the international migration flows since 2011 has had an impact on the European perception of migrants and cultural difference. In the European Union, many hostile reactions have come along with more welcoming stances. The opposition and the refusal of international migrations reflect an ethnocentric approach to the phenomenon, since part of the European society considers migrants as a different and distant “Them” group that constitutes a threat. Nonetheless, international migrations can also represent the opportunity to tackle this ethnocentric form of communication through the development of intercultural dialogue. The form of dialogue allows considering persons beyond assigned cultural membership, as individuals who, through their agency negotiate the practices of the small cultures to which they belong. Consequently, intercultural dialogue overcomes the ethnocentric contraposition between the Us/Them groups and allows different cultural practices to hybridise.
The aim of this thesis is to analyse if the organizations of the welcoming system can represent potential spaces for the development of intercultural dialogue and hybrid forms of cultural practices at a local level. For this purpose, I have conducted the analysis through the interviews to 9 workers of CIAC Onlus organization, based in Parma, in Italy, in the frame of the Italian project of reception called SPRAR. The results of the analysis have revealed that CIAC Onlus represents an institutionalized small culture where the intercultural dialogue can develop and spread in the local society through the activities of the organization, which promotes systematic meetings between the workers, the asylum seekers and refugees and the local community.
ABSTRACT
Dal 2011 il forte aumento delle migrazioni internazionali ha avuto un impatto sulla percezione europea dei migranti e della differenza culturale. Nell’Unione Europea, posizioni favorevoli all’accoglienza sono state accompagnate da reazioni più ostili. L’opposizione e il rifiuto manifestati nei confronti delle migrazioni internazionali riflettono un approccio etnocentrico al fenomeno, giacché parte della società europea considera i migranti come un
“Loro” diverso, distante e minaccioso. Nonostante questo, le migrazioni internazionali possono rappresentare anche un’opportunità per contrastare questa forma etnocentrica di comunicazione, attraverso lo sviluppo del dialogo interculturale. Le forme del dialogo permettono di considerare le persone, al di là dell’appartenenza di gruppo che viene loro assegnata, come individui che, attraverso la loro azione, negoziano le pratiche legate alle
“small cultures” di cui fanno parte. Di conseguenza, il dialogo interculturale predomina sulla contrapposizione etnocentrica tra il “Noi” e il “Loro” e permette alle diverse pratiche culturali di ibridarsi.
L’obiettivo di questa tesi è di analizzare se le organizzazioni del sistema di accoglienza possano rappresentare un potenziale spazio di sviluppo del dialogo interculturale e di forme ibride di pratiche culturali a livello locale. A tal fine, ho condotto l’analisi attraverso le interviste a 9 operatori dell’associazione CIAC Onlus, con base a Parma, nel contesto del progetto di accoglienza italiano SPRAR (Sistema di Protezione per Richiedenti Asilo e Rifugiati). I risultati dell’analisi hanno rivelato che CIAC Onlus rappresenta un’istituzione caratterizzata da una sua “small culture” dove il dialogo interculturale può svilupparsi e diffondersi nella comunità locale attraverso le attività dell’associazione, la quale promuove incontri sistematici tra i lavoratori, i richiedenti asilo e i rifugiati e la comunità locale.
ABSTRACT
El aumento de los flujos migratorios internacionales desde 2011 ha influenciado la percepción europea de los migrantes y de la diferencia cultural. En la Unión Europea, reacciones hostiles se han manifestado junto a posturas favorables a la acogida. La oposición y el rechazo expresados hacia las migraciones internacionales son el reflejo de una orientación etnocéntrica hacia el fenómeno, ya que una parte de la sociedad europea clasifica a los migrantes como un grupo “ellos” que representa una amenaza. Sin embargo, las migraciones internacionales también pueden constituir una oportunidad para oponerse a este etnocentrismo a través del dialogo intercultural. Las formas del dialogo permiten considerar las personas más allá de la afiliación a un grupo cultural que se les asigna, como individuos que, a través de su acción, conciertan las prácticas de las “small cultures” de las cuales forman parte. Por lo tanto, el dialogo intercultural predomina sobre la contraposición etnocéntrica entre “nosotros”
y “ellos” y permite la hibridación de las prácticas culturales diferentes.
El objetivo de esta tesis es analizar si las organizaciones del sistema de acogida de los migrantes pueden representar un espacio potencial de desarrollo del dialogo intercultural y de formas hibridas de prácticas culturales a nivel local. A tal fin, he efectuado el análisis a través de entrevistas a 9 trabajadores de la organización CIAC Onlus de Parma, en Italia, en el contexto del proyecto de acogida italiano llamado SPRAR (sistema de protección para solicitantes de asilo y refugiados). El análisis ha revelado que CIAC Onlus representa una institución con su “small culture” donde el dialogo intercultural puede desarrollarse y difundirse en la comunidad local a través de las actividades de la organización, la cual promueve encuentros sistemáticos entre trabajadores, solicitantes de asilo, refugiados y la comunidad local.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
1 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATIONS: FEATURES AND IMPACT 2
1.1 Defining international migrations 2
1.2 The classification of international migrations 3
1.3 The causes of international migrations 6
1.4 Integration into the host labour market 11
1.5 Globalization from below and new identities 12
1.6 Cultural identity 14
1.7 From culture to agency 15
1.8 The small cultures approach 17
1.9 Dialogue 20
1.10 Conclusions 21
2 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATIONS POLICIES 22
2.1 Towards a “communitarisation” of European migration policies 22
2.2 The management of migration flows and the securitization of migration policies. 23
2.3 The integration policies 28
2.4 The Italian welcoming system 31
2.5 Conclusions 34
3 CIAC ONLUS: THE ANALISIS OF THE INTERVIEWS 35
3.1 CIAC Onlus and the methods of analysis 35
3.2 The organization of the project 36
3.3 The relation among workers and beneficiaries 42
3.4 The meeting among workers, beneficiaries and intercultural mediators 55
3.5 International migrations policies and cultural difference 62
3.6 The relation with the local society 75
3.7 Conclusions 78
CONCLUSION 81
BIBLIOGRAPHY 86
APPENDIX: transcription of the interviews to CIAC Onlus workers 90
INTRODUCTION
International migrations flows have strongly increased since 2011, reaching a peak in 2015.
While irregular migrations have always constituted a part of migratory flows to Europe, in the last seven years irregularity has become the predominant form of migration, and the most evident to public opinion, provoking contrasting reactions. Nowadays, irregular migrations reflect a change in the meaning of migrations, where the distinction between forced and voluntary migrations, as the one between labour and non-labour migrations, is not clear-cut.
These of these new mixed flows lead to a redefinition of the causes of international migrations and of representation of migrants. This new form of migration is challenging the European Union to reconsider its migration policies and its relation with the “Others”.
The adverse responses to international migrations take the form of the ethnocentrism. It enhances stereotypes about migrants as a “Them” out-group threatening the welfare and the culture of the European Member States. Nonetheless, international migrations may also represent the opportunity to establish a new approach to intercultural communication, which can substitute ethnocentrism with the form of intercultural dialogue. This is possible when there is a close, individual contact with migrants, which allows the participants of the interaction to listen to each other personal narratives.
The objective of this thesis is to investigate if the work of the organizations of the reception system can promote this process. I focused on the Italian programme of reception called SPRAR (System of protection for asylum seeker and refugees) and I carried out the research through an interview to 9 workers of CIAC Onlus organization, based in Parma, in Italy.
The first chapter deals with the features of international migrations, describing the definitions of migrants and its outcomes, the causes of migrations and the integration of migrants in the host labour market, then analysing the theories of agency as source of behaviours and the theory of small cultures and intercultural dialogue.
The second chapter focuses on the migration policies of the European Union and its limits and on the policies of integration and it describes the Italian welcoming system and the SPRAR project.
The third chapter regards the analyses of the interviews, regarding CIAC Onlus organization.
1st CHAPTER.
INTERNATIONAL MIGRATIONS: FEATURES AND IMPACT.
1.1 Defining international migrations.
It is difficult to provide a singular, comprehensive definition of migrants. UNESCO glossary for international migration in the website1 shows how this definition has changed through time. In 1995, a report by Rainer Bauböck, written for the Council of Europe, defined immigrants as “any person who lives temporarily or permanently in a country where he or she was not born, and has acquired some significant social ties to this country”.2
Bauböck, however, admitted that this definition is narrow, as it does not take into consideration the different policies that regulate migration and citizenship. Inside the EU, for example, citizens that move from a Member State to another one enjoy the majority of the privileges that the citizens of the host Member State have, while migrants coming from outside the EU do not; in other cases, foreign born children from parents that are citizens are not considered migrants. Moreover, the variety of reasons behind the choice to migrate leads to a differentiation of definitions both at the institutional and at theoretical and analytical level that goes way beyond the scope of Bauböck’s description.
Over the years migration flows have become a more complex phenomenon that reflects an equally more complex global context: nowadays it is harder to distinguish among migrants that undertake the travel to escape from specific political, economic or environmental problems (or a combination of them) and those who migrate to improve their living conditions. Already in 2002, the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights Gabriela Rodríguez Pizarro proposed this description:
25. In her first report (E/CN.4/2000/82), the Special Rapporteur proposed that the following persons should be considered as migrants:
(a) Persons who are outside the territory of the State of which they are nationals or citizens, are not subject to its legal protection and are in the territory of another State;
(b) Persons who do not enjoy the general legal recognition of rights which is inherent in the granting by the host State of the status of refugee, naturalized person or of similar status;
(c) Persons who do not enjoy either general legal protection of their fundamental rights by virtue of diplomatic agreements, visas or other agreements.
26. In paragraph 30 of that report, the Special Rapporteur stressed that “in the light of the political, social, economic and environmental situation of many countries, it is increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to make a clear distinction between migrants who leave their countries because of political persecution, conflicts, economic problems, environmental degradation or a combination of these reasons and those who do so in search of conditions of survival or well-being that do not exist in their places of origin”. The Special Rapporteur also noted the challenge of how to define migrant population in a way that takes account of new situations and how to reflect that concept in international instruments.3
1 UNESCO, “Learning to live together”: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/international- migration/glossary/migrant/
2 Rainer Bauböck, “The integration of immigrants”, 1995, p. 7.
3 Human rights of migrants, A/57/292, Gabriela Rodríguez Pizarro, Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, Note by the Secretary-General, 9 August 2002, IV part, art. 25-26, p. 12.
Rodríguez Pizarro, therefore, stressed the lack of legal protection and legal recognition of fundamental rights as the main feature that currently characterizes migrants.
Indeed, international migrants find their definition and explanation precisely in contraposition with the citizens of the national State, who are granted the rights that they lose at the moment of crossing the borders (Zanfrini, 2016:6), or that they have never had. According to Zanfrini, the concept of international migrant started to exist when the national State drew its limits to determine who is part of the national community and who is not. For this reason, the governments tackle immigrations as a “political problem” that needs to be fully analysed and classified in order to regulate the movements across the borders.
The logical consequence of this process is that the various definitions and classifications of international migrants are arbitrary (idem, p.7): they do not describe objective features of the people who cross political borders and geographic obstacles. Rather, they reflect of the ideologies of the national State and the way in which the culture of the host countries faces the encounter with the “otherness”. Hence, they are socially constructed, they are not neutral4 and they are subject to change (idem, pp. 10-11).
Anytime we provide a definition of international migrants, therefore, we are first and foremost describing our mind-set in relation to our identities. It is important to underline this aspect before listing the categories that classify international migrants.
1.2 The classification of international migrations.
The most controversial category distinguishes among regular and irregular migrants. This distinction stems from the legal systems that limit the opportunity to immigrate in the country, but do not deny it, since the freedom of movement and the right to emigrate are human rights laid down by art.13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration is contradictory on this point: despite it assesses the right to leave one’s own country, it does not clearly state the right to immigrate in another one. As explained above, the reason is the need of the national State to control its borders and the movements across them.
The difference among regular and irregular migrants, therefore, depends on the permission to reside and work in one country, which irregular migrants do not have. Among regular migrants there are those who hold a permanent or temporary residence permit and the free migrants (Zanfrini, 2016) that enjoy an agreement on the free movement of persons among their countries of origin (this is what happens in the EU, for example). Among the irregular immigrants, instead, there are the so-called “clandestine”, migrants that arrive to the host country illegally, and the over-stayers, migrants that came regularly but then their visa expires, falling in irregularity.
Irregularity contributes deeply to the way in which migrants are perceived in society, especially when they are described as illegal or clandestine migrants, even though their right to emigrate is protected by international laws. Irregular migration has many negative sides: it has a high individual cost that also depends on the personal interests of those who earn from migrations, like the traffickers; it creates unfair competition, because many employers hire immigrants to pay them unacceptably low wages (ibidem). These aspects and the illegal or
4 Laura Zanfrini, “Sociologia delle migrazioni”, 2004, pp. 9-12.
clandestine definition collaborate to dehumanize and criminalize undocumented migrants, exposing them more easily to discriminations.
According to Zanfrini (2016), the expiration of a temporary residence permit (like a tourist visa), or the need for cheap workforce, which attracts illegal arrivals, are not the only causes for irregular migrations. First of all she underlines a tendency (or, as she wrote, a “culture of migration”) of many home communities to consider irregular migration as acceptable. Then, she affirms that in the host countries there are two possible pull factors: first, institutions that facilitate the integration of migrants in spite of the fact that they are undocumented (but she didn’t state which institutions); second, the regularization of many irregular migrants (for example through a temporary protection or the provision of the status of refugee) due to the difficulty to distinguish between forced and voluntary migrations in the mixed flows.
The idea that certain home communities may have a tendency towards irregular migration reinforces a criminalizing view of migrants. It provides to an entire group of people a feature that doesn’t depend at all on their culture, but on the means they have to migrate, which are largely determined by the information they have access to through other migrants. Moreover, the regularizations and the activities to promote the integration of undocumented migrants cannot be considered as sufficient reasons for undertaking a travel that put one’s life at risk.
Rather, they represent the acceptance of an undeniable reality that all the attempts of reduction or opposition have not been able to halt, and Zanfrini herself admits the inefficacy of the policies that aim at curbing irregular immigration (2016: 25). Generalized regularizations, therefore, are not only the result of the difficulty to distinguish among voluntary and forced migrations, but they also depend on the need to relieve the bureaucracy burden and to allow migrants to shift from an undeclared, illegal work to a regular employment.
Voluntary migrations are undertaken for reasons other than persecutions or wars, and they take the form of labour or non-labour migrations. According to Zanfrini (2004), while labour migrations represent an advantage for the host countries, because they contribute to its economy and financial situation, non-labour migrations may represent a cost for the country of destination. Among labour migrations, therefore, there are migrant workers directly attracted by the request of skilled labour from the host country, who are generally temporary migrants. They can be seasonal or contract workers that are employed especially in the field of construction, tourism and agriculture (for example for the harvesting season in Trento, Bolzano or Puglia), where it takes the form of circular migration5. But they can be also project workers with high skills traveling for a particular request of their employers (Zanfrini, 2004:33). In addition, they can be workers that pass the borders of their states daily because they are employed in the neighbouring country and workers that for the nature of their job must pass certain periods in another country. In general, governments tend to favour temporary labour migrations, because they don’t bring along costs in terms of cultural diversification and encounter and costs related with rights and protection.
In permanent migrations instead, migrants frequently find employment that are low-paid and instable, living on the verge of unemployment. Highly skilled workers and entrepreneurs are welcome more favourably, even though permanent migrations can open the path to migrations
5 Maurizio Ambrosini, “Sociologia delle migrazioni”, 2011, p.22.
for family reasons: reunited family members can be absorbed in the labour market, but in other cases they will represent a non-labour migration, and, therefore, they will be perceived as a cost for society. Migrations for the purpose of studies constitute another kind of non- labour migration, but they are generally temporary or they become permanent when the students, and therefore highly skilled migrants, find a job.
Forced migrations are permanent migrations too, and they are more frequent between neighbouring countries: only a minority of them reaches the EU (Ambrosini, 2011). Despite the fact that forced migrants are people in need of help, over the years the social resentment towards them has been rising due to the belief that among those who ask for asylum there are many that are actually economic migrants, or voluntary migrants. They are thought to use migration flows to have access to the EU welfare. As said above, this belief arose, on the one hand, from a higher complexity of the current migrations; on the other, from the gradual overlapping between the concepts of forced and voluntary migrations in the international legal systems. Forced migrants are asylum seekers, namely migrants that ask for political protection to another country; once their request is accepted they obtain the political refugee status6. The Geneva Refugee Convention of 1951 (art.1, pt. A(1)) provides a definition of refugee:
As a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951 and owing to well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.
According to the Convention, therefore, a refugee is a person escaping from a persecution and unable to ask protection to his or her country of origin or where he or she had his habitual residence. Nonetheless, nowadays the protection has been extended to include all kinds of threat to fundamental rights and existence as well as persecution, a shift that the Special Rapporteur Rodríguez Pizarro already highlighted. From Zanfrini’s point of view (2016), forced migrations take the form of collective flights from general dangers and unbearable conditions. The reality of collective migrations and mixed flows and the extension of refugee definition reinforce each other in a vicious circle that causes an overlapping between the concepts of refugees and migrants, forced and voluntary migrations and humanitarian and irregular migrations. The negative consequence is the social stigmatisation of migrants and refugees that may threaten the recognition of and the social support to refugees and the safeguard of migrants’ fundamental dignity. For this reason, the UNHCR refuses a revision of the refugee concept and promotes a clear-cut distinction between migrants and refugees in the political debates.7 However, it is important to underline how migration flows have changed over the years, and that complex circumstances push migrations with important effects on the recognition of asylum.
I conclude the classification with the concept of return migration, namely migrants that go back to their country of origin. They can also be descendants of people that migrated years or
6 Obviously, also Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) represent forced migrations, but since they are internal migrations they fall outside the scope of this thesis, and I will treat them only partially.
7 UNHCR website, https://www.unhcr.it/news/rifugiati-e-migranti-faqs.html
even centuries before, for example Italians coming back from Argentina or the US. Many migrants nurture the myth of the return, the dream of going back to their home countries. Yet this is not always an easy choice, and those who are able to stay in the host country generally prefer a form of transnationalism, keeping contact with and going back periodically to the country of origin. As already mentioned, governments tend to prefer and promote temporary migrations, not only for labour migrations but also when it comes to refugees. This is evident in the new temporary forms of asylum provided, which, however, do not take into consideration neither the costs related to the support of the refugees that want or must come back nor the difficulty that they will face in their home countries.
1.3 The causes of international migrations.
Migrations can be defined according to different categories; similarly, there is no overall theory that can explain the totality of factors at the origins of migrations. Rather, different theories can highlight different aspects of this complex phenomenon (Ambrosini, 2011).
Theories differentiate macro-sociological from micro-sociological causes of migration. While the micro-sociological approaches try to explain the choices of the individual migrants, the macro-sociological approaches focus on general structural causes that influence the decision of migrating. They distinguish, therefore, among push and pull factors. During the European economic take-off after the Second World War pull factors prevailed: the European countries attracted workers from less developed countries, especially from North Africa and former colonies, in order to face an excess of labour demand over the supply. While previously the European countries experienced strong emigration flows towards the US, South America and Australia, during the economic take-off, Europe became an area of immigration.
Nevertheless, European countries refused to accept this change and they promoted a temporary model of labour migration. Afterwards, European policies on migration became more restrictive because of the economic recession of 1973, but migration flows did not stop.
Since then, the studies on migrations privileged the push factor theory in the interpretation of the migration causes.8 According to this view, several factors in migrants’ country of origins work as an incentive to move to richer countries: unemployment, poverty, persecutions and natural disasters are only few of them. Demographic studies describe migratory pressure as the result of imbalances between the population of the richest and the poorest countries:
countries of the Third World are characterized by overpopulation and by a surplus of young people, while the richest countries by an ageing population (Ambrosini, 2011). As a consequence, young people will migrate towards those countries where the demand for young labour is higher.
Similarly, the neo-classic approach to migration (which influenced the European migratory policies after the Second WW9) focuses on a difference between the level of labour demand and supply in the richest and poorest countries. It is both a micro-sociological and a macro- sociological approach, since it is based on the idea of a self-regulating market that guides the individual actions to obtain the best resource allocation. Where there is an imbalance between demand and supply of labour, therefore, the market will adjust it: the workers of the countries
8 Laura Zanfrini, 2004, pp.46-51.
9 Laura Zanfrini, “Introduzione alla sociologia delle migrazioni”, 2016, p.55
where there is an excess of supply will migrate to the countries with an excess of demand to invest their human capital. It does not conceive it, however, as an inextinguishable process:
the migration flows will continue until the balance between supply and demand will be reached and the cost of emigration will equal the benefits (Zanfrini, 2016).
The Neo-Marxist Dependency Theory also underlines the imbalance between the developing and developed countries as the source of international migrations. But in contrast with the neo-classic approach, it expresses a pessimistic view of the relations between developed and developing countries, which are based on an unequal exchange: colonial and neo-colonial bonds determine a geographic inequality in the development process that forces people to migrate (ibidem). This theory was the starting point of the World-Systems Theory. According to this theory, globalization increases the connection among different areas of the world supporting the expansion of the capitalist model at a global level. The result is the creation of semi-periphery and periphery countries that depend on the capitalist domination of the centre:
the multinational enterprises of the First World move towards the semi-periphery and the periphery to exploit their natural and human resources protected by the agreement between the rich and the poor countries. The penetration of the capitalist model and the process of modernization and industrialization transform the local cultures and traditional societies towards new consumption patterns and create unemployment. Consequently, it contributes to the desire to emigrate, impoverishing the less developed countries of human capital, as well as natural resources: the brain drain phenomenon consists precisely in the emigration of young, educated people that will not invest their social capital to contribute to the development of their home country, which in turn invested on their education, but in a host country (ibidem).
The concept of brain drain connects with the Theory of Dual Labour Market, which is a macro-sociological theory that considers the pull factors at the base of migrations. From this point of view, developed countries attract migrants with a constant demand for cheap workforce to employ in jobs with low social prestige. This demand does not cease because the population of the developed countries generally refuse these jobs: they prefer employments with higher wages and social status. Since it is not possible to raise wages to encourage the supply of labour for these positions (because the level of salary corresponds also to the social status of the job), it is more convenient to exploit migrant workers. They accept these employments for different reasons. First, their residence permits are valid as long as they are employed, therefore they can’t wait for better opportunities; second, the wages they receive are often higher than in their countries of origin, giving them the chance to reach a better social status compared to the one they had in their home communities (which remain their identity landmark). Moreover, the migration project is often conceived as temporary, and the job only as a means to improve their lives (or those of their families) in the home countries.
The consequence is the segmentation of market into two sectors: the primary sector, characterized by highly skilled workers, better wages and work conditions and possibilities for career improvement; the secondary sector, where jobs are precarious, low paid and poorly protected. The brain drain, therefore, turns in the so-called brain-wasting phenomenon:
developing countries are deprived of migrants’ human capital, which is “wasted” in the developed countries in socially undervalued and often dehumanizing jobs.
The Global City Theory explores the international division of labour at the local level, in the metropolitan cities, where the activities of multinational management centres are located.
According to this theory, metropolises are characterized by the polarization of the urban population. The presence of a privileged class, composed by highly skilled professionals with high wages, strengthens the demand for low skill labour that allows the former to keep a wealthy lifestyle. Housekeepers, dog sitters, baby sitters, different works in restaurants and in laundries are all job opportunities that attract migrants. Moreover, they tend to concentrate in areas of the cities where people with the same nationality live, creating ethnic enclaves that support other migrants.
The macro-sociological theories, therefore, highlight the structural factors that are at the basis of migrations, and they give an insight into the contexts where international migrations may start. As mentioned earlier, however, they explain only a facet of the phenomenon and present some limits. In particular, they fail to consider migrants as active subjects of the migratory project, with decision-making abilities and objectives: in these theories migrants suffer passively the economic and political strengths that force them to migrate. Although push and pull factors are important determinants of the causes of migration, they cannot always explain why migrations are more frequent from certain countries and not others, and why, inside those countries, only a small part of the population migrate. Micro-sociological theories consider migrations as result of individual choices, taken on the base of rational consideration of the costs and benefits of the travel. Hence, migrants will choose the routes and destinations that will provide the best advantages, especially in terms of salary.
The neoclassic theory explained above is founded on this assumption, but it shares the same limits of the macro-sociological theories: the neoclassic approach cannot explain why many migrants are not people living in extremely poor countries and why they do not always move towards countries where they should expect to obtain higher salaries. Higher wages are not a sufficient drive to migrate. This is why most of the migrants come from an impoverished middle class and not from the poorest segments of the population of the home countries (Ambrosini, 2011), which can hardly afford the travel (both in terms of costs and risks), have limited access to information about travel (since they often live in isolated areas or villages) and they generally are illiterate or have low school education. Education is a fundamental drive to migration: education increases the human capital that the migrants can invest in the host countries and provide them with the abilities and knowledge to face the travel. Migrants often leave as they receive inaccurate information from other migrants, consequently the life conditions they will experience in the host countries and the general results of migration may be different from the expectations they had before the departure.
The new economics of migrations is a micro-sociological theory that focuses on the migrants’
rational choice as a complex process that aims at wider objectives than only higher wages. It describes migration not only as an individual decision, but also as a family decisional process:
the purpose of migration is to provide the family with remittances from the host country that could safeguard it from the risks of economic development. In the new economics of migrations, therefore, a cause of migration is not extreme poverty, rather the risk of falling
back into poverty10. This depends on the fact that many countries lack the institutions that could insure the population from the risks of changes that economic development determines, and also the institutions that support people in need (for example healthcare institutions, institutions to face unemployment). As a consequence, families decide to divide the responsibilities among their members and migration becomes a means to obtain new revenues. Migrants, therefore, will not lose their ties with the home community. Furthermore, this theory sustains that migration also depends on families’ perception of relative deprivation, namely the idea that their life conditions are worst compared to the ones of other families in same group. According to Zanfrini (2016), migrants perceive their relative deprivation also in comparison to the countries where they would like to migrate, due to the anticipatory socialization: migrants learn the behavioural and consumption models of other countries, especially Western countries, through social interactions and means of communication. They migrate, therefore, because they expect that in the host country they will be able to improve their lives.
Despite it is undeniable that the families play an important role in the migration choice, this choice may also depend on personal decisions and motivations. Macro and micro-sociological theories are not able to define who will migrate: there is a gap between the structural factors that determine migrations and the practical individual choice of leaving. The theory of network fills this gap creating a meso-level between them. According to this theory, the decision to migrate is taken on the basis of the network of interpersonal relations between the potential migrants and those who already migrated. In other words, individuals choose to migrate considering the information they receive from friends or relatives that migrated before them and they generally decide to migrate towards those countries where they know they will rely on the support of these same friends or relatives. The advantages of networks, therefore, consist in reducing the costs and the risks of migration, because migrants can find help in the people of their network. The theory of network also explains why migration flows tend to persist when the conditions that generated them have ceased: every time individuals migrate they expand their network, and they are net-dependent, because any new network may influence and determine new migrations. Inside the network, the human capital of every individual is multiplied, enabling migrants to carry on with their own migration project even with scarce resources. For example, if the host countries restrict their migration policies, migrants may find alternative ways to migrate thanks to the advices they receive in the network. Networks may also have negative consequences, since they can lead migrants towards criminal activities or workplaces where they are exploited. This is often the consequence of vertically structured network11, where a person or a group of people hold a position of power because they contributed to the migration project, for example through a loan or by providing a job to the migrants (a job that in most of the cases is extremely low paid, unstable and exhausting). Nonetheless, networks define migrants as social actors with fluid cultural identities that can adapt to different contexts thanks to the support of their contacts.
10 Economic development increases the income of the population that, therefore, have more means to migrate. This is why a better economic condition is not always coupled with a reduction of migration flows. (Zanfrini, 2016)
11 M. Ambrosini, “Un’altra globalizzazione”, 2008.
To conclude, the multiplicity of these theories reflects the complexity of international migrations: the different causes are not mutually exclusive; rather they are interconnected and reinforce each other. This is particularly evident in the migration flows that characterize the Mediterranean region since 2011. The MEDMIG research of 2016, about the dynamics of migrations towards Europe, promoted by COMPAS12 and the Oxford University, were based on interviews to a high number of migrants revealing an interplay of different reasons for which the interviewed migrated. Indeed, this research highlights how the difference between forced and voluntary migrations does not allow a deep understanding of the causes of migration: migrants and refugees stated that the economic reasons (possibilities of job, better wage, better economic conditions) went together with motivations that “could be described as forced migration”13. Precisely, 66% of the people affirmed that they wanted to escape from situation of violence, such as death threats and religious persecution, while 38% also added economic motivations, such as escaping from poverty and finding an employment in order to send remittances to the family. This research underlines the push factors of migrations. In West Africa people escape from the threat imposed by terrorist organisations and militia groups or from political persecution. After the Arab Spring, Northern Africa experienced a violence escalation that forced many of the migrants that already lived in Libya (attracted by the previous worker migration policies) to reach the Mediterranean Sea as the only way of escaping. In East Africa, instead, people escape from harsh dictatorship, political persecution and violence against the population. Only one third of the interviewed expressed a direct intention to move to Europe, without a specific knowledge of a particular European country.
The rest of them either wanted to migrate toward a country nearby their home country, or they wanted to move to Libya, unaware of the unstable political situation, or they had no precise destination. Indeed, the majority of the migrants that escape from their home countries do not reach Europe.14
This reality shows the limits of the institutional theory that identifies human smugglers and criminal organizations and also associations, no-profit and NGOs as a pull factor of migrations. Smugglers networks are surely a problem that the governments of both the home and the host countries must fight to ensure the respect of migrants’ human rights.
Nonetheless, migration flows would still exist in the absence of both human traffickers and NGOs, and migrants would find irregular and risky ways to reach Europe even without the help of the first ones. Among no-profits and NGOs there are certainly bad actors that exploit migrations and do not work properly; but caution must be used when describing them as intermediary for irregular migrations (Zanfrini, 2016:77), since this definition may dangerously create a parallel with the organizations of human traffickers (as it has happened in 2017, when the Italian government stopped the NGOs activities in the Mediterranean sea).
No-profits and NGOs work for the acknowledgement and protection of the human rights of all migrants and have an important role in supporting them: considering that migrants would arrive to the European shores with or without the presence of these entities in the territory of
12 Centre on Migration, Policies and Society: https://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/about/about-compas/
13 McMahon, S. and Sigona, N. (2016) ‘Boat migration across the Central Mediterranean: drivers, experiences and responses’, MEDMIG Research Brief No.3 http://www. medmig.info/research-brief-03-Boat-migration-across-the- Central- Mediterranean
14 http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html
the states, it would be more useful to recognise the fundamental function they perform for the society as a all and to promote their activities.
1.4 Integration into the host labour market.
Sociological studies have tried to analyse and describe how migrants have access to the labour market and the economic system of the host countries, and over the years different approaches have been developed, as described by Ambrosini (2011) and Zanfrini (2004 and 2016).
The first one was the liberal or assimilationist approach, developed between the 1920s and the 1930s. This optimistic approach described the integration in the labour market as a gradual process of cultural assimilation: migrants have more possibilities to advance in the labour market from the least appreciated job (the peddler) to high quality jobs (professionals) only if they accept to lose their original cultural background to welcome the culture of the host country. Migrants’ original culture is only conceived as an obstacle, and the theory sustained that they could find a job and be accepted more easily as soon as they abandon it. This approach, however, was questioned in the late 1960s.
A new approach dismissed the optimism of assimilation. Instead, it highlighted the discrimination and the disadvantages that migrants deal with, even when they represent the second-generation migrants, whether they abandon their culture of origin or not. Migrants are discriminated because they actually cannot have access to better job opportunities, neither can they advance in their careers; rather, they are “useful” for the host societies precisely because they fill the most disadvantaged job positions that national workers do not want to do. While the national working class succeeds in achieving protection and good work conditions through trade unions, the states discharge over migrants the need for low skilled jobs. As explained above, migrants accept these jobs because they conceive them as temporary, and they look for a means to survive. Only when they understand that the return will be hardly achievable they try to move to another job, but they have to tackle many difficulties.
Both the assimilationist and the structural approaches present certain limits. It is undeniable that migrants generally have more chances in the market of low skill labour and that often migrations lead to the negative result of brain wasting; nevertheless, these approaches do not take into consideration, instead, those skilled migrants that succeed in overcoming these disadvantages and self-employment. A third approach, therefore, is the new economic sociology, developed in the 1980s but based on Polanyi’s idea of embeddedness: economic actions and relations can only be explained inside the social context in which they are embedded, since it is the social context that favours and shapes them. Portes described two types of embeddedness, structural and relational. Structural embeddedness refers to the migration policies (that can be indifferent, hostile or receptive towards migrations) and to the social reaction to migrations; relational embeddedness, instead, refers to the ties that migrants have with their ethnic communities that provide them with resources needed to live in the host country. From Portes point of view, ethnic communities can be strong or weak: strong communities are characterized by the diversification of work activities (for example they include also entrepreneurs) and by geographical concentration, while the weak ones are smaller and generally low skill workers compose them. This theory of relational embeddedness, therefore, refers to the networks created by migrants to support each other.
Networks are based on a double trust, internal and external. Internal trust enables the cohesion inside the network: migrants rely on and are supportive with each other not only because they have the same culture, but also because they face the same difficulties in the host country.
They perceive themselves as a separated group, different and weaker than the rest of the society, and this contributes to their sense of solidarity. On the other hand, external trust is the reputation that the networks have been able to achieve in society. The better this reputation is, the higher the possibilities to be accepted and find job opportunities, even though the external trust stems from the racist distinction between “good” cultural groups and “bad” ones. Hence, networks enable migrants to take advantage of their human capital through the social capital they have access to, which gives them more chances to find employment: the entrepreneurs inside the networks tend to hire people that are part of the same network; whether there is a job opportunity, migrants inside the network may inform the others about it; even national entrepreneurs are more likely to hire people of the same nationality of their trusted workers.
Networks, however, can also have negative consequences. Apart from the ones already mentioned (see 1.3), they may also determine the exclusion of certain people because, even though they speak the same language and they come from the same country, they form part of a different ethnic or religious group; again, networks may require conformity to some norms of behaviour in order to become or to remain members.
Moreover, networks favour the segregation of migrants into specific sectors of the labour market, developing the so-called ethnic specialization (ibidem). Ethnic specialization depends both on the contacts that migrants have (for example entrepreneurs inside the network that employ them) and on the information they obtain about the sector from other migrants in the network. Obviously, this is not only the result of migrants’ social ties; rather it also derives from the difficulties to find jobs in other, more qualified sectors. As underlined by Zanfrini (2004), the structural and relational embeddedness converge to determine which are the job opportunities presented to migrants at their arrival. The new economic system, characterized by the tertiary sector and by unstable, partially protected labour, needs workers willing to work in the 3Ds professions (dirty, dangerous, demanding); at the same time, Western countries deny this necessity and close their frontiers, contributing to the creation of unprotected and deregulated labour an also to the underground economy. The underground economy, also referred to as black, shadow or informal economy, can take two forms: that of the irregular work, whose irregularity may depend either to the status of the workers (unregistered, uninsured or low paid), or to the working conditions or to the management itself (ibidem); that of forced labour, for example prostitution or workers in enterprises that have to pay the debt incurred for the travel.
The attempt of the European Union to attract (only) highly skilled labour enters into contradiction not only with the factors that pushes migrations nowadays, but also with its same economic system. As Zanfrini (2016) states, if the logic to concede the admission to immigration is only based on the employers’ needs of workforce, migrants will continue to be employed just in low skilled and low paid sector of the labour market.
1.5 Globalization from below and new identities.
Although the macro-sociological and the micro-sociological theories provide an in-depth description of the reasons from which international migrations stem, globalization is the general background in which they interplay. There are a good variety of definitions for the word globalisation, but they all start from the idea that globalisation is a worldwide
interrelation and interdependence (from the cultural, as well as economic and social point of view), favoured in particular by the technological and transport innovations. International migrations have a role in this interdependence: they are both a cause and an effect of globalisation. Certainly, contacts among different populations are not new: in the past people already travelled for commercial, political or religious reasons or underwent forced migrations. This contributed to the hybridisation that, according to Nederveen Pieterse (2004), characterises the mélange identity of every population.
What characterises globalisation today, however, is a cultural interrelation across countries that creates a link between the global and the local realities. Its origins date back to the encounter between the hierarchical societies and the European society, which exported the functional differentiation through colonialism. The result of the intercultural communication established between the two cultures did not lead to homologation, but to a cultural hybridism: during the process of decolonization and the colonies independence, a multiple segmentation of social structures arose. Their different cultural forms were interdependent, since they met through intercultural communication and transformed each other. Because of this, cultural identities became more fluid and flexible: they kept their local specificity while being open to the diversity of other cultural identities.15 In this way, they gave rise to the glocalization, namely the process in which the global and the local do not exclude each other, they are interconnected because the local cultures are enhanced as aspects of the global. These hybrid cultural identities are connected to different places: they transcend the national State borders and create transnational spaces where cultural variety is safeguarded.16
In this framework, international migrations are first of all an effect of globalisation: the easier ways of travelling and communicating, the increased possibility to have access to information, the perception of relative deprivation and the anticipatory socialization (as explained in 1.3) work as a drive to migration. At the same time, historically the developed countries established a relation with the developing ones that is not combined with the same level of development and population. It is, therefore, inevitable to foresee migration flows towards developed countries: according to the OECD, labour migrations will continue to intensify until 2060 because of the ageing of population in developed countries and its increase in the developing ones.17 On the other hand, international migrations contribute to the globalization process, in that they act as transnational actors that connect cultures across State borders: the relations they keep in their countries of origin and the networks they create constitute a social bridge (Ambrosini, 2008), or a transnational space, where they transmit in one country and the other the culture of their home community and the culture of the host one. As a consequence, they create a new culture whose main features are transnationality, fluidity and hybridisation, and they fuel the globalization process. Globalization, therefore, is not only determined from the “top”, by international organizations and multinational enterprises, but it is also a bottom-up process, thanks to the people that decide to have a
“transnational life”.
Baraldi (2015) shows that hybridisation of culture can have an important impact over intercultural communication, since it can either oppose to ethnocentrism or reinforce it.
15 Claudio Baraldi, “Comunicazione interculturale e diversità”, 2003.
16 Ulrich Beck, Che cos’è la globalizzazione, 1999.
17 OECD Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2016.
Intercultural communication is the communication in which the cultural difference between individuals is constructed. This difference is based on the contraposition of identity groups, which every individual expresses through his/her actions. The participants in the communication understand and categorise these actions as pertaining to other identity groups, defining through communication the difference between We-identities, namely the cultural identities that individuals develop as members of a specific group. Historically, intercultural communication systems are based on ethnocentrism, a code of intercultural communication that assesses the difference between a positive Us in-group and a negative Them out-group.
Ethnocentrism forms expectations about participants’ We-identities.
1.6 Cultural identity.
According to Stella Ting-Toomey (1999), since during the 21st century it will be easier and more frequent to meet people coming from different cultures in every aspect of our lives, people should acquire new communication skills to become effective global citizens. The author includes these abilities in the broader frame of the identity negotiation theory, which stands on the idea that a successful communication occurs when the interlocutors are able to respect each other self-images. The theory links the individuals’ self-conception to cultural values: every individual defines oneself in relation to the individuals of his or her own group and he or she learns to communicate through the repeated practices within their own cultures.
In other words the culture shapes both the social (i.e. in relation to the membership) and the personal identity of an individual. As a consequence, if in a successful communication the interlocutors respect each other desired self-concept, it means that they respect the cultural norms and values of the cultural group to which each of them is affiliated and that form their communication practices.
This theory, therefore, develops the concept of mindful intercultural communication: in order to achieve shared meanings, dissimilar individuals should engage in an identity support work, namely support each other self-conception, by taking as the frame of reference the cultural categories of the other interlocutors (cultural relativism). A mindless intercultural communication occurs when the individuals rely heavily on their own cultural habits, which may be considered improper in other cultures and therefore result in misunderstandings. From this starting point, Ting-Toomey describes the features of a mindful intercultural communication to explain how to achieve it. First of all, a mindful intercultural communication is fulfilled when the participants in the interaction feel understood (as belonging to a particular cultural group), respected (when their practices are accepted as legitimate) and supported (acknowledged as worthwhile individuals despite their different group inclusions). The components of the mindful intercultural communication are appropriateness end effectiveness, since interlocutors can endorse each other self-conception only through appropriate and effective behaviours in the interactions.
In order to achieve these behaviours, the interlocutors should develop three communication competences: 1) motivations, namely the awareness of the motivations the guide both participants to the interactions, shaping their situational identities (it includes also the awareness of the ethnocentric tendencies that they adopt during the communicative encounter); 2) the practical skills to apply appropriate and effective behaviours (for example
mindful listening, verbal empathy and flexible adaptive skills) and above all 3) the knowledge, acquired through learning and experience. According to Ting-Toomey, individuals should learn the differences among diverse cultural practices, be aware of the similarities and being ready to create new categories to read the encounter. But this is impossible if communicators do not possess any notion of cultural value orientation, i.e. the specific value patterns of cultures that are different from theirs. These value patterns are thought to shape the verbal interaction styles, as explained by Ting-Toomey in a cross- cultural analysis. The analysed categories include:
1) low context communication styles, which uses direct, explicit verbal messages, and high context communication styles, that prefers to imply the meaning through the context and the non verbal communication (more indirect);
2) person-oriented verbal style, that privileges informal, symmetrical interactions, where roles are suspended and the verbal mode focuses on the person, compared to status- oriented verbal style, that prefers formal, asymmetrical interactions where the importance of power-distance and of role compliance are maintained. From this point of view, she also underlines how language can be used to create intimacy, for example resorting to language borrowings from the other language to establish a connection.
Ting-Toomey also adds that to understand other cultures and achieve a mindful intercultural communication, communicators should apply the ODIS method: observe, describe, interpret and suspend any evaluation to avoid generalizations.
Despite Ting-Toomey underlines the centrality of the person and of the empathic listening between interlocutors, she starts from the assumption that every person’s identity is embedded in a cultural framework that moulds it. The communicators, therefore, should firstly focus on their interlocutors’ supposed cultures than on the person herself, inferring that her behaviours are dependent on in-group cultural norms. This approach presents limits, the first of which is the role of individuals in the socio-cultural structures.
1.7 From culture to agency.
Block (2013) shows that agency, namely the individuals’ possibility to take some degree of control over social relations, and structure, namely those social relations and the practices and conventions that lead them, are interdependent. This means that the social structures shape the behaviours of individuals, who are not completely free agents, but at the same time individuals give rise to these social structures by reproducing and transforming them.
While Block focuses on the interdependence between agency and structure, Shanta Nair- Venugopal (2009) goes further on, as she affirms that the approaches to individuals’
behaviours as a representation of the culture, deprive them of their individual agency in the construction of their identities. The author rejects a monolithic and homogenized view of cultural identity to include the personal choice and preference. She states that culture is not only an “inherited capital by virtue of birth and provenance through custom, practice and tradition”, rather individuals choose their own way of being acculturated beyond the social
roles and values imposed by enculturalisation. The construction of identity is an active process that occurs in the discourse practices: identity is socially constructed through the communication with other people, where the individuals choose how to be participants in the communities of practice. The result of this approach is twofold: first it shows that cultural identities are fluid, variable and non-static; second, since culture is not considered any longer as a stable, monolithic entity that determines the individuals’ choices of communication, it also ceases to represent an obstacle for the communication process.
The logical conclusion is that although Ting-Toomey’s analysis underlines the relevance of active participation and empathy in interaction, she fails to consider the agency of the individuals in shaping their own cultural identities. According to Piller (2017), the different notions of culture related to different identity communities, such as the ethnic or gender identities (on which Ting-Toomey herself focuses), are not real: they are imagined communities that are discursively constructed to categorize individuals as group members. In her opinion, we construct cultures through discourse, specifically in communities of practice, where groups of people mutually engage in a communicative effort, establishing membership and rules of practice. This approach makes the concept of culture more fluid, because it is not conceived as a system of values that drives the individuals’ engagement in an interaction, but rather as the result of fixed practices in discourse that individuals negotiate.
Similarly, John and Jenny Gumperz (2009, p.14) describe their approach as follows:
The approach […] departs from established notions of culture as an abstract unitary set of community wide beliefs and norms, showing how human action depends on a variety of interactionally established cultural practices.
Hence, they start from the assumption that culture is created directly through talk, in communicative events that become culturally established. These speech events, both formal and informal encounters (from the job interview to the family reunions), involve the speech activity. In the speech activity, the interlocutors apply their conversational abilities: they try to reach an agreement by inferring what is expected in and as a result of the interaction. They do so through an interpretative process that relates the conversation to previous communication experiences. This process of interpretation is called “conversational inference”, through which interactants assess the communicative intentions of the other participants to the interaction and on the base of these inferences they plan their own responses. The conversational inference includes also the conversational management, namely how interactants practically answers to certain communicative tasks (for example, how to open and close an interaction, or how to respond to a move). The speech activity, therefore, requires cooperation among the participants. According to Gumperz and Gumperz, this cooperation is possible if the interlocutors share the conventions related to a particular speech event, because they can make presuppositions and inferences about each other intentions only if they are aware of the cultural conventions that guide the interactions. If they are not, the communication becomes unpredictable and they may not be able to reach an agreement. These conventions take the form of “contextualization cues”, that is to say linguistic forms that signal an intended meaning, such as code switching or prosody.
The observation of the existence of conventions that interactants should know to carry on the
