Migration to and from Welfare States

This open access book explores the role of family, public, market and third sector welfare provision for individual and households’ decisions regarding geographical mobility. It challenges the state-centred approach in research on welfare and migration by emphasising migrants’ own reflections and experiences. It asks whether and in which ways different welfare concerns are part of migrants’ decisions regarding (or aspirations for) mobility. Employing a transnational and a translocal perspective, the book addresses different forms of geographical mobility, such as immigration, emigration, and re-migration, circular and return migration. By bringing in empirical findings from across a variety of Western and non-Western contexts, the book challenges the Eurocentric focus in current debates and contributes to a more nuanced and more integrated global account of the welfare-migration nexus.

• Open access
• Immigration and emigration
• Nexus of welfare provisions
• Global social protection
• Migration and integration
• Population mobility
• Rural to urban migration
• Circular and return migration
• Welfare-migration nexus
• Citizenship
• Welfare and mobility
• Mobility of the elderly and family-based care
• Chinese international students
• Children's education and parental migration decisions
• Migration and settlement aspirations
• Labour mobility from Eastern European welfare states
• Healthcare workers and migration
• Gender equality in expatriate family migration
• Old-age pensions across borders
• Social protection across countries

• Centre for Intercultural Communication, VID Specialized University, Stavanger, Norway

  Oleksandr Ryndyk

• Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare, University of Malmö, Malmö, Sweden

  Brigitte Suter

• Center for Intercultural Communication, VID Specialized University, Stavanger, Norway

  Gunhild Odden

Oleksandr Ryndyk is a Researcher at the Centre for Intercultural Communication at VID Specialized University, Norway. He holds a Master's degree in International Economics and a joint European Master’s in Migration and Intercultural Relations (EMMIR). He has researched a broad range of migration-related topics, such as social-welfare protection and the integration of intra-European migrants, the labour-market integration of refugees, gender roles, equality and child-rearing practices among migrants, the integration of 1.5-generation migrants, family counselling and conflict resolution among migrant families.

Brigitte Suter is a Senior Researcher and Lecturer in International Migration and Ethnic Relations at the Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM) at Malmö University, Sweden. She has researched a wide range of migration-related topics and has extensive experience in qualitative, interpretative research methods. Her research interests include (im)mobility, social networks, the transformative potential of migration, ethnography, the mobility of highly skilled migrants in the global economy and the role of norms and rights in the field of migration and integration.

Gunhild Odden is Professor of Research in Migration Studies and Vice Dean for Research at VID Specialized University in Stavanger, Norway. She holds a PhD in Sociology and a Master’s in International Migration and Interethnic Relations, both from the University of Poitiers, France. Her research interests include transnational migration dynamics, migratory trajectories, migration and family life and migration and social mobility. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Spain, Norway and Senegal.

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