First Meeting
Circular Migration Patterns in Southern and Central Eastern Europe:
Challenges and Opportunities for Migrants and Policy Makers
The first meeting of METOIKOS took place in Florence on 29-30 April 2010 hosted by the RSCAS, at the seminar room of Villa Malafrasca. The meeting brought together the METOIKOS team composed by Anna Triandafyllidou, Philippe Fargues, Eda Gemi, Camilla Devitt and Piotr Plewa from the EUI, Carmen Gonzalez Enriquez and Miquel Reynes Ramon from the Real Instituto Elcano, Nick Mai from the London Metropolitan University, Krystyna Iglicka and Katarzyna Gmaj from the Centre for International Relations in Warsaw. Ayse Caglar joined the meeting via Skype for most of the day on 29 April from the Max Planck Institute in Gothingen as she was unable to travel due to the volcanic ash cloud disruptions in air traffic.
METOIKOS was the first opportunity to present the specific experiences of each pair of countries on circular migration and to discuss critically the concept of circular migration as developed in European Commission documents (planned, legal), as discussed in the scholarly literature (repeated movements of varied duration, for the purpose of employment), and as found in real life (circularity involving both legal movement stemming from business or work opportunities, irregular movement for work or for family reasons, and regulated seasonal or temporary movement with or without visas which answers to the needs of both migrants and employers).
The Overall the discussion and background reports presented at the meeting showed that circular migration is an elusive concept because it covers very different type of phenomena. The question remains therefore open (and will be tackled through the extensive fieldwork now undertaken by the METOIKOS research teams) whether circular migration involves something distinct from temporary, seasonal migration, and whether it can be regulated by bilateral schemes and incentives provided by destination to origin countries with regard to re-integration measures aimed at the circular migrants when they are back home.
Presentations:
Programme