Labour migration in uncertain times: Migration from Spain to Norway

Increased migration from Southern Europe in the Wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the vast inflow refugees during the so-called refugee crisis of 2015 has changed the migration landscape in Europe. The current project analyses these migratory flows. Results from the main part of the project indicate that Spanish migrants have left Spain not only because of an unemployment crisis but also because of a political crisis where contempt for politicians and inability to create normal futures for themselves are central. Reasons for leaving and for not returning are ascribed to homeland politics and conditions on the labor market there, but also to more favorable conditions on the Norwegian market. It is not only access to jobs that is foregrounded by Spanish migrants, but central qualities of the labor market in Norway such as the predictability and protection offered by the Norwegian work environment act. The focus thus, is on being able to create a normal future. Since 2015, the European public's attention has been moving from the Euro-crisis to the refugee-crisis. The project was therefore expanded to include pilot interviews with Syrian refugees in 2016. The expansion created a unique chance to understand what a crisis framing means to migrants across the forced-voluntary continuum. The project uses 'crisis' as point of departure to understand new migratory patterns by drawing on these two particular cases of human mobility in the wake of the European financial crisis and the subsequent 'refugee crisis'. Preliminary indicate that crisis-mobilization can both hinder and facilitate positive relations between new migrant groups and the majority population. Future research based on the current project will aim to increase our understanding of how crisis shape migrants' imaginations and experiences.

This project aims to further our understanding of migration between two countries that have been differentially affected by the current European economic crisis by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews. The project will focus on two groups of migrants, one defined as "easily employable" or highly skilled and another as "less easily employable" and less skilled. The aim of this is to explore the heterogeneity of migrant experiences in the Norwegian labour market and to discover diffe rent mechanisms and traits of development in the field of migration from Spain to Norway. The two groups of migrants with considerably different relationships to the protections offered by the Norwegian Working Environment Act and the Norwegian welfare st ate are selected to generate data suitable for comparative analyses of migrants' experiences with Norwegian society and working life. The study has two overarching themes: (1) the extent to which the Norwegian labour market provides protections and opport unities and/or the extent to which it facilitates exploitation of labour migrants; and (2), the roles that class, skill level, gender, ethnicity, and whiteness play in shaping the relationships between the migrants and Norwegian institutions and society. Burawoy's extended case method and the Manchester anthropologists favoured using local crises as points of departure for their case studies, arguing that macro forces are particularly poignant during times of crisis, and the starting point of the current project is likewise a time of crisis in Europe. History has shown that economic crises play an important part in workers' decisions to migrate, but the issue of cause is much more complex. A crisis does not necessarily lead to migration. The current proje ct will investigate the impact of structural elements such as unemployment and labour conditions, but also examine migrants' experiences by drawing on socially embedded and transnational perspectives on migration.