Revisiting migrant networks: migrants and their descendants in labour markets

Man” of Petersburg, people with a craving for the contrasts and contradictions of the city and a deep suspicion of utopian dreams. As Simone makes clear, those who comprise the shifting, restless, unintentional terrains of the surrounds are actually the urban majority; those people—migrants, casual workers, drifters, the poor—who pass time in the hidden interstices but are also, at the same time, over exposed to the exploitation, vulnerability and cruelty of the city. Via the notion of “the surrounds”, the book is an attempt to explore the “viability of possible outsides” (15) to captivity, capitalist development and forced mobility. Infrastructure is central to this issue of viability since the surrounds always accompany, exist alongside (outside of) and improvise upon the structures provided by legitimized flows of energy, information and people. It is here that Dostoevsky’s Underground Man meets Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, a line from which seems particularly appropriate here: “Since you never recognise me even when in closest contact with me, and since, no doubt, you’ll hardly believe that I exist, it won’t matter if you know that I tapped a power line leading into the building and ran it into my hole in the ground”. As Simone puts it, “concentration becomes the possibility of dispersal” (12). The surrounds refer therefore to the forms and senses of urban centrality (and possibility) that emerge from dispersal. The Surrounds is a continuation of Simone’s epic, yet also understated project of re-configuring urban studies from the perspectives and experiences of the multitude who reside or pass through some of the largest yet most understudied cities on the planet. Simone’s willingness to learn from those who are afforded little respite from the relentless requirement for innovation, reinvention and mental and physical agility in order to survive never falters; people who, Simone recognizes more than most, are central to understanding urbanization in the twenty first century.

The significance of personal relationships for migrants' integration and labour market outcomes has a long lineage in the social sciences. For migrants facing a foreign labour market, personal contacts can be crucial: they provide both direct and indirect paths to employment, through job offers, context-specific information, and reputation mechanisms. Personal relationships or 'ties' are also the constitutive elements of migrant networks, the rich social fabric in which migrants are embedded. Migrant networks persist over time, as firstand second-generation migrants are born in complex webs of kinship, friendship, and shared migration background. On top of that, in the migration literature, personal networks are usually investigated under an ethnic lens, with a clear distinction between ties towards coethnics, ties towards other, non-coethnic migrants, and ties towards the native population. Questions about the importance of intra-ethnic and interethnic relationships for migrants and their descendants are hence paramount.
The edited collection Revisiting Migrant Networks presents a range of papers addressing such questions in the context of European labour markets. The volume originates from the IMISCOE standing committee 'Social Inequality and Education' and from the 2018 and 2019 IMISCOE conferences, and includes contributions from both migration and social network scholars. In addition to a substantive introduction and conclusion, the collection is organised in nine chapters, where authors employ different methodologies to analyse empirical case studies from seven European countries: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.
One of the central objectives of the book is to provide an intellectual framework for researchers interested in studying integration and migration (both international and internal) from a social network perspective. By this measure, Revisiting Migrant Networks must be judged a success. Although references to social networks have become increasingly common in the study of human movement, the book convincingly suggests that network approaches are still underutilised in the migration literature. In conjunction to that, the contributions effectively emphasise the conceptual and methodological advantages offered by social network analysis (SNA).
The introduction to the volume represents a particularly valuable resource, as the editors probe into the existing literature on migration networks and labour market integration. Here, SNA is used to assess the role of migrants' personal networks and to define what constitutes a 'tie'. By relying on the social network toolbox, the book editors challenge the binary notion that ties towards natives should be assumed to be weak and hence more useful for labour market integration, while those towards other migrants and coethnics should be strong and less resourceful. Instead, the collection proposes more fine-grained conceptualisations, beyond the ethnic lens, in 'a continuum of dynamic relationships ranging from strong to weak with many shades in between' (20).
Such fine-grained conceptualisations are then applied and put to a test in the empirical chapters of the book. Among these, Louise Ryan's chapter draws from decades of qualitative research in the UK to illustrate how migrants rely on their personal networks and use combinations of strong and weak, intra-and interethnic ties to achieve successful labour market integration: 'a permanent, full time job, with pay and conditions commensurate with qualifications' (62). The author first describes the varying characteristics of migrants' personal networks, stressing how they might change over time. Then, she recounts the experiences of high-skilled migrant workers in London who relied on pre-existing, strong ties to find and secure employment, highlighting how, depending on the specific case, such ties were either inter-or intra-ethnic. Sara Rezai and Elif Keskiner's inquiry on the social mobility of firstand secondgeneration Turkish migrants in the Netherlands echoes Ryan's findings. In their chapter, the authors stress the importance, for professionals with a migration background, of establishing meaningful relationships with natives. Rezai and Keskiner find that, in high-level social environments, natives often take on mentorship roles, where they supply migrants with invaluable advice and topical know-how. Conversely, the 'counter-stratification' framework developed by Alireza Behtoui in the context of Sweden states that, in highly segregated settings, intra-ethnic social and cultural capital might act as a labour market buffer, thereby protecting migrants from the negative effects of social stratification and discrimination. Başak Bilecen's contribution provides further nuance to the nature and resourcefulness of interpersonal ties through the use of sociograms, which map and code migrants' personal ties. Sociograms represent another valuable contribution of SNA to the study of migrant integration, as they allow researchers to visualise entire networks and to assess migrants' social embeddedness and labour incorporation.
The empirical chapters successfully showcase the importance of rejecting a pure dichotomy between 'strong intra-ethnic' and 'weak inter-ethnic' ties, in favour of a network perspective on migrants' labour market outcomes. However, the book's expressed ambitions are somewhat stunted by the limited geographical coverage, which might leave the reader wondering about the adequacy and potential of network approaches in different contexts. As it often occurs in edited volumes, there is also variation across the papers in terms of the analytical depth with which migration experiences are investigated and presented.
Notwithstanding these minor weaknesses, Revisiting Migrant Networks is a significant and timely accomplishment. First, it offers a nuanced conceptualisation of interpersonal ties and presents several empirical accounts of the ways in which such ties play a role in shaping migrants' labour market outcomes. Second, it represents a unique and insightful introduction to the application of SNA to the study of migration and integration, which will be especially useful for those seeking to incorporate this new perspective to migration studies. Finally, by illustrating the strength and adaptability of SNA, the collection has the potential to open several promising avenues for future research.