About the Project

TEMP MIGRATION lies at the intersection of migration research, the transforming world of work, and demographic and socio-cultural change. Globalization, digitalization and the COVID-19 pandemic have fundamentally changed labor markets and core processes of work. Against the widely circulated claim that future work will be largely automated, certain occupational sectors have proven indispensable – requiring on-site, human presence. Simultaneously, the scale and speed of demographic aging in industrialized countries and resulting labor shortages are striking.

The growing dependence on foreign labor to fill workforce gaps reflects prominent social currents worldwide: increased intake of temporary migrants, gradually restrictive migration regimes that constrain foreigners' rights to stay long-term, and – as a consequence – a concerning divide between those admitted permanently and those who are not. TEMP MIGRATION uses the lens of place-making and belonging in increasingly diverse socio-culturally spaces to carve out the subjectivities emerging among temporarily accepted labor migrants. We will analyze how states and employers design and produce temporariness and how this influences people’s rationales and actions in the context of their lives and experiences as temporary migrants. By capturing how time and temporariness shape orientations towards life in a foreign country the project seeks to reveal how these orientations result in practices that affect the receiving societies.

RQ 1

How does "being temporary" affect migrants' strategies and social practices in their country of residence, including investments in professional and social networks, in language acquisition, family formation, household decisions, and future planning?

RQ2

How do rationales regarding the place of living differ by industry and the "worth" migrants are accorded in a migratory regime of "skills" – exemplified by high-wage technology workers, (semi-)skilled health care workers, and low-wage construction workers – and differentiated by gender and race?

We use mixed qualitative methods to propose an integrative perspective on temporary labor migration on a global scale. Our aims are to advance theory building through an ethnographically-informed, qualitative study of temporary migrant-employing companies, migrant employees, and stakeholders to examine migrants' subjectivities while recognizing their reception by society and employers.