Immigration | EPFL Graph Search

250px|Solde migratoire en 2015 Inmigrantes europeos llegando a Argentina.jpg thumb|250px|Immigrants européens arrivant en Argentine par un paquebot des Messageries maritimes (v. 1880-1900). Limmigration désigne l'entrée, dans un pays ou une aire géographique donnée, de personnes étrangères qui y viennent pour un long séjour ou pour s'y installer. Le mot immigration vient du latin in-migrare qui signifie « entrer dans un lieu ». Elle correspond, vue du côté du pays de départ, à l'émigration. En marge de ce phénomène existe celui de la double nationalité et du nomadisme. La notion d’immigré repose sur les déclarations de lieu de naissance et de nationalité. Dans le cas des frontaliers, les migrations peuvent être quotidiennes (forme internationale de migration pendulaire). Histoire Les études contemporaines d'archéopaléontologie, fondées sur la génétique, confirment que de grands mouvements migratoires existent depuis la Préhistoire, de l'Afrique vers l'Europe par exemple

Where is my place? Native home and culture in Iranian immigrants' homemaking

Maryam Jafarbegloo

This research investigates homemaking of culturally diverse groups. Homemaking is a process, which is created by residents through the understanding of forms and belongings to represent and celebrate events throughout new structures and objects. Homemaking also is influenced by residents¿ domestic traditions. The investigation of this phenomenon is the focus of this study. Several questions are discussed, partly related to understanding the meaning of home among immigrants, and partly aiming to discover the relation between homemaking and immigrants¿ previous home in their house country. In order to answer the research questions, the present study examines the tensions of immigrants to change different parts of their houses to understand how their homemaking is affected by their domestic culture and memories of their house in their native country. The research contains two main parts. The first part explains a theoretical framework and the bodies of knowledge, while the second part focuses on the analysis of findings and conclusions. In the second part of the research, a study on transformation of domestic traditions on modern house architecture in Tehran aims at discovering respective achievements related to the use of space based on cultural values. In addition, similarities and differences between immigrants¿ current houses in two different host countries and their previous houses in their native countries are observed and examined. Throughout this part, those aspects of domestic tradition, which are transferred by immigrants in the settling process, are investigated. The city of Tehran is considered as a benchmark to achieve all documents from the immigrant houses in their native country during the second Pahlavi period. In addition, as the host cities, Hamburg from Germany and Zürich from Switzerland are studied to answer the research questions with a comparative analysis from Iranian families. In addition, four types of modern houses, including detached houses, row houses, high-rise apartments, and slum houses (Alunak), built in 1940-1979 in Tehran, are examined to understand the immigrants¿ previous houses. The results of this research reveal that homemaking among immigrants serves the creation of the feeling of being at home pursued by immigrants¿ culture in order to recall their houses in Tehran. Results unravel a strong relationship between the immigrants¿ domestic traditions in Iran and their homemaking in Zürich and Hamburg. The Iranian traditional aspects commonly introduce influential factors in homemaking of Iranian immigrants. Some common findings of homemaking process, which are the results of the transformation of Iranian immigrants¿ domestic culture to Zürich and Hamburg, introduce an adaptation of the original Iranian house according to several common factors as follows: ¿ Renovation of the interior arrangement of spaces like living room and kitchen based on their houses in Tehran. ¿ The importance of privacy forces the families to make their home by covering the windows with curtains, covering the yards by tall greenery walls, and separating the interior plans into public and private sections. ¿ Owing to guest hospitality, the houses are furnished to offer sufficient space for guests same as the houses in Tehran, thereby providing different daily and nightly functions for the rooms.

EPFL2017

"Immigration, Innovation, and Knowledge Diffusion"

Gabriele Cristelli

This dissertation studies the relationship between immigration and innovation. It adopts an empirical perspective and focuses on Switzerland, combining the use of patent data and immigration administrative records. The first essay is based on a novel database on immigrant inventors and explores their role in Swiss R&D activities, their productivity, and inventive career before and after immigration. It shows that highly productive inventors are over-represented among immigrants and that foreign inventors tend to enter Switzerland early in their careers and with little prior inventive experience. The second essay studies the innovation effects of the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (AFMP), which lifted immigration restrictions for EU citizens to Switzerland after its introduction in 2002. It exploits a natural experiment generated by regional differences in the exposure to the AFMP and influx of foreign workers. It finds that the AFMP introduction increased regional patenting in Switzerland and did not depress the inventive output of its neighbouring countries. In addition, Swiss inventors did not reduce their inventive activity due to newly arrived foreigners. Further results show that the AFMP had a positive effect on incumbent inventors' productivity, increasing the number of foreign collaborators and the variety of technical knowledge available.The third essay also focuses on the AFMP and studies the effects of the Swiss and the German labor markets' integration on technical knowledge diffusion. Using patent citation data and textual similarity measures, it demonstrates that the abolition of immigration restrictions for commuters residing in the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and working in Switzerland increased the diffusion of German inventions patented in commuters' residential locations into Switzerland.

EPFL2021

Where is my place? Native home and culture in Iranian immigrants' homemaking

Maryam Jafarbegloo

EPFL2017