“Moving on” with gendered aspirations: Sudanese migrants navigating controlling welfare states, labour markets and migration regimes in the Netherlands and the UK

ABSTRACT

The ongoing political unrest and severe economic hardships in Sudan have led many Sudanese to arrive in Europe as asylum seekers. Throughout the years, after obtaining refugee status and becoming European citizens, many settle in the host countries of which they are citizens, while others move onwards to other EU countries as European labour migrants. As the migrants’ legal statuses change during these different stages, so do their welfare and labour-market entitlements, as well as their aspirations and possibilities to achieve them. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork with Sudanese families across the Netherlands, the UK and Sudan, this article explores the strategies deployed by male and female migrants to navigate the current welfare states, labour-market and migration regimes according to their life-course-related needs and aspirations. The article evidences the existing expectations and contradictions in these regimes towards mobile populations and the consequent social and gender inequalities they perpetuate.

KEYWORDS:

• Gendered aspirations
• refugees
• welfare state
• life-course
• labour market

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank all her respondents, many of whom remained by her side over the years and helped her clarify doubts in endless occasions. The author expresses her thanks to PhD supervisor, Valentina Mazzucato, for having taught her how to “find the story”. This article was written, thanks to the support and feedback from her colleagues at the Bonn International Centre for Conversion; despite the different backgrounds, all their comments helped to shape this paper. To all of you, THANK YOU.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In this article, I include migrants whose migration status changed over time. Asylum seekers might obtain refugee status or become undocumented. If they become refugees, many obtain the citizenship of the receiving country, while others decide to move somewhere else and become labour migrants. Throughout these different stages, people’s aspirations change and adapt. By including migrants with different legal statuses I observed common aspects in their aspirations and the strategies to fulfil them, which expand beyond migration labels.

2 The region of origin was taken as a proxy for different socio-economic statuses.

3 Out of the PhD project (Serra-Mingot 2018), four papers have been written and published in peer-reviewed journals. (See Serra-Mingot and Mazzucato 2019; Serra Mingot 2020; Serra Mingot and Mazzucato 2018b), whereby similarities in the methodological section are inevitable.

4 Pseudonyms have been used to ensure the anonymity of the respondents.

5 https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/rules/immigration_and_residence_restrictions_on_homelessness_help

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded under Marie Curie Initial Training Networks (ITN) - Call identifier: FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN.