Comparativo

The profound trauma associated with rape and sexual violence in conflict has been extensively explored within existing scholarship. The fact that many survivors exhibit remarkable post-trauma resilience, however, remains critically under-investigated. CSRS will address this fundamental gap by undertaking a paradigm-shifting empirical study of the underlying conditions for resilience. It will then use this data to pioneer a new, survivor-centred model of transitional justice – the process of redressing the legacy of massive human rights abuses. Using the three comparative case studies of Bosnia-Hercegovina (BiH), the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Colombia, and adopting a social-ecological approach that emphasizes the interactions between individuals and their environments, CSRS consists of two inter-linked parts. The first part will involve extensive fieldwork, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, to generate a rich cross-cultural dataset that identifies and explains the key micro, meso and macro factors that foster resilience in survivors of war rape and sexual violence. The second part of CSRS will use this dataset to build an innovative, bottom-up model of transitional justice that prioritizes the long-term needs of survivors, reflecting the project’s hypothesis that a positive correlation exists between fulfilment of needs and resilience. This model will be developed with the input of survivors in BiH, the DRC and Colombia and in consultation with transitional justice scholars and practitioners. CSRS aims to transform transitional justice theory and practice. The project outputs will therefore include both academic publications and policy reports to communicate the model to the governments of the case study countries, the United Nations and a wider international audience with the overall aim of making empowerment and resilience part of a new transitional justice agenda.

The proposed research has two overarching objectives. First, it aims to examine whether it is possible and appropriate to extend a novel way of measuring social class recently devised for the United Kingdom to other post-industrial nations for the purposes of cross-national comparative research. If it is, the project will begin to explore, through secondary and primary analysis of large-scale survey data, the different shapes and trajectories of the class structures – or ‘social spaces’ – of various nation states. This will involve examination of which classes and sub-classes predominate and which have emerged or declined, as well as the different gender and ethnic/nationality constitutions of the classes and the distinct effects these differences have for understanding cultural and political struggles and, ultimately, the distribution of power or ‘recognition’ in each country. Second, the project aims to explore, through both statistical analysis and qualitative interviews, how social class is actually lived, experienced and balanced against other pressures and sources of recognition in everyday life, with a focus on three specific nations: the United States, Germany and Sweden. Of particular interest in this respect is the balancing of desire for recognition through money and education – the two cornerstones of social class in post-industrial capitalist societies – and their associated lifestyles with desires for recognition and love within the family. The comparative analysis included in both research aims will be guided by the hypothesis that national differences depend on the nature of the welfare regime in operation, especially as it relates to the nature and extent of workforce feminisation, though the research will also be alive to the possibility of alternative – or no significant – sources of contrast.

The educational achievement of students from working-class ethnic minority or immigrant back-grounds is vitally important for their integration into the labor market and society. We know from research that their disadvantaged family back-ground, such as low parental education and income, significantly influences these students’ academic achievement. However, as students increasingly spend most of their time in school contexts, school has also become one of the key factors for under-standing educational performance. In this context, interactions of specific school regulations, practices, and structures with the skills, values, and cultures of students can greatly contribute to the development of educational policies for reforming schools in a way that would increase the educational achieve-ment of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This study conceptualizes school-related factors as institutional habitus and seeks to understand how schools’ institutional habitus accommodate students from different ethnic and minority back-grounds for making empirical contributions to the development of inclusive and intercultural school structures. This report is based on a comparative study that investigates the components of the institutional habitus of two different schools, one in Turkey and one in Germany, and how they influence the educa-tional performance of children from working-class Kurdish ethnic minority backgrounds in Turkey and working-class Turkish immigrant backgrounds in Germany. This exploratory, qualitative study included interviews with teachers, students, school principals, and experts in the field of education, as well as participatory observations in the classroom and beyond.

This research project aims to understand the organizational and cognitive consequences of the election of specific national political representatives by citizens living abroad. The proposal is based on a comparative analysis of two expatriate populations with such rights, Italians and French, in two host countries, Belgium and Canada. The focus of the research is the motivations, representations and strategies of politically active emigrants in branches of home political parties abroad. The research will be done through an original multi-methods research design – computer-assisted discourse analysis, qualitative comparative analysis and quantitative questionnaire analysis – to gather rich and sociologically relevant data. The combination of CAQDAS techniques with QCA, as a comparative tool of analysis, will produce robust results and provide good grounds for tentative generalization beyond the considered case studies. The project will originally contribute to the theoretical advancement of many research fields. It will develop the theory of political parties, since the knowledge is weak and fragmentary concerning the role and functioning of political parties abroad, and almost inexistent in non-contentious contexts. The project will also advance the theory of transnational politics, since it will focus on two dimensions underdeveloped in the existing literature: the involvement of emigrants in home politics and the analysis of banal transnational politics. The project will finally contribute to the theory of national identity and citizenship since it will question the reconfiguration of established nation states that might result from giving citizenship rights and representation to nationals living abroad. In a policy perspective the research responds to recurring demands to further investigate the governance of migration as well as the implications of multilevel citizenship in a context of growing mobility of EU citizens from, to and within the EU.

The Swiss Federal Office for Migration (BFM) has commissioned the ICMPD to undertake a comparative study of asylum procedures at seven European airports - Zürich, Brussels, Frankfurt a.M., London-Heathrow, Vienna, Paris-Roissy and Schiphol. Objectives • To provide an overview of the legal and practical framework and methods applied in the selected airports • To enable the BMF to put the Swiss policies into a European perspective • To design better and more rational airport asylum procedures Outcomes Comparative analysis of: • Asylum procedure at the airport • Accommodation of asylum seekers during the procedure in the transit zone • Deportation and securing The study includes elements of field research (qualitative interviews with governmental, non-governmental and international organisations involved as well as visitation of the respective premises at the airport) and desk research (examination of legal texts, literature and relevant statistics).

Know Reset aimed at conducting a systematic inventory of resettlement frameworks and practices in the EU, providing a comparative analysis and assessment of resettlement in the Member States, evaluating their resettlement capacity while addressing policy recommendations to the EU and its Member States in order to enhance cooperation and improve resettlement activities. To better understand Member States’ decision-making and better explore the potential for developing resettlement capacity in the EU, the Project has covered the 27 EU Member States whatever the nature and degree of their involvement in refugee resettlement. Unique field research has also been conducted in three major countries of first asylum (Kenya, Pakistan, Tunisia) by external experts hired for the Project, who dedicated their observation and analysis on EU Member States resettlement practices in the pre-departure phase. The Final Report compiles various deliverables of the Know Reset Project: a series of tables and graphs for quantitative and qualitative country comparison, 27 "Resettlement Country Profiles", 3 Country of First Asylum Reports and 2 EU Comparative Reports.

'Technological advancements in reproductive medicine have introduced the new concept of 'FREEZING'. Nowadays, healthy women are given the possibility to cryopreserve their oocytes in order to prolong their fertility, a procedure known as 'social egg freezing'. There is an ongoing bioethical academic and public debate on the social and ethical implications of this practice. The here proposed socio-empirical research is interested in extending our understanding of the concept of 'freezing' in broader contexts, while analyzing it through the prism of 'sociology of time'. Egg freezing constitutes an extremely fascinating paradigm for studying concepts of time, timing, planning and its social-technological manipulation related to modern life science. In line with the IF work program's focus on creativity, innovation and diversity, this research aims to examine the interplay of culture and bioethics in an interdisciplinary and empirical manner, focusing on and comparing experts' and lay positions and using a cross-cultural German-Israeli comparative research framework. This cross-cultural comparison is especially interesting since the German regulatory and legal framework regarding new reproductive technologies is rather restrictive, while the Israeli regulation has been identified as extremely permissive. Using qualitative in depth interviews with relevant experts as well as users of social egg freeing, this research aims at (a) In-depth empirical analysis of time in the context of reproductive medicine; (b) A cross sectional analysis of social egg freezing by comparing two national contexts as well as experts and ordinary (lay) ethics; and (c) Theorization of the time dimension for the relationship of reproduction, labor and gender. Thus, this innovative research is expected to enhance the researcher academic competence and the transfer of new knowledge.'

Research Questions Where do Chinese migrant entrepreneurs come from and why do they migrate? Where do they settle, and how do they organize their economic and social activities? How are they perceived by local and migrant African entrepreneurs in their host country? Does this perception correspond to the discourse of cooperation propagated by the Chinese and African governments? How does the Chinese presence influence the development of African host societies? Contribution to International Research This comparative study on the Chinese migration into two West African countries explores the economic and political processes triggered by the Chinese migration. It analyses the interactions of the local population with the Chinese migrant entrepreneurs as well as the former’s innovative reactions toward the strategies and practices of the latter. The combination of the different regional research capacities at the GIGA within one research team allows us to address this multidimensional research problem with adequate regional and multidisciplinary competences and research strategies. Research Design and Methods Our research field is characterized by high degrees of informality, especially regarding migratory paths, residence status, economic activities, social organization and the political action of all actors involved. In view of this, existing quantitative data on the micro- and meso-levels could not be taken as a reliable basis for our analyses. Moreover, the economic interests that characterize our field had the effect of reduced acceptance on the part of our informants of standardized instruments such as questionnaires. For these reasons, our research concentrates on coordinated qualitative comparative case studies within and across Ghana and Senegal in order to produce reliable research findings. In accordance with our research questions, qualitative data collection was conducted on a micro-level, drawing on the method of actor-centred participant observation and its adaptations in narrative interviews. Additional semi-structured interviews were conducted to ensure comparability across cases. In addition, visual ethnographic methods were applied (photo essays, network-mapping) as a basis for joint interpretation in the overarching research context. Preliminary Results We had assumed that networks formed the dominant model of social organization for both the African and the Chinese actors and groups we studied, and that networks were the key factors to understanding the interaction between these two groups. In the field, however, we were unable to establish any empirical evidence that the Chinese individual economic sojourners (or small groups forming family-owned businesses), whose business models tend to be highly speculative, are engaging in any form of meaningful social and economic interaction with their African counterparts beyond primarily functional and opportunistic buyer–seller or employer–employee relationships. African traders also did not reveal any stronger motivation to open their networks to their Chinese counterparts. Based on our observations, we conclude that a wide range of African actors engages in innovative practices not through social exchange and mutually beneficial cooperation with the Chinese newcomers but by creatively appropriating the unintended opportunities that Chinese actors provide in the local African settings through their distinct social and economic practices. However, the significations that are inscribed into the diverse Chinese social and economic practices and the stimuli they represent are contested between diverse African actors, since their social and economic positioning, their interests and interpretations, and their capacities for adaptation differ greatly. The Chinese business strategy of large-scale wholesale trading in combination with the low cost of the commodities they sell has facilitated the engagement of larger social strata with limited financial means in trading activities. These changes in market access, not least, have had a profound impact on Senegalese and Ghanaian market orders. Not surprisingly, many of the new traders whose access to this profession has directly benefited from the Chinese presence also closely observe the latter’s business strategies. All interviewed Chinese traders, for instance, unanimously employed the logic of high turnovers at small profit rates, aspiring to maximize incomes through sheer volume. Once the African traders have realized that trading in Chinese goods provides solid opportunities for capital accumulation and growth, they have turned their gaze toward China as source for their commodities.

Building on two pilot studies conducted in 2010, the proposed research will explore the gender dimensions of anti-immigration social movements in contemporary Europe. This will be done through a comparative analysis of activism in two populist radical right parties: an ethnographic and documentary study of activism in the social and cultural associations linked to the Northern League party (NL) in Italy and to the National Front party (NF) in France. During the applicant’s earlier research on the NL, it became clear that the themes of women’s rights and gender equality are increasingly mobilised in instrumental ways by this party, seeking to attract women’s votes. This corresponds to a recent radicalisation of the NL’s discourse, which in the past decade has increasingly targeted migrants coming from Muslim countries: in this discourse, immigration is associated with sexual violence and gender conservatism. The research will mobilise these earlier studies while expanding their focus through a comparative perspective. In examining current developments in the ideology and politics of the NL and the NF, and their attempt to modernise their public image, the proposed comparative research will contribute to ongoing theoretical debates about the articulation of racism and gender as well as about the role played by gender in collective action. The proposed research is ground-breaking in two ways. First, only a minority of ethnographic studies exist which focus on activism in radical right organisations, as sociologists have tended to focus on left-wing social movements. More specifically, very few studies have investigated the role played by women in radical right social movements. Second, the few existing qualitative studies of women’s activism in these organisations fail to compare systematically the practices women and men. As opposed to these existing studies, the proposed research will examine both women’s and men’s involvement in these organisations.

The urban treatment of human trafficking as “public problem” represents an emblematic policy case to explore the controversies of the new “European spatial politics of social protection”. Cities emerge as spaces of “unbounding” by which practices of internationalization of welfare delegitimize national “law enforcement” boundaries. “Policy entrepreneurs” – governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, faith organizations, unions, etc - working against human trafficking within the framework of “internationalization”, challenge conventional ways by which we are accostumed to think about the “public” and democracy. The comparison between two urban initiatives in USA And EU intends to highlight the times, the contents and the modalities by which coalitions of “policy entrepreneurs” integrate welfare and security policies against human trafficking and make different trade-off between standardization and innovation emerge. Relevance of the project (1) To enrich the debate on the formation of a European social solidarity model overcoming the relationship citizenship/sovereignty/territorialiy; (2) to improve policymaking and urban research. Objectives (1) to detect intersectoral effects of targeted actions on vulnerable groups and the different forms of enactment of actors and resources by which the problem is treated as “local”; (2) to define and transfer integrated knowledge frameworks on the regional effects of the internationalisation of welfare, and thereby, on the changing nature of the “public” of social policy; (c) to develop a frontier-research profile capable of encouraging innovation and regional cooperation as well as producing innovative “transdisciplinary” arrays of knowledge on “cities” and “territories”, beyond conventional approaches based on the dualism urban(place)/social (people). Research methodology Comparative case study; Ethnography, Direct Participant Observation and complementary qualitative tools

In order to manage the long-term challenges of global migration, Europe must create effective and coherent policies for engaging with countries of origin and transit. Effectiveness and cohesion depend on the real-world mechanisms at work: How do the root causes of migration operate? What do prospective migrants see as alternatives to migration? How do policy measures interact with other factors in shaping migration outcomes? Because the quality of policies is so intimately connected with the actual development-related causes and consequences of migration, MIGNEX addresses the full scope of the topic as described in the Work Programme. The project’s overall objective is to contribute to more effective and coherent migration management through evidence-based understanding of the linkages between development and migration. Steps toward this objective comprise extensive research in ten strategically relevant countries of origin and transit, including Afghanistan, Guinea, Somalia, Nigeria and Turkey. The project team will conduct a survey with a target sample of 12,500 individuals, in addition to qualitative data collection and policy analysis. Correctly identifying two-way causal mechanisms between migration and development is imperative but very difficult. The project design incorporates two innovative responses to this challenge. First, it follows a principle of disaggregation, which, among other things, entails specific attention to local-level mechanisms. Second, the analysis combines conventional methods, such as multivariate regression, with Qualitative Comparative Analysis, which is a technique that allows for identifying complex causal relationship on the basis of in-depth case studies. In the analysis of policy coherence, the consortium will focus on identifying the causes of incoherence. The proposal clearly specifies three primary expected impacts and sets out an ambitious and professional strategy for impact maximization.

This research addresses the question why the position of Roma in Europe keeps deteriorating despite all the (inter)national efforts put into its improvement. Roma persist as the main targets of ethnic discrimination and are faced by severe socio-economic inequalities throughout Europe. This project recognizes the urgent need to readdress the position of Roma at the times, when most of the programmes for their integration are nearing its conclusion (such as the Decade for Roma Inclusion 2005-2015) and when their intra-European mobility is being particularly problematized. By employing interdisciplinary quantitative and qualitative methodology and theoretical conceptualizations from the perspective of citizenship studies, this project aims to offer a novel insight on the position of Roma in Europe. The project investigates different dimensions of citizenship (rights, dimensions, belonging) in order to show that Roma are not an exception or a minority that simply ‘does not fit’ and is hence excluded from society. I seek to develop a new theoretical perspective to support the above claim: I argue that there are certain institutional mechanisms, that I call as invisible edges of citizenship involved in the production of the marginalization of Romani minorities in all European states where they reside either as citizens or migrants. Instead of only offering selected case studies, this research aims to offer a cross-country comparative analysis of citizenship and minority acts as well as Roma National Strategies and the experience of Romani individuals themselves with the invisible edges of citizenship. The results of this research will be relevant both for academics as well as policy makers: I will prepare a cross-country database on approaches to minority protection and major challenges connected to the position of Roma, 2 journal articles and a book manuscript.

This research explores the impact of property regimes on experiences of citizenship across five democratic countries: Greece, The Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Property rights are a foundational element of democracy, but the right to private property exists in tension with values of equality and a right to shelter. An investigation of property is urgent given the recent normalisation of economic models that have resulted in millions of evictions every year. Through an ethnographic study of eviction this research provides a comparative analysis of the benefits and limitations of contemporary property regimes for democratic citizenship. A property regime is defined as the combination of moral discourses about real landed property with the regulatory policies and market mechanisms that shape the use, sale and purchase of property. The selected countries represent a diverse set of property regimes, but all five are experiencing a housing and eviction crisis that has created new geographies of disadvantage, exacerbated inequalities of race, gender, age and income, and led to social unrest. Building on the PI's previous research into citizen-driven democratic innovation, this research critically examines the concept of property through a novel methodology dubbed 'conflictive context construction' that employs a qualitative approach centred on moments of conflict resulting from the use, sale or purchase of specific properties to answer: how do property regimes shape people's experience of citizenship and what can this tell us about the role of property in contemporary models of democratic governance? The high gain of this research lies in the opportunity to rethink the role of property within democracy based on extensive empirical data about how moral assumptions combine with particular ways of regulating and marketing property to exacerbate, alleviate or create inequalities within contemporary experiences of democratic citizenship.

Scholars of international migration pay increasing attention to localities. As a result, we know much about cities being more innovative and efficient in their local immigrant integration policies than central governments. However, less is known about cities’ response to the needs of their most marginalized immigrant populations struggling with poverty, and about the risks related to decentralising policies to the local levels (e.g. creating unequal opportunities). Although migrants in Europe and in the U.S. statistically are more active on the labour market than nationals, they are twice more often affected by poverty, stay longer in poverty, fall back into it more often, face greater barriers to and within employment, and yet, they underutilize welfare services which are available to them. Using a case of Polish immigrants in three EU (London, Berlin, Stockholm) and one U.S. (New York City) cities, LocMig research project aims to examine the response of local welfare system (the system of provisions of welfare resources by local actors) to migrant urban poverty. LocMig will develop a novel theory explaining the role of macro-, mezo- and micro-level factors in shaping various responses to migrant poverty. Polish immigrants will be a focus of this study, as they are the second-largest group among intra-EU migrants (1.1. million in 2016), and the third-largest among European migrants in the U.S. (nearly 425,000 in 2018). A massive interest has been dedicated to Polish immigration particularly post-2004, however, only a handful of studies focus on the less successful stories of Polish immigrants struggling with poverty. A few studies describe Poles experiencing homelessness in London, Oslo and Brussel. A comparative understanding of various poverty experiences and use of services within various local welfare systems is missing. The four cities are selected to the study, as they are all top migrant destinations, operate within different national and local welfare regimes, have different national-level effectiveness in reducing migrant poverty, and are among the top destinations for Polish immigrants. LocMig project will answer three specific research questions: Question 1: For Polish immigrants living in cities and experiencing poverty and for direct service providers who work with them, how does reducing poverty look within different LWSs? Question 2: How do different responses of LWSs enable or impede reducing poverty? Question 3: How do macro, meso and micro-level factors shape various types of LWSs responses to migrant poverty? Research methodology: In order to answer these questions, we propose to conduct a comparative-case study (CCS, Yin, 2017) with qualitative longitudinal research component (Neale, 2019; Derrington, 2019) and based on so called community collaborative approach (McKay, Bell, Blake, 2010). CCS will allow to compare cases using a high level of scientific rigour. The longitudinal research will allow to maximize opportunities for understanding how overcoming poverty occurs (or is hindered) in “real-time” as participants enter local welfare systems. Finally, the community collaborative approach involves key stakeholders in the research process and that way, the research design and process is culturally and contextually relevant to the participating communities. The data collection process will include 72 interviews with Polish migrants and native-born who experienced poverty, and with direct service providers; Longitudinal research will be based on 48 interviews and 4 shadowing observations conducted in three waves of interviews with LWS migrant participants and persons directly providing services. Additionally, 8 expert interviews will be conducted, two in each city. Interviewed immigrants will also fill a demographic and social network survey. The project will also use secondary data collected in each city: national and city-level legislation related to the local welfare system, principal texts produced by non-state actors involved in the local welfare systems, and qualitative and quantitative indicators of local welfare system response to migrant poverty (e.g. multilingual provision of various welfare programs in cities, access to services for undocumented migrants etc.). The data analysis process will combine elements of grounded theory approach, deductive qualitative analysis, and inductive thematic analysis; and social network analysis. Dedoose and SPSS software will support data analysis process. LocMig contributes to the field of sociology of international migration and social welfare studies by addressing the following gaps existed in these fields: limited knowledge on migrants utilizing local welfare systems; successful LWSs responses to migrant poverty; Polish immigrants struggling with poverty and accessing welfare systems in comparative contexts. Scientific impact of the project will be achieved by means of advancement of state-of-the-art, preparing and submitting articles to peer-reviewed international journals, preparation of a book manuscript, participation in international conferences, presenting and consulting the research during public lectures, and popularizing project findings on social and professional media.

Scholars of international migration pay increasing attention to localities. As a result, we know much about cities being more innovative and efficient in their local immigrant integration policies than central governments. However, less is known about cities’ response to the needs of their most marginalized immigrant populations struggling with poverty, and about the risks related to decentralising policies to the local levels (e.g. creating unequal opportunities). Although migrants in Europe and in the U.S. statistically are more active on the labour market than nationals, they are twice more often affected by poverty, stay longer in poverty, fall back into it more often, face greater barriers to and within employment, and yet, they underutilize welfare services which are available to them. Using a case of Polish immigrants in three EU (London, Berlin, Stockholm) and one U.S. (New York City) cities, LocMig research project aims to examine the response of local welfare system (the system of provisions of welfare resources by local actors) to migrant urban poverty. LocMig will develop a novel theory explaining the role of macro-, mezo- and micro-level factors in shaping various responses to migrant poverty. Polish immigrants will be a focus of this study, as they are the second-largest group among intra-EU migrants (1.1. million in 2016), and the third-largest among European migrants in the U.S. (nearly 425,000 in 2018). A massive interest has been dedicated to Polish immigration particularly post-2004, however, only a handful of studies focus on the less successful stories of Polish immigrants struggling with poverty. A few studies describe Poles experiencing homelessness in London, Oslo and Brussel. A comparative understanding of various poverty experiences and use of services within various local welfare systems is missing. The four cities are selected to the study, as they are all top migrant destinations, operate within different national and local welfare regimes, have different national-level effectiveness in reducing migrant poverty, and are among the top destinations for Polish immigrants. LocMig project will answer three specific research questions: Question 1: For Polish immigrants living in cities and experiencing poverty and for direct service providers who work with them, how does reducing poverty look within different LWSs? Question 2: How do different responses of LWSs enable or impede reducing poverty? Question 3: How do macro, meso and micro-level factors shape various types of LWSs responses to migrant poverty? Research methodology: In order to answer these questions, we propose to conduct a comparative-case study (CCS, Yin, 2017) with qualitative longitudinal research component (Neale, 2019; Derrington, 2019) and based on so called community collaborative approach (McKay, Bell, Blake, 2010). CCS will allow to compare cases using a high level of scientific rigour. The longitudinal research will allow to maximize opportunities for understanding how overcoming poverty occurs (or is hindered) in “real-time” as participants enter local welfare systems. Finally, the community collaborative approach involves key stakeholders in the research process and that way, the research design and process is culturally and contextually relevant to the participating communities. The data collection process will include 72 interviews with Polish migrants and native-born who experienced poverty, and with direct service providers; Longitudinal research will be based on 48 interviews and 4 shadowing observations conducted in three waves of interviews with LWS migrant participants and persons directly providing services. Additionally, 8 expert interviews will be conducted, two in each city. Interviewed immigrants will also fill a demographic and social network survey. The project will also use secondary data collected in each city: national and city-level legislation related to the local welfare system, principal texts produced by non-state actors involved in the local welfare systems, and qualitative and quantitative indicators of local welfare system response to migrant poverty (e.g. multilingual provision of various welfare programs in cities, access to services for undocumented migrants etc.). The data analysis process will combine elements of grounded theory approach, deductive qualitative analysis, and inductive thematic analysis; and social network analysis. Dedoose and SPSS software will support data analysis process. LocMig contributes to the field of sociology of international migration and social welfare studies by addressing the following gaps existed in these fields: limited knowledge on migrants utilizing local welfare systems; successful LWSs responses to migrant poverty; Polish immigrants struggling with poverty and accessing welfare systems in comparative contexts. Scientific impact of the project will be achieved by means of advancement of state-of-the-art, preparing and submitting articles to peer-reviewed international journals, preparation of a book manuscript, participation in international conferences, presenting and consulting the research during public lectures, and popularizing project findings on social and professional media.

Scholars of international migration pay increasing attention to localities. As a result, we know much about cities being more innovative and efficient in their local immigrant integration policies than central governments. However, less is known about cities’ response to the needs of their most marginalized immigrant populations struggling with poverty, and about the risks related to decentralising policies to the local levels (e.g. creating unequal opportunities). Although migrants in Europe and in the U.S. statistically are more active on the labour market than nationals, they are twice more often affected by poverty, stay longer in poverty, fall back into it more often, face greater barriers to and within employment, and yet, they underutilize welfare services which are available to them. Using a case of Polish immigrants in three EU (London, Berlin, Stockholm) and one U.S. (New York City) cities, LocMig research project aims to examine the response of local welfare system (the system of provisions of welfare resources by local actors) to migrant urban poverty. LocMig will develop a novel theory explaining the role of macro-, mezo- and micro-level factors in shaping various responses to migrant poverty. Polish immigrants will be a focus of this study, as they are the second-largest group among intra-EU migrants (1.1. million in 2016), and the third-largest among European migrants in the U.S. (nearly 425,000 in 2018). A massive interest has been dedicated to Polish immigration particularly post-2004, however, only a handful of studies focus on the less successful stories of Polish immigrants struggling with poverty. A few studies describe Poles experiencing homelessness in London, Oslo and Brussel. A comparative understanding of various poverty experiences and use of services within various local welfare systems is missing. The four cities are selected to the study, as they are all top migrant destinations, operate within different national and local welfare regimes, have different national-level effectiveness in reducing migrant poverty, and are among the top destinations for Polish immigrants. LocMig project will answer three specific research questions: Question 1: For Polish immigrants living in cities and experiencing poverty and for direct service providers who work with them, how does reducing poverty look within different LWSs? Question 2: How do different responses of LWSs enable or impede reducing poverty? Question 3: How do macro, meso and micro-level factors shape various types of LWSs responses to migrant poverty? Research methodology: In order to answer these questions, we propose to conduct a comparative-case study (CCS, Yin, 2017) with qualitative longitudinal research component (Neale, 2019; Derrington, 2019) and based on so called community collaborative approach (McKay, Bell, Blake, 2010). CCS will allow to compare cases using a high level of scientific rigour. The longitudinal research will allow to maximize opportunities for understanding how overcoming poverty occurs (or is hindered) in “real-time” as participants enter local welfare systems. Finally, the community collaborative approach involves key stakeholders in the research process and that way, the research design and process is culturally and contextually relevant to the participating communities. The data collection process will include 72 interviews with Polish migrants and native-born who experienced poverty, and with direct service providers; Longitudinal research will be based on 48 interviews and 4 shadowing observations conducted in three waves of interviews with LWS migrant participants and persons directly providing services. Additionally, 8 expert interviews will be conducted, two in each city. Interviewed immigrants will also fill a demographic and social network survey. The project will also use secondary data collected in each city: national and city-level legislation related to the local welfare system, principal texts produced by non-state actors involved in the local welfare systems, and qualitative and quantitative indicators of local welfare system response to migrant poverty (e.g. multilingual provision of various welfare programs in cities, access to services for undocumented migrants etc.). The data analysis process will combine elements of grounded theory approach, deductive qualitative analysis, and inductive thematic analysis; and social network analysis. Dedoose and SPSS software will support data analysis process. LocMig contributes to the field of sociology of international migration and social welfare studies by addressing the following gaps existed in these fields: limited knowledge on migrants utilizing local welfare systems; successful LWSs responses to migrant poverty; Polish immigrants struggling with poverty and accessing welfare systems in comparative contexts. Scientific impact of the project will be achieved by means of advancement of state-of-the-art, preparing and submitting articles to peer-reviewed international journals, preparation of a book manuscript, participation in international conferences, presenting and consulting the research during public lectures, and popularizing project findings on social and professional media.