A clear theme that emerged from migrant informants was that their intention to migrate, and indeed their intention to stay, was linked to a desire to change and develop selves. This theme acted as an overarching principle encompassing both professional and personal areas of life. Developing the self through mobility, whether leisure or migration, is not new to academic literature. Thus, the aim here is not to theorize the development of the self per se, but to highlight how change or development of self is implicated in the remaking of self-other relations through problematization of self and belonging, and re-imagining sociality. In contrast to Foucault’s emphasis on problematization as thought or reflection though, Moore (2011) argues it also involves affect, emotion, performance, fantasy, and relations with objects, technologies and the material world (Moore, 2011).
Of the six primary migrants interviewed, five cited a precarious employment situation linked to the crisis as one of the factors in deciding to move. One informant, though, left a job with a permanent contract and thus she explained that the crisis played a role in assessing the risk of moving and not staying, or to the potential of failing in London as she would have forfeited her previous employment contract.
Globalization, the resulting potential for mobility, and the crisis, have contributed to the problematization of sedentary selves. While the crisis was an important issue for migrants in pushing further, the common theme that emerged was a desire to develop the self across many areas of life. Serena, for instance, explained that while losing her job and subsequent employment difficulties were important in her decision to move, the key reason was more related to her understanding of self:
I think I was a bit stuck, in some way. So I felt that things were not moving and sometimes I think it’s more scary, to think that nothing is going to happen in your life.
Sometimes people are scarred about what can happen I think, sometimes its more scary things that may not happen. So I think it was a choice that I gave myself, an opportunity to make new things happen in my life.
The link between mobility as progress and becoming was a common trope in interviews.
The search for becoming and change is not, however, an ‘impact’ of globalization and the crisis.
While specific social, economic and political processes have contributed to the process of problematization within a general terrain, they do not completely determine its form and character. Historically specific transformations are never a direct consequence or expression of socioeconomic and political change, but are instead a set of located and embedded responses that take particular forms (Moore, 2011). Thus, the crisis cannot be seen as a direct cause of migration. Instead it helped create the conditions, in which the self can be made into a question:
A question that provoked many informants to highlight the importance of independence. Before migrating, several informants described a general lack of independence and life skills that was inhibiting personal growth. Many informants lived with their parents or in a house owned by their parents, something they felt contributed to a lack of independence and self-confidence that would help them improve all areas of their lives. In this way, instead of relying on friends and family, migrants make the fostering of independence a key principle for care for the self. Thus, through migration, they identify a series of mundane practices that would become a mode of self-making:
I’ve had to mature in certain sense. Because, anyway, not being at home anymore with mom and dad, I had to think about everything, about every little thing…the house, work, decisions, I come home, cooking, cleaning, absolutely everything. So from that point of view it (migrating) was a huge change, I think also a necessary and positive one.
For informants, migration is a mode of transformation, of thought and embodied practice that organizes technologies of the self, used to develop the conditions in which the self can be transformed. Conditions, where technologies of the self enable self-actualization and the individuals’ ability to become happier and wiser (Molz, 2004). Problematization, though, in being fundamentally political, entails a questioning of self-other relations and meanings of belonging implicit in those relations. Moore (2011) argues the most crucial aspect of globalization is that it acts as a diacritic, interrogating our relations with others, of what we
share, of how we set our personal and political horizons, the character of forms of belonging and the complex relations they entail. Informants in the sample explained that they wanted to move, in part, because of frustrations they linked to Italy or the nation. Several described difficulties they experienced in work place settings that they felt were characteristic of Italy: Many lacked meritocracy, were guided by nepotism and for many of the female informants, they had had negative experiences related to gender or felt generally that Italy did not create equal opportunities for women. Thus, many explained that migration became an opportunity to constitute certain values and different outlooks than they found in Italy. Living in London offered the chance to open selves to new cultures, to embody a more cosmopolitan and multi-cultural life style.
It was clear, though, that problematizing self-other relations and belonging was also linked to intimate relations, namely personal relationships. Thus, in addition to selves, migration also involves making personal relationships into objects for transformation as well. Andrea, for instance, described his long-standing wish to travel abroad in order to understand different cultures and constitute a more open worldview. When asked why he had not already done so, he described himself as sedentary in nature and lacking the necessary independence. He explained this, in part, by linking his independence to his parents’ upbringing that was “typically Italian” in that you should always rely on your family and stay close to home, something he found problematic:
I was always a bit too conditioned by them, because they were supporting me. So I felt yeah okay, as long as I can do stuff (…) But I told them that you should try and educate your son to be able to make it on his own. Because if your parents help too much you get lazy. Like, they never wanted me to have a job when I was studying, also because I was living there. I would have liked to be more independent before, but, on one side, it’s easier because you wouldn’t have to worry about things, but also its more difficult when you have to face problems.
Thus, Andrea is simultaneously outlining the principles of independence and self-reliance to guide his conduct and problematizing his personal biography that calls into question those principles in relation to belonging and how belonging is related to personal relationships. This is an integral part of the migration process that continues long after arriving in migration
destinations. Matteo, for instance, explained that a crucial aspect of his life in London over the past ten years has been the development of an ability to be more risk adverse. Importantly, though, he did not discuss this development in isolation, but when discussing differences with his closest friends in Italy and London:
There is a reason why some people are here and some people are there. I think, people in (home region) tend to be, uh, less risk adverse, which is unfortunately a feature I think I inherited from my culture. But, for me, for example, from a person who is very reluctant to change jobs, I understood that it’s not so scary, it’s a part of life (...). I think people that live here have to be like this, either adapt or you can’t survive, I think people who stayed there, haven’t gone beyond these limits.
Matteo is linking his personal development through migration to key personal relationships in Italy by defining ethical behaviour as risk taking. In doing so, he makes clear the underlying tension in how belonging is problematized and attached to different relationships throughout the migration process.