Though not among the most famous of the Baroque’s architects and builders, the Bregenzerwald Baroque Master Builders, who were heavily involved in the creation of a sacred landscape of churches and monasteries in the wider Lake Constance area, have attracted scholarly attention since the nineteenth century. This article attempts to recontextualize these builders by taking them out of the usual framework proposed by art historians who, not least due to a chance discovery of an important source in the mid-twentieth century, tended to interpret the remote alpine valley of the Bregenzerwald as some kind of “rustic Florence.” Instead, this article rereads these builders in the context of the more mundane social and political realities of the Bregenzerwald. It suggests that in order to better understand this fascinating group of builders and craftsmen, it may be helpful to avoid reconstructing their sociopolitical history from their artistic achievement (How were they able to accomplish this?), and instead to reverse this approach to uncover the sociopolitical structures in which they lived (Who were they before they accomplished this?).

Throughout the Cold War, Yugoslavia was the only socialist country that participated in the Western-led international refugee regime and acted as a transit zone for refugees hoping to reach the Western Bloc. Those transiting were mainly, but not exclusively, escapees from various countries in the Soviet bloc. A few refugee groups also settled in Yugoslavia against the backdrop of shifts in international constellations, tense relationships with neighboring countries, and transnational mobilizations. This article will first investigate the dichotomy between transit and the few instances of refugees integrating into socialist Yugoslavia. Next, it will investigate the ease of the resettlement process by exploring how the length of time spent in the country was influenced by hierarchies among different refugee groups based on ethnic origin, political allegiances, class, and which opportunities for resettlement were available to whom. Finally, it will reflect on how the changing role of temporary refuge or permanent haven that Yugoslavia ascribed to itself was constructed and challenged by the host society, potential countries of resettlement, and the refugees themselves.

Brazilians in the United States voted overwhelmingly for right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro in 2022. What role did religion play? Based on exit polling, focus groups, and observation of local Brazilian churches, this article explores how Christianity drives support for right-wing populism among Brazilian migrants to the Boston area. Christians, and especially evangelicals, are significantly more likely to vote for Bolsonaro, and the priests and pastors of Brazilian migrant churches are particularly willing to discuss parties and candidates. Yet neither clergy endorsements nor political conversations at church explain this religious effect. I argue that indirect influence within congregations, which reinforces a conservative worldview in non-overtly political ways, helps explain why most observant evangelicals favor Bolsonaro. Migrants potentially influence the voting behavior of friends and family in Brazil, including via transnational religious communities, so their political attitudes can help bolster authoritarian populism in the homeland, as also seen in India and Turkey.

Whenever a person intends to cross a border, citizenship de facto determines—more than any other status—whether that person can enter the territory of another state. Yet, despite its ubiquity and centrality within global mobility infrastructures, the exact mechanisms through which citizenship shapes human movement on the planetary scale remain surprisingly ambiguous. This Article examines the multifaceted ways in which citizenship operates as an organizing principle within the complex of rules and norms governing transnational human mobility, including how the increasing acceptance of dual nationality status and the emergence of citizenship-by-investment schemes reverberate throughout the legal infrastructure and create new pathways for elite mobility. Using citizenship as an exploratory lens, the Article thereby seeks to theoretically complement and nuance existing scholarship in migration and mobility studies, arguing that physical space remains the dominant structure for human mobility. As we show, legal infrastructures reconfigure access to human mobility in ways that simultaneously fragment and compress physical space as it pertains to transnational movement.

The aim of this Article is to present a general and nonexhaustive overview of the legal infrastructures that configure cross-border movement in Latin America. It draws on the mobility approach, regime interaction, and—legal—infrastructural studies, which, together, provide a tentative analytical framework for the legal infrastructuring processes that we observe around border regulation in Latin America, an, arguably, understudied but core mobility hotspot. We present—in the form of several vignettes—different outcomes of infrastucturing processes which either enable or impede cross border mobility. This approach reveals the dynamic nature of law surrounding mobility and its apparent contradictions and unintended consequences. It concludes that the shift to an infrastructural account of the law can help us gain a more holistic and, therefore, more realistic understanding of how the law works over time, how it infrastructures crossborder mobility beyond and sometimes against states’ intentions and expectations, and how people on the move have more agency than the snapshot image of—forced—migration law conveys.

This research examines the ways the hostile environment in the UK utilises domestic violence as a deterrent measure, weaponising this endemic form of interpersonal violence against migrant women. I argue that the state’s own processes of accountability and responsibility for domestic violence fatalities, and the active exclusion of migrant women from state-provided services that are key in intervening in cases of domestic violence, are sufficient for domestic violence against migrant women to be constituted as state violence. I frame this in the context of what an ontological security approach can offer to our understanding of the multiplicity of encounters and experiences that migrant women have with a state apparatus that is designed to offer both security and accountability to address the particularly gendered insecurity of domestic violence. The active exclusion of migrant women from these monitoring mechanisms embeds both an affective and a very real empirical insecurity in the lives of migrant women. This ontological insecurity is both inside and outside of state, making ontological security for some while unmaking it for others.

The various global refugee and migration events of the last few years underscore the need for advancing anticipatory strategies in migration policy. The struggle to manage large inflows (or outflows) highlights the demand for proactive measures based on a sense of the future. Anticipatory methods, ranging from predictive models to foresight techniques, emerge as valuable tools for policymakers. These methods, now bolstered by advancements in technology and leveraging nontraditional data sources, can offer a pathway to develop more precise, responsive, and forward-thinking policies.

This paper seeks to map out the rapidly evolving domain of anticipatory methods in the realm of migration policy, capturing the trend toward integrating quantitative and qualitative methodologies and harnessing novel tools and data. It introduces a new taxonomy designed to organize these methods into three core categories: Experience-based, Exploration-based, and Expertise-based. This classification aims to guide policymakers in selecting the most suitable methods for specific contexts or questions, thereby enhancing migration policies.

This study uses stable and radiogenic isotopic data from Chalcolithic (c. 3000–1900 bc) humans and animals recovered from the Rego da Murta dolmens (Alvaiázere, Portugal) to understand dietary and mobility patterns in the populations using these monuments. The results suggest diets based primarily on C3 plants and terrestrial animals, with some possible variation in protein intake by age or status. Analyses of 87Sr/86Sr values identify two individuals out of ten from Rego da Murta I and four individuals out of fifteen from Rego da Murta II as migrants. These data were compared to other Chalcolithic burials in south-western Portugal: while diets were found to be similar across the region, the very high 87Sr/86Sr values recorded for two migrant humans match no known settlement in the broader region. A recent mapping study of 87Sr/86Sr values in Portugal suggests their origins may lie to the north/north-east of the dolmens.

The influx of foreign capital into cities in developing countries creates new labor demands, triggering significant internal migration as workers move for opportunities. But this mobilization creates a management problem for local governments. How do local officials manage competing interests in developing their labor market while preventing governance problems from excessive demand on public resources? Using the highly institutionalized case of China, I argue that local governments encourage long-term migration of “desirable” migrants by integrating them into social services while keeping others out. Variation in locally invested FDI skill dependence drives variation in inclusivity towards internal migrants. Policies that facilitate the integration of internal migrants into local urban welfare systems correlate with investment in firms with greater dependence on high-skilled workers, especially when investment flows to firms established more than one year previously. These trends are strongest in eastern municipalities where market forces play a larger role in local development policies.

We present findings from historical microdata that suggest former rural elites effectively preserved their socio-economic advantages into the early People's Republic of China (PRC, circa 1949–1965) by exploiting urban–rural differences in government policies. In particular, former rural elites were three to four times more likely than poor peasants to move to a nearby town, and this urbanization was highly associated with socio-economic privileges in a rapidly developing economy, including both income and educational opportunities. We also find evidence that after 1949, former rural elites who did urbanize were more likely than their poor peasant counterparts to find industrial jobs.

The Japanese flying squid, Todarodes pacificus, is distributed mainly in the northwest Pacific and the Japan Sea. The present study was conducted for a better understanding of the mechanisms behind its migration routes. The ratios of strontium to calcium (Sr:Ca) in the statoliths can be associated with the water temperatures the squid experienced in the sea. Using specimens collected in the northern Japan Sea in summer and Lagrangian backward tracer experiments, a strong negative correlation was obtained between the Sr:Ca in the statoliths and the empirical water temperatures estimated through a regional ocean model. These backward tracer experiments were continuously conducted at depths of 6, 15, and 30 m. The greatest determination coefficient of the regression expression appeared for a nearshore tracer group of the experiment at a depth of 15 m. In addition, the regression expression provided reasonable lifetime empirical water temperature variations of the squids collected in the sea areas east of Tsushima Island and west of the Goto Islands in winter. The combination of Ca:Sr analytical chemistry and tracer experiments with the ocean dynamic model used in this study improved our understanding of the migration path of T. pacificus.

This study aimed to investigate the psychological impact of the Turkey 2023 earthquakes on preschool-aged children and to compare them with those with other life-threatening traumas. Thirty-four preschool children who experienced earthquakes on February 6, 2023, and applied to our outpatient clinic in the following 3 months, and 37 other trauma-experienced preschool children were included in this cross-sectional study. Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment/Post-Traumatic Stress sections were conducted. Parents were asked to complete the Pediatric Emotional Distress Scale and the Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 1.5–5 to evaluate stress-related reactions alongside psychiatric problems of children. The results showed that acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were more common in the earthquake-experienced group than in the other trauma-experienced group (Fisher’s exact test, 52.9% vs. 8.1%, p < 0.001 and 38.2% vs. 8.1%, p = 0.004, respectively). Migration after the earthquake had no additional impact on trauma-related psychiatric outcomes, either ASD or PTSD (p = .153, and p = 0.106, respectively); whereas sleep problems predicted PTSD (OR = 1.26, β = 0.42, p = 0.036) in the earthquake-experienced group. Our study provides implications for understanding the psychological impact of earthquakes and risk factors for PTSD among preschool children.

Migrants encounter multiple challenges, such as learning new languages and adapting to a new life. While digital technologies help them learn, limited research has been conducted on their digital skills development. In this article, we report on migrants’ digital skills development while learning language through culture using a web app developed by an EU-funded project that aimed to promote social cohesion through a two-way exchange of knowledge and skills. Forty-six migrant and 43 home community members in Finland, Spain, Türkiye, and the UK participated in intercultural and intergenerational pairs to engage with and co-create interactive digital cultural activities in multiple languages. Participants’ digital, linguistic and cultural gains were measured before and after the workshops. We report on participants’ digital skills, measured by a digital competence self-assessment tool developed based on DigComp, and interviews with the participants. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Qualitative data were analysed deductively using the categories of the DigComp framework. Findings indicate statistically significant improvement in migrants’ self-reported digital skills. Highest gains were in the competency area of digital content creation. Comparison of migrants’ digital skill development with that of home community members did not show any statistically significant differences, supporting our argument against the deficiency perspective towards migrant populations. Interview data suggested overall positive evaluations and highlighted the role of the web app instructions for content creation. We conclude with suggestions for further research and argue for inclusive pedagogies, emphasising how both community members learned from and with each other during the workshops.

The article studies how public policies of migrant ‘integration’ are enacted and made sense of in the street-level welfare state from the perspective of social work practitioners performing integration work and with a focus on language and language skills acquisition. It draws from twenty-seven semi-structured individual interviews and reflective discussions after service user meetings with eleven social workers and social advisors in migrant integration services conducted between 2018 and 2019 in the Helsinki capital region of Finland. Results infer ambiguous, yet persistent, ideals of monolingualism in which Finnish language skills acquisition plays a central role and linguistic diversity turns into individual lack of skills and capacities through service user responsibilisation. Yet practitioners refer to the unfeasible situations this creates for service users as well as to their own struggles as practitioners within the monolingual service system.