Departament de Ciències Polítiques i Socials
Documents de recerca, en accés obert, com ara working papers, informes de recerca, memòries tècniques, etc., del Departament de Ciències Polítiques i Socials de la UPF.
URI permanent per a aquesta comunitat http://hdl.handle.net/10230/7
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Item type: Item , Offshore enrolment in higher education and migration: some evidence from Australia(2014-03) Levatino, AntoninaThis paper presents empirical evidence on the relationship between enrolment in transnational higher education (TNE) and subsequent skilled migration to the country that provided the educational services. Based on macro-level panel data, the analysis shows a close link between offshore enrolment in Australian higher education and subsequent skilled migration to Australia, suggesting that countries may successful use the provision of higher education outside their borders to enlarge skilled migrant recruitment. Although further research on the issue is needed, this paper represents the first step in the exploration of an issue of particular interest for both developed and developing countries, constituting an original contribution to the current debate on skilled migration, student mobility, and new trends in the higher education sector.Item type: Item , Detaining asylum seekers at the borders: De jure and De facto practices under the new migration pact(2025-07) Paul, Noa; Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Departament de Ciències Polítiques i SocialsThis paper examines the EU’s New Pact for Migration and Asylum, addressing concerns about its potential to exacerbate human suffering at EU borders through increased detention. It critically analyzes the Pact’s pre-entry border procedures, focusing on the legal framework for detaining asylum seekers and the provisions’ impact on the right to liberty. To understand whether the procedures risk proliferating unlawful de facto detention, the paper assesses both the new legislation as well as current practices of de facto detention under the so-called hotspot approach on the Greek island of Samos, which served as a blueprint for the Pact. The findings reveal that the new procedures significantly expand the legal and practical possibilities for detaining asylum seekers during screening, asylum border, and return border procedures, risking to render the detention of asylum seekers at the external border the default. Thereby, the provisions contravene the right to liberty enshrined in human rights law in manifold ways. Moreover, by expanding the possibilities for EU countries to impose mobility restrictions, the procedures severely exacerbate the risk for unlawful de facto detention, as the practice of mobility restrictions in places like Samos shows. Rather than representing a shift in EU migratory policies, the paper demonstrates how the Pact replicates and extends existing practices of (unlawfully) detaining asylum seekers under the hotspot approach. The paper argues that these provisions enhance detention capacities to restrict asylum seekers’ mobility and facilitate deportations, aligning predominantly with the Northern EU states’ priorities to curb ‘secondary’ migration.Item type: Item , Narrating crises of Europe’s southernmost borderscapes: the case of Melilla and Lampedusa(2025-06) Marino, AnnaThis paper presents the qualitative content analysis of claims in mainstream media made around crises related to immigration at specific borderscapes of the European Union located in two Southern European Member States, namely Italy and Spain. The two selected border crisis cases are the tragic shipwreck of Lampedusa, which occurred on the 3rd of October 2013, and the Melilla massacre, which occurred on the 24th of June 2022. I argue that both events were pivotal in shaping the view (local, national and international) on these borders given their broader mediatic reach, which gave these borderlands unprecedented attention, despite being only two of the numerous tragedies that took place on the Central and Western Mediterranean migratory routes since the early 2000s. The aim of the analysis is thus to compare claims made in the media around the mentioned events on these specific borderscapes, peculiar areas shaped by transnational flows that have existed and developed beyond the constructed idea of the national state and its clear-cut borders. Indeed, I argue that what happens on these borderscapes and its consequential media representation profoundly shapes the way we think about these territories, migration flows, and migrants at the national and European levels. The aim is thus to detect potential similarities and differences in how these events are narrated through claims made in the media. These claims and their comparative analysis give us an idea of how these events and these territories are perceived in the two member states and then translated at the European level.Item type: Item , What role will refugee labour mobility play in the future of safe and legal pathways?: a case study of the Spanish experience(2025-04) Rodes Durán, Clara; Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Departament de Ciències Polítiques i SocialsThe 2018 Global Compact on Refugees acknowledged the restricted nature of resettlement and the need “to expand its base” by diversifying labour migration opportunities for refugees. Spain’s recent labour mobility project under its National Resettlement Plan offers a case study in this approach, making a shift in legal pathways for refugees. However, the relevance of refugee labour pathways and their normative implications has mainly been ignored. To address the research gap, this article aims to articulate the need for complementary pathways, contribute to theories of refugee labour mobility, and assess whether refugee labour mobility can and should be used as a tool to access territory, with a focus on the Spanish context. To this end, the analysis involves analysing multi-sited policy documents and conducting semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in the field of safe and legal pathways. The analysis demonstrated that, while refugee labour pathways have some potential to expand admission for displaced talent, the line between addition and substitution risks diluting long-term refugee protection. Conditioning admission on labour market utility excludes many in need of international protection and introducing the logic of cost-effectiveness undermines the solidarity inherent in the right to seek asylum, risking the commodification of the international protection system.Item type: Item , Contested collective memories of migrations in Catalonia(Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Departament de Ciències Polítiques i Socials, 2025) Zapata Barrero, Ricard; Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Departament de Ciències Polítiques i SocialsThis prospective study examines the role of the M-Factor (Migration Factor) in the formation of a country’s collective memory. Despite the seminal contributions of memory studies to the field of identity formation, the M-Factor in nations’ historical heritage is particularly under-researched. The relationship between national identity and the collective memory of migration, and vice versa, represents a fertile area of enquiry into the formation of contested collective memories. By framing the analysis on the case study of Catalonia, a territorial community in Spain with national claims, which lacks a structured state apparatus and where 73% of the population is result of migrations in the 20th and 21st centuries, this paper provides an illustrative case study of a contested collective memories. In Catalonia there is a discrepancy between the historical reality of migration and its social and political acknowledgment. This apparent paradox presents a compelling opportunity for research that seeks to bridge the fields of collective memory studies and migration studies. The data was collected from existing documents and a sample of 18 semi-structured interviews with a variety of profiles at the meso level, allowing us to saturate the information. The subsequent analysis traversed two domains: diagnosis (the contested collective memories of migration) and normative considerations regarding the potential of a future memory politics. This research provides a basis for a future political theory that addresses intergenerational relations and shared intercultural experiences to ground an inclusive collective memory of migrations.