Once countries started recovering from the devastation of WWII, economies needed to be rebuilt. The USSR had built its command economy around the idea of high levels of extensive growth achieved by a division of labor between countries in Eastern Europe (Comecon) and industrialization. This depended on large amounts of labor as extensive growth meant […]
Migrating for work
Turkish Migration to Germany & the Netherlands
I read Rinus Penninx’s A Critical Review of Theory and Practice: The Case of Turkey with interest, as I have heard quite a lot about Turkish migration to Germany and the Netherlands in recent years, but knew very little about its origins. I am particularly interested in the social and political aspects of migration, but […]
How words matter – from Germany, Kazakhstan, and the US
De Haas emphasized that the way we speak about migration matters, not only to our discourse, but also to the lived experiences of migrants. Using “migrant worker” instead of “expat” indicates a particular idea about the person in question. We perhaps think “unskilled” or it brings up certain ideas of race and ethnicity. De Haas […]
Welcome to the Blog: Labor and Migration in Central Eurasia
Marianne Kamp, Aug 16, 2020 That looks a little different than the Khorgos “Inland Port” today. Since 2000, many factors have contributed to putting millions of people in motion across international borders: wars, economic growth, reduction in visa barriers, investments that make travel cheaper. This class uses examples from Turkey, the Caucasus, and Central Asia […]