Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
Chapter 8 foregrounds how intimacy and romantic relationships, or the lack thereof, and (im)mobility are intertwined, and present another factor shaping migratory ‘work-life pathways’. This chapter reveals how perspectives and rationales change over time and teases out how intimate relationships provide the stability and security to anchor migrants in the long term. It demonstrates that the EU Generation gradually experience emplacement and develop ties to communities in and segments of their migrant receiving societies in the Asian global cities Singapore and Tokyo. That said, mobility has become an underlying thread of the life trajectories of these middle-class migrants. While the migrants might feel at home, they seldom rule out the possibility of leaving again. Mobility and roots, and thus the possibility of having a home abroad without settling down, do not contradict. Further mobility or staying decisions increasingly depend on romantic partners and the possibility of both partners legally residing and working in the host country.
Chapter 6 unearths how the entanglements of gender, ‘race’, age and generation, as well as class identities shape the EU Generation’s work experience in the destination cities. This chapter conceptualises migrants’ employment and career development by their ‘Other’ identity as a way to unearth how work and (im)mobility affect each other. Integrating gender in the analysis reveals differences in the two cities. Yet, the comparison also highlights how this generational cohort value work as an undeniable factor of identity-making. As middle-class migrants, they are often unwilling and insecure about forfeiting their career for a family. This raises questions about the value of work in neoliberal labour markets but also about the taken-for-grantedness of having a family at a certain life stage – or at all. Augmented by ongoing geographical mobility, frequent organisational mobility, and the anxiety of becoming socially immobile, many migrants project family plans into a vague point in the future.
The conclusion highlights the complex decision-making processes and the structural constraints involved in migrants’ geographical, organisational/career and social mobility. It emphasises the significance that the three entangled dimensions of mobility assume for the EU Generation’s pursuit of middle-class life paths in Asian global cities. The longitudinal research foregrounds how the particular generation and life stage upon the EU Generation’s emigration from Europe have turned geographically distant Asian cities into attractive destinations for career progression and distinction in a time of flexible labour and shorter employment contracts. Previously accumulated mobility capital and the notion of insecurity lying ahead in any globalised labour market render continuous mobility or residence abroad the most reasonable path to choose for the time being and thus pave the way for an entire life stage, or longer, in Asia. The discussion identifies remaining and newly emerging obstacles to the incorporation of independently moving middle-class migrants such as the EU Generation in both cities. In doing so, the conclusion reaffirms the rationale for considering Singapore and Tokyo, and potentially other non-Western global cities, as a viable option and a potentially long-term residence for the EU Generation and middle-class labour migrants in general.
Chapter 2 depicts the contexts of labour migration to contemporary Singapore. As a consequence of the developmental state’s social engineering, epitomised by the principles of multiracialism and multiculturalism, as well as extensive foreign labour import, contemporary Singapore is characterised by postcolonial diversities and a bifurcated migration regime. Singapore’s immigration policies and migrants’ opportunities in the city-state have changed since the late 2000s, and these changing conditions constitute the background against which the young Europeans hope to develop a career and potentially grow footholds in the country. The chapter ends by introducing the legal and institutional framework the EU Generation use for accessing work visa and the labour market.
Part I of this book, Spatial Mobility to Asia: Moving Ahead by Moving out, examines the EU Generation’s physical movement, that is, migration to Asia. Chapter 1 uses statistics and qualitative data from interlocutors’ youth in Europe in order to delineate how European university students of the EU Generation grew up in what they perceive to be a thrilling yet competitive educational environment – one that values overseas experiences and suggests these to be a prerequisite for a fulfilling and successful professional career. The chapter then discusses the related literature on intra-European mobility, educational migration and the labour market before it introduces the theoretical approach to class in migration. The remaining chapter categorises the EU Generation’s varied migration motivations into four major types. The typology demonstrates how different forms of capital are converted or validated in the migration of each type and underlines that across all types mobility becomes a form of capital in itself, one that helps explain how the EU Generation secure employment in Asian global cities.
Drawing on an extensive study with young individuals who migrated to Singapore and Tokyo in the 2010s, this book sheds light on the friendships, emotions, hopes and fears involved in establishing life as Europeans in Asia.
It demonstrates how migration to Asian business centres has become a way of distinction and an alternative route of middle-class reproduction for young Europeans during that period. The perceived insecurities of life in the crisis-ridden EU result in these migrants’ onward migration or prolonged stays in Asia.
Capturing the changing roles of Singapore and Japan as migration destinations, this pioneering work makes the case for EU citizens’ aspired lifestyles and professional employment that is no longer only attainable in Europe or the West.
Chapter 3 shifts the lens to Tokyo, a vibrant metropolis and business hub in the Asia-Pacific region and the capital city of Japan, an ‘island nation’ and country that, despite an influx of migrants over the past three decades, continues to be perceived as largely homogeneous both from within and outside of Japan. The chapter discusses how Japan has rapidly opened up to migration in recent years, leading to an immense diversification of Tokyo’s resident population, including its foreign residents. However, foreigners are still seen as guests rather than immigrants. The chapter traces the roots of Japan’s constructions of difference and thereby explains the peculiar positioning of the (mostly white) European migrants in contemporary Tokyo society.
Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative study with young Europeans who migrated to Singapore and Tokyo in the 2010s, this book sheds light on the life course effects of early-career migration and on the changing outlook of the immigrant receiving countries of Singapore and Japan. The book demonstrates how migration to Asian business centres has become a way of distinction and an alternative way of middle-class reproduction for young Europeans during that period. It also reveals how the perceived insecurities of life in the crisis-ridden EU result in these migrants’ onward migration or prolonged stays in Asia. Capturing the changing roles of Singapore and Japan as migration destinations, this pioneering work makes the case for EU citizens’ aspired lifestyles and professional employment that is no longer only attainable in Europe or the West. After years of working experience and of building a life and networks in the two cities, Singapore and Tokyo – and for some migrants, other Asian hubs – have become temporary homes. Having spent the crucial first life stage of ‘full’ adulthood and economic independence in Asia, the migrants have established grounds for a middle-class lifestyle that they might not be able to replicate easily in their home countries or elsewhere. Singapore’s and Japan’s changing migration regimes, however, pose different barriers to the migrants, which results in the Europeans’ ambiguous feelings towards their differentiated embedding in the host societies.
Part III, (Im)Mobility Through Differentiated Embedding: The Ties That Bind, complements the analysis of migrants’ geographical, organisational and career mobility by examining the non-work-related aspects of migrants’ lives abroad. It connects the EU Generation’s place making and socialising practices to intimacy and thereby unearths complex processes of differentiated embedding, which result in either repeated physical mobility or staying. Chapter 7 engages questions of the migrants’ interaction with the heterogeneous and constantly diversifying resident population of their host cities. Emerging feelings of familiarity and security allow migrants to varying degrees to develop a sense of belonging. Such differentiated embedding, rather than a full-fledged belonging or outright marginalisation, best describes the complexities of migrants’ prolonged staying in Singapore and Tokyo.
The introduction presents the European millennial subjects of the book. It coins the term of the EU Generation in order to capture the commonalities of the group: their middle-class backgrounds and upbringing with the ideals of intra-European mobility in the integrating EU of the early 2000s. The chapter explains the concepts of mobility, immobility and aspirations in the life course as a segue into the way middle-class dispositions and aspirations shape the trajectories of this migrant group. The chapter then considers the migrant destinations of Singapore and Tokyo as cities defying the binary of East versus West and ends with a note on the research design and data.
