Background Cape Verde has produced migrants over the centuries. Its history and geography have compelled males and females to leave their homeland in search of resources to invest in their family s survival and development. Literature on parental investment has evidenced the association between investment in embodied capital during infancy and early childhood and its outcomes at later stages. However, these studies seldom address migrant population. Aim This study aims to gain a better understanding of the relationship in a migratory context between parental investment in infancy and its outcomes in prepuberty embodied capital, among Cape Verdean children living in Cova da Moura, a deprived neighbourhood in Lisbon Metropolitan Area, Portugal. Methods A mixed method s approach combining quantitative with qualitative studies - is used. The prepubertal capital of the 221 schoolchildren attending the basic school located in Cova da Moura is assessed through Anthropometry and educational records analysis. The parental investment in infancy of 75 is analysed through interviews with parents and combined documentation (e.g. health booklets, reports, legislation). Results The key findings are: 1)Children are born and raised between 1997 and 2002, a time characterized by a favourable socioeconomic development in Portugal in general and Cova da Moura in particular. 2)In spite of living in a so called deprived neighbourhood , the school children linear growth falls into the healthy range of the III NHANES growth reference, and it is slightly better than the linear growth of other groups of children measured in Portugal in late 1980s and early 2000. School-oriented cognitive development is not adequate, however. A third of the students have not a regular school performance. 3)Parental investment in infancy is significantly associated to prepubertal physical growth and school-oriented cognitive development. The size effect is, however, small.

This thesis brings a focus to food and its cultural geographies by examining the ways that diasporic communities forge networks of distribution and the role of homesickness in shaping tastes in consumer societies. It also adds food (as material and immaterial culture) to diasporic geographies by highlighting the importance of food practices for migrant identities and sense of belonging. Through an investigation of food practices among Brazilians in London this research also contributes to an understanding of how this recent, numerous but under researched South American group experience migration in an everyday basis in London. The investigation undertaken includes desk research on food provision systems, semi-structured interviews and documentary field research with Brazilian food providers across London, focus group discussions with Brazilian migrants, periods of observational research in case study shop and restaurant outlets, and ethnographic domestic research with case study Brazilian households in Harlesden, Brent (an area of London with marked Brazilian immigration over the last decade). My analysis considers ‘Brazilianess' as a category and cultural-culinary form being made and contested in London. An overview of the dynamics of Brazilian food provision in London shows that this making and contesting operates through both the material culture of food provision and the social lives of public spaces such as restaurants, cafes and grocery shops. Brazilian food consumption thus operates in a number of different registers linked to practicality, emotion and ethnic identification. A closer look at public Brazilian food consumption spaces reveals how such places create collective migrant spaces of belonging by translocalizing Brazilian life. In the domestic settings, food narratives and observation reveal the materialities and practices of migrant home making in mixed households and the processes through which consumption practices are negotiated and contested by different household members.

This thesis is a discourse-analytical study of SELF and OTHER representations in contemporary Russian discourse on migration. The overall aim of this thesis is to explore how SELF and OTHER discourse participants are represented in pro-governmental discourse, to which extent the ideology of pro-governmental media discourse can be classified as discriminatory towards migrants and how it changes in the period between the years 2006 and 2009. The discussion is based on the results of the discourse analysis of the corpus of texts collected from three various sources. Firstly, the pro-governmental moderate corpus of media articles collected from the website of the Moscow City Council in August – November 2006 is compared to the corpus of texts collected from the website of the radical anti-migrant movement DPNI. The purpose of this comparative study is to establish the extent of commonalities through the analysis of referential-categorizing and evaluative strategies between thee two types of discourse. Moreover, in the instances of represented discourse, it is important to understand how journalists position themselves and the readers with respect to the evaluative force of the statements. The results received from the analysis of these strategies are used to construct discourse space ontology for SELF and OTHER representations. Secondly, the moderate corpus is extended to receive more data for the analysis of conceptual imagery, i.e. metaphors. The analysis of metaphors confirms tendencies typical of migration discourse but also has its special pattern which is attributed to sociocultural specifics explored through the examination of conceptual blends. The evaluative dimension constitutes an important aspect of the discourse analysis of conceptual imagery. Finally, a multimodal corpus of verbal and visual data representing a protest action by the pro-governmental youth movement “Molodaia Gvardiia” at the end of 2008 – beginning of 2009 is searched for specific strategies of SELF and OTHER representation. The analysis shows an extensive use of discursive strategies typical of racist ideology used for the representation of SELF and OTHER discourse participants in pro-governmental media discourse on migration.

In this thesis, I examine the ideas of home among Irish-born return migrants who left the Republic of Ireland in the late-1980s/early-1990s for the United States, and then came back at the beginning of the 2000s. Drawing on an analysis of intensive interviews, I elucidate the ways in which my research participants articulate and use the concept of home to negotiate their (re)settlement experiences. The overarching argument of the thesis is that participants’ interpretations represent an alternative to fixed, bounded and exclusionary understandings of home, without necessarily downplaying the longing for a discreet, foundational and originary home. This is important because their accounts of home begin to challenge narrow readings of locality and stable definitions of identity. Moreover, their narratives of home force researchers to address awkward questions about who belongs to particular places, and on what basis claims to membership are made. I develop this argument throughout the thesis by analyzing participants’ descriptions of (re)settlement in the old/new places they inhabit. I show that the majority of participants conventionally justify the return decision as the restoration of a settled sense of home. The actual experience of (re)settlement, however, requires many participants to redefine home upon return. The anxieties associated with the return experience means that home can be simultaneously a space of both homecoming and leavetaking, blurring distinctions between ‘here’ and ‘there’, home and away. In effect, what participants’ narratives draw attention to is the often-overlooked tension between home’s dual meaning: its lived and longed-for aspects. While the reality of return revises the expectations surrounding homecoming, opening out home to broader sets of connections does not necessarily mitigate the longing to belong ‘at home’, to anchor the elusive aspects of home. Participants’ accounts of (re)settlement point towards an accommodation of both grounded and uprooted homes simultaneously: translocally lived, yet longed-for as discreetly-defined. These findings are significant, as they foreground the moored and mobile moments of home as complementary and co-existing rather than conflicting and contending. Return migrants’ (re)settlement experiences offer a productive entry point into investigating this paradoxical nature of home in contemporary societies.

The migration of nurses is stimulating international debate around globalisation, ethics, and the effects on health systems. This thesis examines this phenomenon through nurses trained in Nepal who migrate to the UK. Since 2000, increasing numbers of Nepali nurses have started crossing national borders to participate in the global healthcare market, particularly in the affluent west. By using qualitative multisited research and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders in both Nepal and the UK, this thesis explores why nurses aspire to migrate, how they fulfil these aspirations, and their experience of living and working in the UK. The thesis begins by examining the historical development of nurse training in Nepal, particularly from the mid 1950s. This period saw profound socio-political transformations, including in the position of women in Nepali society and in the perception of nursing in Nepal. Previously, many families were very reluctant to send their daughters into nursing. By the late 1990s, middle-class women and their families were increasingly attracted to nursing, both as a vocation and as a means to migrate. The thesis explores the rise of private training colleges to meet the increased demand for nurse training, and the new businesses that have grown up around the profession to facilitate nurse recruitment and migration. Around one thousand nurses have migrated to the UK since 2000, and the second part of the thesis presents their experiences of the migration process and of working and settling in the UK. Nurses have faced complex bureaucratic and professional hurdles, particularly after UK nurse registration and work-permit policies changed in 2006. The thesis also highlights how highly qualified nurses with many years of work experience in Nepal have become increasingly deskilled in UK. Frequently sent to rural nursing-homes by recruiting agencies, they create and join new diasporic support networks. Further, many have left their loved ones behind, and experience homesickness and the pain of family separation. Often, they plan for their husbands and children to join them after several years, and the research explores this and the issues faced by their families, as they relocate and adapt to life in the UK. Finally, the thesis makes some important policy recommendations. For Nepal, these relate to greater regulation of nurse training and the brokering of nurses abroad. In the UK, they relate to increasing the flexibility of registration and visa regulations to assist in supporting Nepali nurses' work choices, and to value and utilise their professional skills in the UK better.

This thesis is concerned with the heart of Caithness, the northernmost region of mainland Scotland. Based on 18 months participant observation in the coastal village of Lybster and the surrounding area, it explores concepts of kinship and belonging. The thesis examines characters, places, and events in both everyday and ritual settings. I trace the creation and maintainence of community, and the construction and blurring of the boundaries of belonging as well as paths of social transformation. I examine how Caithnessians perceive themselves as 'strangers' in their own nation, thus creating increasingly localized ties that bind. Significant in all of this, in a locality where migration has historically been important, is an analysis of how 'others' and their identities play a constitutive role in the self-identification processes of Caithnessians. I consider ascribed and achieved ways of belonging - the genealogical and performative journeys that are involved in fitting into this locality. I examine the contradictions, nuances, and negotiations that are evident in definitions of selves and others and the constitutive relationship between them. All of this is part of a wider investigation into how people conceptualise themselves and others. I argue that what I have called ‘island-mindedness’ characterises the identities of this mainland population and leads to a side-stepping of national identity. In the context of current research on the nation, such ethnographic illumination of the complexity of notions of identity in specific regions is essential for a rounded anthropological understanding of Scotland. By offering a close exploration of a community based on kinship, this thesis aims to illuminate new ways of approaching the nuances of everyday life. I suggest that it is in the encounters of everyday life - more than in claims and categories - that identity work and kinship are most complex and most meaningful.

This is a thesis about knowing, working and migrating in a complex and fluid world. Through an analysis of biographic-narrative interviews with migrants working in 'knowledge intensive' roles, as well as with those employed in jobs normally considered 'low-skilled', arguments about knowing, working and migrating in the 'new knowledge economy' are developed. Foregrounding an active and embodied understanding of knowing as a socially embedded and fluid phenomenon allows for a reconceptualisation of the relationships between knowing, migrating and working, raising questions about our normative understandings of both the 'knowledge' economy and divisions of migrant labour. This thesis seeks to illustrate how everyday practice and the interaction of complex (and often competing) 'forces' have acted to produce powerful ideas about what kind of jobs are suitable for which types of migrants, and how these ideas become accepted as normal – as 'common sense' assumptions. Furthermore, such productions of knowledge about migrants, also impacts on how, what and where we know. That is, the processes and performances of knowing are both constitutive of, and constituted by, the structures of power which shape our lives. Thus the 'power to know' is contextual, fluid and yet fundamental to the constitution of our everyday lives.

Directed cell migration is essential in both physiological and pathological situations. Many guidance cues have been extensively investigated in the past decades, to be able to regulate directional cell migration, including chemical, physiological and haptotactic cues. In the past years, we have focused on the roles of physiological electric field in the guidance of directed cell migration. It is well accepted that physiological electric fields exist both extracellularly and intracellularly with different functions, and interestingly, endogenous EFs exist in not only physiological but also pathological events. For instance, the existence of a small current in developing embryos which is also known as the endogenous electric field has been tested, such as the blastopore in Xenopus, chicken embryos, and etc. It has been also demonstrated that endogenous electric fields exist at the wound edges of injured cornea and skin. Physiological electric field is among many other guidance cues controlling an important cellular response – directed cell migration in response to stimuli, a phenomenon named electrotaxis or galvanotaxis. We and others have extensively demonstrated that physiological EFs could control directional cell migration, and that several signalling pathways are required for the regulation of such event. In the current study, we used Dictyostelium model to further explore the molecular and genetic mechanisms of how electrotaxis is controlled, by extensively investigating candidate molecules and genes in such regulation. We found that PI3K, PTEN and Ras signalling pathways are largely involved in the regulation of electrotaxis, Ras plays more dominant roles in this event in comparison with PI3K and PTEN, which only partially contributed towards the electrotactic response of the Dictyostelium cells. Asymmetric redistribution of signalling molecules are shown to play an essential role in the initiation and maintenance of the electrotactic response of the cells.

The interrelation between gender and the asylum-seeking process has received increasing attention within academic as well as political discussions in the past decade. Looking specifically at the case of Sweden, this paper hopes to add to existing knowledge through the consideration of how tensions and contradictions regarding migrants and asylum-seekers affect women’s experiences of the asylum-seeking process. The analysis builds on the idea that the European Union Member States, Sweden included, have cultivated a “securitized” migration discourse which considers refugees and asylum-seekers as a threat to national security and stability. This has resulted in reinvigorated internal and external controls on migration and asylum, with particular structural and gendered implications for those seeking asylum in the EU. The aim of the study is to explore how these implications affect women’s experiences of seeking asylum in Sweden. It finds that women, and especially women belonging to ethic minority groups in their home-countries, are particularly vulnerable to the effects of securitization due to lack of social and economic resources, increased exposure to gender based violence (GBV) during the migratory journey, insecurities related to male-dominated and overcrowded asylum accommodation centers, and insecurities related to family fragmentation.

Les poissons migrateurs thalassotoques réalisent des migrations pour changer de biomes à deux moments de leur vie. La première migration est une migration anadrome qui a lieu au stade juvénile. Après une phase de croissance en eau douce, ils réalisent une migration catadrome vers les habitats marins, afin de s’y reproduire.Il existe une très forte diversité, écologique et morphologique, au sein de ce groupe qui partage une stratégie d’histoire de vie commune : la catadromie. En décomposant par phases la migration anadrome de colonisation des bassins versants, cette étude avait pour objectif de mettre en évidence les tactiques déployées lors de cette colonisation, puis de les comparer afin de mettre en évidence d’éventuelles variations, appelées « variants ».Deux méthodologies principales ont été utilisées : les premières phases de colonisation ont été étudiées en structures expérimentales. Pour les individus âgés de un an et plus, une approche de suivi par télémétrie acoustique a été choisie.Un patron global de migration de colonisation des bassins versants par les thalassotoques aainsi pu être proposé. Des variants interspécifiques liés à l’écologie et à la morphologie des espèces ont aussi pu être mis en évidence, ainsi que des variations intraspécifiques. Ces variations suggèrent l’existence de différentes stratégies d’histoire de vie au sein d’une même espèce de thalassotoques. / Abstract