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Karen O'Reilly

Loughborough University, Social Sciences, Faculty Member

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Karen is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Loughborough University and a freelance qualitative research trainer. She is presently working with Dr Michaela Benson, on the project BrExpats: freedom of movement, citizenship and Brexit in the lives of Britons resident in the European Union funded by the UK in a Changing EU. This innovative sociological study questions what Brexit means for Britons resident in other European Union member states. Working closely with Britons living across the EU27, employing diverse ‘live’ methods, it keeps a finger on the pulse of how they experience Brexit and its impacts on their lives as it unfolds. The project produces policy reports, podcasts and newsletters, as well as academic outputs. Karen is author of: Lifestyle Migration and Colonial Traces in Panama and Malaysia (2018)

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ANUSUYA MAHANADA

Sciences Po, Paris

Stockholm University

Lucinda Fonseca

Universidade de Lisboa

Danube University Krems

Uluslararası İlişkiler

Uluslararasi Iliskiler Konseyi

Dimitria Groutsis

Université libre de Bruxelles

Marco Martiniello

Université de Liège

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Papers by Karen O'Reilly

Migration theories: a critical overview

Routledge Handbook of Immigration and Refugee Studies. 2nd, Edn, 2023

Social scientists study international migration because it has the potential to change individual... more Social scientists study international migration because it has the potential to change individuals and societies in diverse and interesting ways, the potential to exploit, to enrich, to engender competition and positive change. It raises questions about identity, belonging, resources, social cohesion, and social divisiveness. In recent decades, the topic has become the focus of a great deal of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary empirical social science and there is a wealth of empirical knowledge about diverse flows and outcomes, and an eclectic mix of approaches drawn on in terms of theoretical explanation. The chapter casts a critical eye over the widely used neoclassical economic theories, new economic and dual/segmented labour market theories, world systems theory, and migration systems and networks theory. In a new section, we then consider more intersectional, transnational, and democratising discourses around integration that theorise a role for power and inequalities. We analyse theoretically informed policy approaches and their impacts, including the concept of bordering. Finally, we consider the potential for a unifying macro-theoretical approach to migration informed by sociological understandings of social life as ongoing practices of structuration.

Majority–minority relations in contemporary women's movements: strategic sisterhood

Gender Place and Culture, Dec 1, 2013

ABSTRACT White, Black, indigenous, national and ethnic minority women&#39;s movements in Euro... more ABSTRACT White, Black, indigenous, national and ethnic minority women&#39;s movements in Europe are rooted in different communities and have emerged along separate paths. This book examines who relations between ethnic majority and ethnic minority women&#39;s movements in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom have developed and are being talked about by movement activists. Different historical and socio-political factors, state structures, and social movement and civil society characteristics provide the background for why ethnic majority and minority women have organised separately along racial and ethnic lines. In turn, separate organising as well as differing political interests have made it challenging for women&#39;s movement organisations to cooperate across racial and ethnic divides. A complex picture of conflict and disunity, as well as strategic sisterhood alliance, characterises their relationships. This book examines the gendered, racial and ethnic patterns of women&#39;s movement mobilisation; the articulation of critiques against majority women&#39;s movements from minority women; responses from majority women&#39;s movements; and efforts at joint mobilisation and strategic sisterhood in the area of violence against women.

La información de los medios de comunicación sobre la escasez de mano de obra en la horticultura del Reino Unido durante la pandemia de COVID-19: el uso de metáforas bélicas en la revelación selectiva de la precariedad laboral/de los trabajadores

Estudios geográficos, Dec 16, 2022

Media reporting of labour shortages in UK horticulture during the COVID-19 pandemic: the use of w... more

Migration theories

Routledge eBooks, Dec 16, 2022

Telling Practice Stories of Lifestyle Migration at the Intersections of Postcoloniality and Neoliberalism

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2018

In the closing chapter, we summarise how telling lifestyle migration as a story of practice revea... more In the closing chapter, we summarise how telling lifestyle migration as a story of practice reveals the work of neoliberalism and postcolonialism in how privilege is structured, experienced, and embodied in the search for a better way of life through migration. We highlight the unique insights offered by the book into the interplay of these wider structural and material conditions, with the proximate structures that benefit lifestyle migrants and over which they have some (limited) agency. As we conclude, lifestyle migration is a process shaped by structural constraints and opportunities that describes the relocation of individualised neoliberal subjects in pursuit of a better quality of life, and the processes by which these individuals negotiate, embody, and enact this pursuit.

Multi-Sited and Mobile Ethnography

SAGE Publications Ltd eBooks, Jan 15, 2014

Introduction to ethnographic methods

Taylor & Francis eBooks, Feb 16, 2010

Editorial: The Economic and Social Research Council review of government social classifications

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 1998

As Statistics in Society enters its second decade and as Series A starts its 161st year, we look ... more

Bristol University Press eBooks, Aug 13, 2017

Hosts and Guests, Guests and Hosts: British Residential Tourism in the Costa del Sol

Routledge eBooks, May 13, 2016

When Pau Obrador first asked if I would like to contribute to this book on tourism cultures in th... more When Pau Obrador first asked if I would like to contribute to this book on tourism cultures in the Mediterranean I immediately said yes. I have been studying and writing about British migrants in Spain for over ten years, and have been a member of the community as a second-home owner or peripatetic migrant for much of that time 2. Most of my work has been at pains to point out that these migrants do not see themselves as tourists. They mark themselves out in opposition to tourists. They say 'we live here' or 'we are here to stay'. They talk about tourists as 'other', as a nuisance, as 'them not us', as the visitors who come and take up their time and want to be shown around, as family who think they (the migrants) are always on holiday (O'Reilly 2003). On the other hand it has been undeniable in everything I write that this is a tourism-informed mobility (cf. Williams and Hall 2002). The migrants live in a tourist place, alongside tourists, sharing in tourist spaces and activities, spending time with tourists at work and play, often living leisured lives marked by tourist activities. British 1 I would like to dedicate this paper to Valerie, who very sadly and unexpectedly passed away since this paper was first drafted, demonstrating rather starkly the materiality of our bodies. She is missed, and I hope I have done justice to her sincere attempts to settle in Spain. Research for the paper was funded, between 2003 and 2005, by the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain (Grant No. R000223944). 2 There are currently 600,000 registered British living in Spain, and one can safely estimate that this only represents a third of those who actually live there most of the year. If all British in Spain were registered they would be the largest minority group in the country. See www.ine.es

International Labour Migration to Europe’s Rural Regions

Routledge eBooks, Oct 18, 2020

Emotions in return migration and rural development Migration is highly emotional (Castles, de Haa... more Emotions in return migration and rural development Migration is highly emotional (Castles, de Haas, and Miller 2014) and often evokes strong feelings of optimism for human and economic development in societies of origin. In 1998, during a period of harsh economic and political transition in Russia, temporary labour migration started from Teriberka, a small, remote Russian village on the Barents Sea coast, to Båtsfjord, an equally small village in the Norwegian Arctic. The labour mobility programme brought about 40 villagers, mainly women, to work in the fish-processing industry in Båtsfjord. Most of the migrants were formerly employed at the kolkhoz in Teriberka-a fishing and fish-processing collective farm established in the Soviet era. The migration was designed to fit Norwegian regulations, which restricted the work to two years of unskilled jobs in the fish-processing industry in northern Norway for Russian workers (no families). The mobility programme was organised by Norwegian and Russian businessmen as part of a broader development project in Teriberka. The migration organisers, most migrants, villagers, and politicians expected that the migration would improve the migrants' and their families' situation and catalyse economic activity and development in the declining Russian village. They hoped for a better life for migrants and the community, while fear, euphoria, joy, homesickness, disillusionment, and nostalgia for the Soviet past were other strong feelings. With extensions of the work permits, the migration ceased after three years and most migrants returned to Teriberka. Thus, return migration occurred, which refers to migrants returning to their countries of origin or later generations returning to their family's homeland (Kunoroglu et al. 2016). In Teriberka, the migrants returned after backand-forth migration but the expected developmental outcomes of migration were not achieved. The extent of the emotional strain contained in people's stories drove us to acknowledge affectivity as a way of comprehending the world (Markussen 2006). This motivated our examination of the emotional underpinnings of this rural return migration and its lack of impact on the development of Teriberka.

What does Brexit mean for British citizens living in the EU27? Talking Brexit with the British in Spain

Invoking a Community of Engagement: Mobility and Place in a Small English Town

Routledge eBooks, Dec 5, 2016

This chapter draws on ethnographic data from a small East Midlands town in England to demonstrate... more This chapter draws on ethnographic data from a small East Midlands town in England to demonstrate that local community is a resource for identity formation and expression, as well as collective claims for place-based material resources and emplaced social networks of daily relationality. Community is brought more into play in times of anxiety, such as when urban restructuring, flexible labour markets, globalising processes, and increased levels of migration impact on people’s daily, lived experiences. The expression of community boundaries, however, is not (necessarily) drawn foremost along ethnic/foreigner/immigrant lines, but along the lines of mobility and instability. Migration, in the situation I describe, is thus feared not for the immigrants it brings but for the changes it promises, and especially the transience and loss of continuity. Disputes about the symbolic borders of the community often play out with regard to disputes over the real geographic and physical borders of the town, and disputes over the economic and political boundaries and the material resources these enable or disable. Emplaced memories and narratives of the past are central tools through which people recreate community identity and belonging in public spaces on a daily basis and effectively encourage locals (of all backgrounds) to collectively fight for or defend resources. Overwhelmingly these narratives deploy notions of both victimhood and a community of engagement as a counter to the threat of transience.

Residential Tourism and Economic Development: Imagineering Boquete and Penang

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2018

This chapter provides a more focused discussion of how lifestyle migration figures within state-l... more This chapter provides a more focused discussion of how lifestyle migration figures within state-led strategies for economic development. It introduces residential tourism—property-led foreign investment by individuals—as a feature of neoliberal development strategies. It highlights how the prospect of foreign investment of this kind has led to the establishment of new markets in Panama and Malaysia. Exploring these cases in particular, we examine how places are promoted, imagineered, and become popular destinations for certain populations at specific points in time.

The National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification: Origins, Development and Use

© Crown copyright 2005 Published with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stat... more

London: competitiveness, cohesion and the policy environment

Policy Press eBooks, May 19, 2004

Long read: let's ditch the stereotypes about Britons who live in the EU

Long read: let's ditch the stereotypes about Britons who live in the EU Our images of Britons liv... more Long read: let's ditch the stereotypes about Britons who live in the EU Our images of Britons living in the rest of the EU are dominated by twin stereotypes: the sun-seeking, patriotic pensioner in Spain and the upper-middleclass English couple renovating a Dordogne property. Karen O'Reilly and Michaela Benson (Goldsmiths University of London) make a plea for the true complexity and diversity of the British diaspora to be recognised, and explain how these stereotypes feed into a wider notion of migrancy as deviant and problematic. Stereotypes pervade popular and political understandings of who the British abroad are and what their lives are like. These stereotypes-most notably those of patriotic pensioners living lazy lives in the sun-fail to reflect the complexity of the lives of this richly diverse population. They are damaging because they continue to be reproduced and make it easier to dismiss the needs, worth and value of these people's lives. One response, from some members of the populations, has been to portray themselves specifically in opposition to such stereotypes. In this way-among others-stereotypes have consequences. They also tell us a great deal about those who produce (and reproduce them)-even more than about those they pretend to describe. These stereotypes communicate ideas about what Britain is (or should be) and about who is (or can be considered) British. They are thus caught up in broader concerns about who is thought to belong and who not in (Brexit) Britain. New Year's Eve in Paris, 2011. Photo: Adrien Mogenet via a CC_BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence These narratives reinforce, rather than debunk, ideas about migrancy that see it as deviant. The migrants in question are portrayed as not integrating, as nostalgic, as old colonials. This serves to treat them as other, as not like 'us', and so not only to dismiss them but also to dismiss the colonial traces, the nostalgia, the little Britain mentality that is ubiquitous (but also contested) both here in Britain and amongst its diaspora.

Working Towards the Good Life

Moving into the everyday lives of these migrants, this chapter considers the relationship between... more Moving into the everyday lives of these migrants, this chapter considers the relationship between work and lifestyle migration. Within this, we do not only speak about paid employment—as might be assumed in the case of corporate expatriacy—but consider work to extend into volunteering and the other activities that such migrants occupy themselves with. The chapter is therefore descriptive of work and non-work lives, and diversity, and also illustrates their flexibility and capitals. In this way, it demonstrates the value of referring to these populations as lifestyle migrants, laying bare how people use work to get quality of life, rather than vice versa.

Lifestyle Migration:Escaping to the Good Life?

Ashgate eBooks, 2009

Changing Employment Relations: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose? Reflections arising from the ESRC Review of Government Social Classifications

Work, Employment & Society, Dec 1, 1998

ABSTRACT In 1994 the Office for National Statistics (ONS, then OPCS) com-missioned the Economic a... more ABSTRACT In 1994 the Office for National Statistics (ONS, then OPCS) com-missioned the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to conduct a wide ranging and zero-based, independent review of official socio-economic classifications (SECs). The first phase of this review concluded that government SECs were still required, but that the existing ones should be replaced by a single, revised, occupationally-based SEC with an explicit conceptual rationale (see Rose 1995a). Subsequently it was decided that this revised SEC should measure employment relations, thus adopting the conceptual base of the class schema produced by John Goldthorpe and his colleagues (see Rose 1996; Rose and O&#39;Reilly 1997: Ch.1; Goldthorpe 1997). However, while validation studies conducted on data collected in the 1980s have concluded that this conceptual base is fundamentally sound, it might be argued that the ‘flexible’ labour market and the emergence of post-Fordist organisations raise questions about whether this is still the case.

Migration theories: a critical overview

Routledge Handbook of Immigration and Refugee Studies. 2nd, Edn, 2023

Social scientists study international migration because it has the potential to change individual... more Social scientists study international migration because it has the potential to change individuals and societies in diverse and interesting ways, the potential to exploit, to enrich, to engender competition and positive change. It raises questions about identity, belonging, resources, social cohesion, and social divisiveness. In recent decades, the topic has become the focus of a great deal of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary empirical social science and there is a wealth of empirical knowledge about diverse flows and outcomes, and an eclectic mix of approaches drawn on in terms of theoretical explanation. The chapter casts a critical eye over the widely used neoclassical economic theories, new economic and dual/segmented labour market theories, world systems theory, and migration systems and networks theory. In a new section, we then consider more intersectional, transnational, and democratising discourses around integration that theorise a role for power and inequalities. We analyse theoretically informed policy approaches and their impacts, including the concept of bordering. Finally, we consider the potential for a unifying macro-theoretical approach to migration informed by sociological understandings of social life as ongoing practices of structuration.

Majority–minority relations in contemporary women's movements: strategic sisterhood

Gender Place and Culture, Dec 1, 2013

ABSTRACT White, Black, indigenous, national and ethnic minority women&#39;s movements in Euro... more ABSTRACT White, Black, indigenous, national and ethnic minority women&#39;s movements in Europe are rooted in different communities and have emerged along separate paths. This book examines who relations between ethnic majority and ethnic minority women&#39;s movements in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom have developed and are being talked about by movement activists. Different historical and socio-political factors, state structures, and social movement and civil society characteristics provide the background for why ethnic majority and minority women have organised separately along racial and ethnic lines. In turn, separate organising as well as differing political interests have made it challenging for women&#39;s movement organisations to cooperate across racial and ethnic divides. A complex picture of conflict and disunity, as well as strategic sisterhood alliance, characterises their relationships. This book examines the gendered, racial and ethnic patterns of women&#39;s movement mobilisation; the articulation of critiques against majority women&#39;s movements from minority women; responses from majority women&#39;s movements; and efforts at joint mobilisation and strategic sisterhood in the area of violence against women.

La información de los medios de comunicación sobre la escasez de mano de obra en la horticultura del Reino Unido durante la pandemia de COVID-19: el uso de metáforas bélicas en la revelación selectiva de la precariedad laboral/de los trabajadores

Estudios geográficos, Dec 16, 2022

Media reporting of labour shortages in UK horticulture during the COVID-19 pandemic: the use of w... more

Migration theories

Routledge eBooks, Dec 16, 2022

Telling Practice Stories of Lifestyle Migration at the Intersections of Postcoloniality and Neoliberalism

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2018

In the closing chapter, we summarise how telling lifestyle migration as a story of practice revea... more In the closing chapter, we summarise how telling lifestyle migration as a story of practice reveals the work of neoliberalism and postcolonialism in how privilege is structured, experienced, and embodied in the search for a better way of life through migration. We highlight the unique insights offered by the book into the interplay of these wider structural and material conditions, with the proximate structures that benefit lifestyle migrants and over which they have some (limited) agency. As we conclude, lifestyle migration is a process shaped by structural constraints and opportunities that describes the relocation of individualised neoliberal subjects in pursuit of a better quality of life, and the processes by which these individuals negotiate, embody, and enact this pursuit.

Multi-Sited and Mobile Ethnography

SAGE Publications Ltd eBooks, Jan 15, 2014

Introduction to ethnographic methods

Taylor & Francis eBooks, Feb 16, 2010

Editorial: The Economic and Social Research Council review of government social classifications

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 1998

As Statistics in Society enters its second decade and as Series A starts its 161st year, we look ... more

Bristol University Press eBooks, Aug 13, 2017

Hosts and Guests, Guests and Hosts: British Residential Tourism in the Costa del Sol

Routledge eBooks, May 13, 2016

When Pau Obrador first asked if I would like to contribute to this book on tourism cultures in th... more When Pau Obrador first asked if I would like to contribute to this book on tourism cultures in the Mediterranean I immediately said yes. I have been studying and writing about British migrants in Spain for over ten years, and have been a member of the community as a second-home owner or peripatetic migrant for much of that time 2. Most of my work has been at pains to point out that these migrants do not see themselves as tourists. They mark themselves out in opposition to tourists. They say 'we live here' or 'we are here to stay'. They talk about tourists as 'other', as a nuisance, as 'them not us', as the visitors who come and take up their time and want to be shown around, as family who think they (the migrants) are always on holiday (O'Reilly 2003). On the other hand it has been undeniable in everything I write that this is a tourism-informed mobility (cf. Williams and Hall 2002). The migrants live in a tourist place, alongside tourists, sharing in tourist spaces and activities, spending time with tourists at work and play, often living leisured lives marked by tourist activities. British 1 I would like to dedicate this paper to Valerie, who very sadly and unexpectedly passed away since this paper was first drafted, demonstrating rather starkly the materiality of our bodies. She is missed, and I hope I have done justice to her sincere attempts to settle in Spain. Research for the paper was funded, between 2003 and 2005, by the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain (Grant No. R000223944). 2 There are currently 600,000 registered British living in Spain, and one can safely estimate that this only represents a third of those who actually live there most of the year. If all British in Spain were registered they would be the largest minority group in the country. See www.ine.es

International Labour Migration to Europe’s Rural Regions

Routledge eBooks, Oct 18, 2020

Emotions in return migration and rural development Migration is highly emotional (Castles, de Haa... more Emotions in return migration and rural development Migration is highly emotional (Castles, de Haas, and Miller 2014) and often evokes strong feelings of optimism for human and economic development in societies of origin. In 1998, during a period of harsh economic and political transition in Russia, temporary labour migration started from Teriberka, a small, remote Russian village on the Barents Sea coast, to Båtsfjord, an equally small village in the Norwegian Arctic. The labour mobility programme brought about 40 villagers, mainly women, to work in the fish-processing industry in Båtsfjord. Most of the migrants were formerly employed at the kolkhoz in Teriberka-a fishing and fish-processing collective farm established in the Soviet era. The migration was designed to fit Norwegian regulations, which restricted the work to two years of unskilled jobs in the fish-processing industry in northern Norway for Russian workers (no families). The mobility programme was organised by Norwegian and Russian businessmen as part of a broader development project in Teriberka. The migration organisers, most migrants, villagers, and politicians expected that the migration would improve the migrants' and their families' situation and catalyse economic activity and development in the declining Russian village. They hoped for a better life for migrants and the community, while fear, euphoria, joy, homesickness, disillusionment, and nostalgia for the Soviet past were other strong feelings. With extensions of the work permits, the migration ceased after three years and most migrants returned to Teriberka. Thus, return migration occurred, which refers to migrants returning to their countries of origin or later generations returning to their family's homeland (Kunoroglu et al. 2016). In Teriberka, the migrants returned after backand-forth migration but the expected developmental outcomes of migration were not achieved. The extent of the emotional strain contained in people's stories drove us to acknowledge affectivity as a way of comprehending the world (Markussen 2006). This motivated our examination of the emotional underpinnings of this rural return migration and its lack of impact on the development of Teriberka.

What does Brexit mean for British citizens living in the EU27? Talking Brexit with the British in Spain

Invoking a Community of Engagement: Mobility and Place in a Small English Town

Routledge eBooks, Dec 5, 2016

This chapter draws on ethnographic data from a small East Midlands town in England to demonstrate... more This chapter draws on ethnographic data from a small East Midlands town in England to demonstrate that local community is a resource for identity formation and expression, as well as collective claims for place-based material resources and emplaced social networks of daily relationality. Community is brought more into play in times of anxiety, such as when urban restructuring, flexible labour markets, globalising processes, and increased levels of migration impact on people’s daily, lived experiences. The expression of community boundaries, however, is not (necessarily) drawn foremost along ethnic/foreigner/immigrant lines, but along the lines of mobility and instability. Migration, in the situation I describe, is thus feared not for the immigrants it brings but for the changes it promises, and especially the transience and loss of continuity. Disputes about the symbolic borders of the community often play out with regard to disputes over the real geographic and physical borders of the town, and disputes over the economic and political boundaries and the material resources these enable or disable. Emplaced memories and narratives of the past are central tools through which people recreate community identity and belonging in public spaces on a daily basis and effectively encourage locals (of all backgrounds) to collectively fight for or defend resources. Overwhelmingly these narratives deploy notions of both victimhood and a community of engagement as a counter to the threat of transience.

Residential Tourism and Economic Development: Imagineering Boquete and Penang

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2018

This chapter provides a more focused discussion of how lifestyle migration figures within state-l... more This chapter provides a more focused discussion of how lifestyle migration figures within state-led strategies for economic development. It introduces residential tourism—property-led foreign investment by individuals—as a feature of neoliberal development strategies. It highlights how the prospect of foreign investment of this kind has led to the establishment of new markets in Panama and Malaysia. Exploring these cases in particular, we examine how places are promoted, imagineered, and become popular destinations for certain populations at specific points in time.

The National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification: Origins, Development and Use

© Crown copyright 2005 Published with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stat... more

London: competitiveness, cohesion and the policy environment

Policy Press eBooks, May 19, 2004

Long read: let's ditch the stereotypes about Britons who live in the EU

Long read: let's ditch the stereotypes about Britons who live in the EU Our images of Britons liv... more Long read: let's ditch the stereotypes about Britons who live in the EU Our images of Britons living in the rest of the EU are dominated by twin stereotypes: the sun-seeking, patriotic pensioner in Spain and the upper-middleclass English couple renovating a Dordogne property. Karen O'Reilly and Michaela Benson (Goldsmiths University of London) make a plea for the true complexity and diversity of the British diaspora to be recognised, and explain how these stereotypes feed into a wider notion of migrancy as deviant and problematic. Stereotypes pervade popular and political understandings of who the British abroad are and what their lives are like. These stereotypes-most notably those of patriotic pensioners living lazy lives in the sun-fail to reflect the complexity of the lives of this richly diverse population. They are damaging because they continue to be reproduced and make it easier to dismiss the needs, worth and value of these people's lives. One response, from some members of the populations, has been to portray themselves specifically in opposition to such stereotypes. In this way-among others-stereotypes have consequences. They also tell us a great deal about those who produce (and reproduce them)-even more than about those they pretend to describe. These stereotypes communicate ideas about what Britain is (or should be) and about who is (or can be considered) British. They are thus caught up in broader concerns about who is thought to belong and who not in (Brexit) Britain. New Year's Eve in Paris, 2011. Photo: Adrien Mogenet via a CC_BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence These narratives reinforce, rather than debunk, ideas about migrancy that see it as deviant. The migrants in question are portrayed as not integrating, as nostalgic, as old colonials. This serves to treat them as other, as not like 'us', and so not only to dismiss them but also to dismiss the colonial traces, the nostalgia, the little Britain mentality that is ubiquitous (but also contested) both here in Britain and amongst its diaspora.

Working Towards the Good Life

Moving into the everyday lives of these migrants, this chapter considers the relationship between... more Moving into the everyday lives of these migrants, this chapter considers the relationship between work and lifestyle migration. Within this, we do not only speak about paid employment—as might be assumed in the case of corporate expatriacy—but consider work to extend into volunteering and the other activities that such migrants occupy themselves with. The chapter is therefore descriptive of work and non-work lives, and diversity, and also illustrates their flexibility and capitals. In this way, it demonstrates the value of referring to these populations as lifestyle migrants, laying bare how people use work to get quality of life, rather than vice versa.

Lifestyle Migration:Escaping to the Good Life?

Ashgate eBooks, 2009

Changing Employment Relations: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose? Reflections arising from the ESRC Review of Government Social Classifications

Work, Employment & Society, Dec 1, 1998

ABSTRACT In 1994 the Office for National Statistics (ONS, then OPCS) com-missioned the Economic a... more ABSTRACT In 1994 the Office for National Statistics (ONS, then OPCS) com-missioned the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to conduct a wide ranging and zero-based, independent review of official socio-economic classifications (SECs). The first phase of this review concluded that government SECs were still required, but that the existing ones should be replaced by a single, revised, occupationally-based SEC with an explicit conceptual rationale (see Rose 1995a). Subsequently it was decided that this revised SEC should measure employment relations, thus adopting the conceptual base of the class schema produced by John Goldthorpe and his colleagues (see Rose 1996; Rose and O&#39;Reilly 1997: Ch.1; Goldthorpe 1997). However, while validation studies conducted on data collected in the 1980s have concluded that this conceptual base is fundamentally sound, it might be argued that the ‘flexible’ labour market and the emergence of post-Fordist organisations raise questions about whether this is still the case.