The crossing of national state borders is one of the most-discussed issues of contemporary times and it poses many challenges for individual and collective identities. This concerns both short-distance mobility as well as long-distance migration. Choosing to move - or not - across international borders is a complex decision, involving both cognitive and emotional processes. This book tests the approach that three crucial thresholds need to be crossed before mobility occurs; the individual’s mindset about migrating, the choice of destination and perception of crossing borders to that location and the specific routes and spatial trajectories available to get there. Thus both borders and trajectories can act as thresholds to spatial moves. The threshold approach, with its focus on processes affecting whether, when and where to move, aims to understand the decision-making process in all its dimensions, in the hope that this will lead to a better understanding of the ways migrants conceive, perceive and undertake their transnational journeys. This book examines the three constitutive parts discerned in the cross-border mobility decision-making process: people, borders and trajectories and their interrelationships. Illustrated by a global range of case studies, it demonstrates that the relation between the three is not fixed but flexible and that decision-making contains aspects of belonging, instability, security and volatility affecting their mobility or immobility.

The crossing of national state borders is one of the most-discussed issues of contemporary times and it poses many challenges for individual and collective identities. This book examines the three constitutive parts discerned in the cross-border mobility decision-making process: people, borders and trajectories and their interrelationships. Illustrated by a global range of case studies, it demonstrates that the relation between the three is not fixed but flexible and that decision-making contains aspects of belonging, instability, security and volatility affecting their mobility or immobility.

This open access book offers a critical perspective on intra-European mobility and migration by using new empirical data and theoretical discussions. It develops a theoretical and empirical analysis of the consequences of intra-European movement for sending and receiving urban regions in The Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Turkey, Poland and Czech Republic. The book conceptualizes Central and Eastern European (CEE) migration by distinguishing between different types of CEE migrants and consequences. This involves a mapping of migration corridors within Europe, a unique empirical analysis of consequences for urban regions, and an analysis of governance responses. Next to the European and country perspectives on this phenomenon, the book focuses on the local perspective of urban regions where most mobile citizens settle (either permanently or temporarily). This way the book puts the analysis of intra-European movement in the perspective of broader theoretical debates in migration studies and beyond.

The primacy of education in development agendas is unquestioned. With the gradual acknowledgement of the potential benefits that migration can hold for development, the relationship between migration and education is a growing area of research. Migration, Education and Socio-Economic Mobility explores how the decisions people make in terms of both their migration choices and educational investments, mediated as they are by gender, class, caste and nationality, can potentially contribute to earning incomes, building social and symbolic capital, or reshaping gender relations, all elements contributing to the process of economic and social mobility. Much of the existing literature examining the links between migration and education focuses either on the investment of migrant remittances in the education of their children back home or on ‘brain drain’ that refers to the migration of skilled workers from the developing to the developed world. Most of these discussions are firmly rooted in materialist arguments and while undeniably important, tend to underplay the social processes through which migration and education interact to shape people’s lives, identities and status in society. Along with economic security, people also aspire to social mobility and status enhancement. The ideas presented in this book take a more varied and nuanced view of the relationship between education and migration. This book was originally published as a special issue of Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education.

This book brings together ten original empirical works focusing on the influence of various types of spatial mobility – be it international or national– on partnership, family and work life. The contributions cover a range of important topics which focus on understanding how spatial mobility is related to familial relationships and life course transitions. The volume offers new insights by bringing together the state of the art in theoretical and empirical approaches from spatial mobility and international migration research. This includes, for example, studies that investigate the relationships between international migration and changing patterns of partnership choice, family formation and fertility. Complementing to this, this volume presents new empirical studies on job-related residential mobility and its impact on the relationship quality of couples, family life, and union dissolution. It also highlights the importance of research that looks at the reciprocal relationships between mobility and life course events such as young adults leaving the parental home in international migration context, re-arrangements of family life after divorce and spatial mobility of the elderly following life transitions. The scholarly work included in this volume does not only contribute to theoretical debates but also provide timely empirical evidence from various societies which represent the common features in the dynamics of spatial mobility and migration.

This book provides an innovative perspective on migration, mobility and transport. Using concepts drawn from migration history, mobilities studies and transport history it makes the case for greater integration of these disciplines. The approach is historical, demonstrating how past processes of travel and population movement have evolved, examining the continuities and changes that have occurred, and arguing that many of the concepts used in mobilities studies today are equally relevant to the past. The three central chapters view past population movements through, respectively, the lenses of migration history, mobilities studies and transport. Two further chapters demonstrate the diversity of mobility experiences and the opportunities and difficulties of applying this approach in teaching and research. Extensive case study material from around the world is used, including personal diaries, which vividly recreate the everyday experiences of past mobilities. Population movement has never been of more importance globally: this book demonstrates how knowledge of past mobility experiences can inform our understanding of the present.