The thesis examines the migration decision-making and everyday experiences of young highly skilled professional migrants through the case study of German migration to the UK. It develops a framework combining the twin notions of transnational urbanism and translocal subjectivities, allowing a strong focus on migrants' subjective experiences, perceptions and emotionalities of mobility, while acknowledging the centrality of spaces and places for them. The geographical setting of the case study further serves to accentuate the relatively small-scale disruption occurring during the migration process, and the subjectivities connected to this. Data was collected in the UK (mainly London) during thirteen months of fieldwork, using participant observation, in-depth interviews and expert interviews. The research reveals a previously unacknowledged high ambivalence and diversity of this migrant group. Young German highly skilled migrants display various mobility and migration patterns with regard to the translocal connections they maintain, the emotional importance they attach to these connections, and their previous internal and international migration history. Three mobility types emerge from this: 'bi-local', 'multi-local' and 'settled' migrants. The close translocal connections practiced by migrants can lead to conflict, particularly for bi-local migrants, as judging of the migration project can occur by friends and families; meaning the spatial and emotional proximity between the migrants and their social network can be both positive and negative. The expectations towards the UK are also highly complex, and strongly influence micro-scale personal geographies. Lastly, the diversity of migration projects leads to widely varying attitudes towards fellow German migrants, as well as tensions and potentially conflicts within German social spaces. Overall, a strong and pervasive ambivalence about the migration experience emerges, which is experienced differently by the three migrant groups and the geographical proximity between Germany and the UK plays a large role in this. This thesis adds empirical and analytical insight to the academic debate regarding young professional migrants within the EU, and German contemporary migration in particular. Theoretically, it contributes to the discussion around lifestyle migration and middling transnationalism, and it enhances the practical use of the concept 'emotional geographies' for migration studies.

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The notion of superdiversity demands a move beyond an ethno-focal analysis of migration related diversity and calls to analytically incorporate other aspects of diversification, including differential migration, legal status and labour market trajectories. Taking London and Toronto as field locations, this thesis investigates how a superdiversity lens can be operationalised and utilised to discuss migrant socialities in urban contexts. It methodologically explores one particular avenue for doing this - personal social network analysis - to better understand the theoretical and empirical implications of adopting a superdiversity approach. Both qualitative and quantitative analysis strategies are used and particular emphasis is on visualising complex patterns and exploring how starting with complexity as an assumption facilitates the multidimensional analysis a superdiversity lens calls for. Focusing on networks of migrants who in statistical terms are commonly categorised as 'other' - who have relatively few co-migrants in terms of place of origin but who are differentiated in terms of other superdiversity aspects - the thesis questions if and what impact small group size has on patterns of sociality. With this focus it is established that a) the numerical size of the origin group impacts on social activities differently depending on whether one small group is explicitly liked to other pan-ethnic groups or not; b) that sociality patterns of migrants emerge from the complex interplay of general socialising opportunities but are also linked to individual trajectories of migration and settlement; c) that with a superdiversity lens it is indeed possible to move beyond the ethnic network notion. To support this latter point the thesis explores four alternative ways of describing migrant networks in terms of city-cohort, long-term resident, superdiverse and migrant-peer networks. The analysis contributes to theoretical debates by proposing a rational understanding of diversity rather than one based on the enumeration of categories be they ethnic or otherwise.

In 1969, Indonesia established a national family planning programme and total fertility has declined rapidly since but there is little consensus over the relative contribution of family planning to the observed decline. The first chapter constructs a new measure of family planning exposure to examine the role of family planning in reducing fertility. The causal effects of infant mortality is also examined based on a new instrumental variable, water supply and sanitation programme exposure, and that of schooling using father's schooling as an instrument. The findings strongly indicate that family planning contributes to lower fertility together with reductions in infant deaths and improvements in women's schooling, and that the effects of family planning and decreases in infant mortality are larger than that of schooling. In 2002, nearly one-in-ten men and more than one-in-five women in Indonesia were overweight and noncommunicable diseases had become the main cause of death but there exists no evidence on the causal effect of schooling on BMI for developing countries. The second chapter assesses whether more schooling causes healthier BMI in Indonesia by using two instrumental variables to capture exogenous variation in schooling. The first instrument takes advantage of the primary school construction programme (SD INPRES) in the 1970s; the second instrument is father's schooling. Two results stand out: more schooling causes higher BMI for men and there is no causal effect of schooling on BMI for women. This chapter also provides some very preliminary evidence that the shift from blue collar to white collar and service sector occupations is one contributing factor to why more schooling increases BMI for men. The third chapter also uses the SD INPRES programme but to examine the effect of increased school supply on schooling attainment: overall, by gender, and by socioeconomic background. It also constructs a new SD INPRES programme exposure variable as an instrument for schooling to assess the causal effect of schooling on wages. The results strongly suggest that the SD INPRES programme increased schooling for men and women but that women benefited more as did individuals from less advantageous socioeconomic backgrounds. More schooling also causes higher wages and there appears to be an added positive effect for women through the additional schooling induced by the SD INPRES programme.

The aim of the thesis is to contribute to the better understanding of determinants and consequences of international migration from Senegal, a West-African country with a longstanding tradition of migration to both African and European countries. Using a longitudinal (retrospective) and multi-sited micro dataset on 'Migration between Africa and Europe' (MAFE-SN), three selected topics are explored empirically. Firstly, the research examines the role of individual and contextual factors for the migration decision-making process, analysing jointly selection into migration attempts and departure. Results indicate that selection processes at the decision and realisation stages do not necessarily coincide, for instance with regard to the role of sex, education, but also immigration policies. Secondly, the impact of international migration experience on investments in real estate or business assets in the country of origin is examined. Direct migration experience is found to stimulate investment, though the effect varies according to the type of asset, the location and the destination region. International migration also appears as a way to overcome certain social disadvantages in terms of access to property. However, nonmigrants with access to migrant networks are not more likely to invest. Thirdly, the thesis investigates the effect of return migrant status on occupational attainment in Dakar. The main result obtained, a positive effect on self-employment, conforms to previous studies' findings on other countries. Yet, when using variables on the hierarchical socio-economic status or prestige position of the occupation, the positive effect of return migration is confined to wage-employed activities. In addition to the empirical analyses, the thesis contributes to the conceptual and methodological discussion on measurement of immigration policies. A database with detailed data on immigration policies in France, Italy and Spain over the period from 1960 to 2008 is constructed and qualitative information is converted into quantitative scores.

This thesis conducts empirical analysis on the determinants of migration and remittance sending decisions in Kenya and the impact on the expenditure patterns of households using cross-sectional household survey data. The first empirical chapter explores the factors that influence the subsequent migration decisions of Kenyan siblings using binary logit models. The findings reveal that preceding sibling migrants have a strong negative effect on the probability of migration for other siblings. Evidence in support of migration as a joint household level decision is obtained as preceding sibling and non-sibling migrants are found to exhibit similar effects. Conditional on migrating, siblings are shown to utilize existing sibling networks by moving to the same internal or external destination as preceding migrants. Discrete failure time models are also employed so as to account for any neglected heterogeneity at the household level. Controlling for neglected heterogeneity, the overall effect of preceding sibling migrants is found to be statistically insignificant. However, non-sibling migrants are found to decrease the probability of migrating. The second empirical chapter examines the remittance behaviour of multiple compared to sole sibling migrants, and the motivations of Kenyan siblings in sending remittances to their household of origin. No evidence of selection bias in the decision to remit is detected when a Heckman selection model is estimated. Using probit and OLS models, the presence of other siblings is found to decrease the probability of remitting but to have no effect on the amount of remittances sent. The amount of remittances sent by other siblings is also found to have no statistically significant effect on the remittances sent by a sibling using IV regression methods. In the third empirical chapter, the expenditure patterns of Kenyan households are investigated according to whether the household is a migrant or non-migrant household, and whether a migrant household is in receipt of remittances or not using an Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) approach. The analysis reveals that remitters who are spouses and siblings of the household have higher bargaining power towards the allocation of remittances to physical investments and durable goods, respectively. The expenditure patterns also show that remittances are not pooled together with general income when allocating the household budget towards durable goods and physical investments. In addition, the findings reveal that the reported uses of remittances by Kenyan households contrast with their actual uses. In the fourth chapter, the uses of remittances for the acquisition of physical investments and durable goods are analysed in more detail using IV and bivariate probit models. Remittances are found to be exogenous for the durable goods category but endogenous for physical investments. The evidence obtained is supportive of remittances being used by households to purchase these categories of commodities.

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Today migrants are increasingly seen as potential ‘philanthropists' or even as the ‘instigators' of development transition in their countries of origin. This thesis explores, via an original multiperspective bottom-up approach, how the discourse of migrants' contribution to development is constructed and put into concrete practice in the case of Moldova. The young republic is one of Europe's lesser-known countries and yet, with its intense recent experience of migration, it presents a fertile territory for in-depth study of the migration–development dynamic, with special reference to the role of migrant associations. More specifically, the heart of the thesis investigates, with a transnational lens, representations and negotiations of migrants' collective development efforts, firstly among migrants, secondly among development actors, and thirdly the aid-relationships between the two. The thesis engages with the literature on the relationship between migrants' transnational development practices and transnational power hierarchies, highlighting the role of international development policy discourses and initiatives from an interdisciplinary perspective. It aims to contribute to the broader theoretical discussion on linkages between transnational collective practices of Eastern European migrants living in EU countries and the development transition in the Eastern European 'neighbourhood'. Using a variety of field methods including multi-sited ethnography, the data collection took place over a period of one year – following the ‘discourse on migrants' contribution to development' in the transnational social field of migrant civil society and in the transnational field of development organisations across seven European countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Moldova, Switzerland and the UK. The findings reveal significant differences between migrants and mainstream development agencies on the issues of Moldova's transformation process, development practices and on the notion of ‘ideal' development partners. Migrants' collective transnational development practices appear as a dynamic process shaped not only by the current and understudied Moldovan migration features and based on various socio-economic and cultural indicators, but also by the country's Socialist past and its marginalised place within Europe. The results also show unexpected relationship patterns between migrants and state institutions and aid agencies, in which the latter two rely on migrant associations to carry out their newly-created migration–development policies and programmes. And an overall discomfort was found among aid-workers in engaging Moldovan migrants as their partners, expressed in double standards applied to migrants in ‘aidland'.

This thesis investigates the dual transnationalism of ancestral return migrants, that is to say people “returning” to the territory where their ancestors had once migrated from. Dispersed from their homeland in the second half of the 19th century, the Adyge-Abkhaz diaspora has been involved in a variety of transnational practices in relation to their homeland in the Caucasus; and some, with considerable effort, have been settling there especially in the last two decades. The transnational involvement of this diaspora, most of whom live today in Turkey, is motivated by their search for belonging. Many who go back and forth between Turkey and the Caucasus are involved in transnational diaspora associations and take an active role in the formation of a transnational ethno-political-cultural environment for new generations growing up in the diaspora. The majority of those who have “return migrated” to their homeland in the Caucasus, in this study to two republics, Adygeya (an autonomous republic under the Russian Federation) and Abkhazia (a republic with contested independence), develop new transnational links to their diaspora communities in Turkey. This thesis is the product of a multi-sited, multi-method research project that combines theories related to transnationalism, diaspora and return, as well as migrant adaptation. Using life-history interviews, semi-structured interviews and participant observation, fieldwork for the research took place in rural diaspora settlements and urban diaspora organisations in Turkey as well as in the Caucasus, thereby enabling the researcher to study both ends of the migration route. Existing studies on ancestral return migration focus on pull and push factors, which hitherto have focused on sending and receiving countries separately. This thesis argues that their dual transnationalism, both in the diaspora (in Turkey) looking back towards the diasporic homeland, and after return looking back towards the diaspora, turns them into the “diaspora of their diaspora”.

This thesis is based on eighteen months' fieldwork in Tissana: a bustling multi-ethnic fishing town on Sierra Leone's southern coast. It tells the story of the successive waves of young migrants who, for several decades, have been arriving on the coast from rural areas seeking an alternative to the indentured labour conditions of a farming economy still shaped by the legacy of domestic slavery. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing post­‐war economy, and in an ecological context in which fish stocks are in treacherous decline, I explore the intersection between people's everyday struggles for economic survival and their taken-for-granted knowledge of the substance of the world within which those fragile livelihoods play out. In a region in which we have come to correlate ‘memory' with the collective scars of slavery and civil war, Tissana's older residents look back with nostalgia and remember the youthful energy, conspicuous consumption and seemingly easy ‘freedom' of their town's early boom years. In some respects, the pattern is familiar from accounts of resource rushes all across Africa: the convergence of large numbers of young strangers in an unfamiliar landscape far from the authority of village elders opened up a space in which a new kind of moral economy emerged. However, within just a few decades of its initial boom, the fluidity of Sierra Leone's fishing economy is already under intense pressure. Fish stocks have suffered a noticeable decline and, as catches become smaller and more erratic, people find themselves drawn once more into networks of dependency and reciprocity that offer their only viable hope of material security. A constant tension animating everyday life in Tissana is how people are able to work, through the strategic deployment of material gifts, to nurture the relationships that they rely upon for their subsistence, whilst simultaneously attempting to protect themselves from becoming entangled in other, less appealing social bonds. At its core, then, this is a work about the materiality of human relationships; of social bonds formed and lived under conditions of such stark economic uncertainty that, very often, ‘love' and ‘livelihoods' are difficult to disaggregate — and even more difficult to trust. Here relationships often have a peculiarly fleshy, ethnographically observable aspect. One can go a long way towards mapping the town's fluctuating networks of friendship, love, debt, and obligation simply by watching the gifts of fish exchanging hands on the wharf. The town also raises a quite particular set of problems for an anthropologist interested in the materiality of social life. I explore how the lived experience of poverty, and the anxiety of stretched livelihoods are entangled with quotidian discussions of blessings, swears, initiation societies, and ‘fetish' medicines: elements of social life that we might intuitively gloss as ‘ritual', but that are, in fact, integral to the everyday economic order. Here, my work builds on a long literature in Sierra Leonean ethnography. Anthropologists working in this region have often revealed how their interlocutors do not draw any sharp distinction between ‘material' and ‘immaterial' elements of the physical environment and the agencies that inhabit it (Ferme 2001; Tonkin 1979; Bellman 1984). My contribution to this literature is to explore how such apparently abstruse questions of im/materiality become relevant in people's lives through economic practice: through the everyday decisions people make, and the work they invest, in fishing, trading, and gift-exchange.