Browsing by Author "Maury, Olivia"

This master's thesis examines extra-European international students as an important part of the migrant labour force in Finland. Student migration is one of the fastest growing forms of migration today. Student migrants have principally been discussed in relation to education policy, human capital and the unwanted brain drain has been underlined. Aspects outside of the education-related have been studied less and for example wage work done by non-European students with a student visa in Finland has been ignored to a large extent. This thesis builds over the gap between the administrative migration-categories student-migrant and migrant-worker. Accordingly, the main subjects in this thesis are named student-migrant-workers. Emphasis is also put on the racist structures these migrants are confronted with at work and in everyday life as well as on their social and legal position in Finland. The analysed material consists of seven semi-structured theme interviews with migrants from five different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa who came to Finland in order to study. The analysis departs from a critical perspective on borders that underline how borders, and extensions of these, function as control mechanisms within the migration administration. Today borders no longer constitute a clear dividing line between nation-states, but are instead flexible and located at the centre of the migrants lives. The extensions of borders the analysis emanates from, is the temporary residence permit the migrants have obtained and how it influences their possibilities of forming their life in a way they would want to. Since the residence permit implies certain requirements for the migrants and restricts their social and political rights, this scope is remarkably limited. The thesis illustrates how borders, in the form of the student s residence permits, produce a precarious labour force that is easy to exploit. As will be seen, most of those holding a student s residence permit have no other choice than wage working in order to avoid deportation. Because of the strict limitations, these migrants are produced as flexible workers that quickly can react to the demand on the labour market. The analysis also shows that boundaries are created on the basis of race , ethnicity and language and also influence the position on the labour market as well as the experiences of everyday life. The analysis is situated in a context of migration in contemporary capitalism and shows that borders produce new subjectivities that are possible to utilize in the current economic system. The temporariness the characterises the lives of the student-migrant-workers renders inclusion in society more difficult and questions in this way integration as analytical tool in contemporary migration research.