The Development of a Migratory Disposition: Explaining a “New Emigration”

Since the late 1990s, migration from Ecuador has diversified with migrants now targeting a range of new destinations. By highlighting the recent immigration of non‐Jewish undocumented migrants from Ecuador to Israel, this article looks to discern not only a new trajectory but primarily a new type of migrant. Empirical findings point in the direction of an increased number of migrants who operate their migration largely from outside the realm of transnational networks. These migrants have no established connection in their destination and they thus also base their decision to migrate there upon very little information, which is usually obtained from an acquaintance who had been there. It appears that these migrants make their decision to migrate in an individual and hasty manner. Often they do not deliberate their migration plans with their close family and household. Nonetheless, once they have successfully operated their migration independently, they then regularly serve as pioneers who encourage and facilitate the migration of their relatives and friends. In an attempt to provide a sociological explanation to the motivational structure and the more individualist migration pattern of this new type of migrant, this article proposes the conceptualization of the migratory option as a disposition, inculcated mainly in large segments of the Ecuadorian low‐middle class. A migratory disposition is being formulated as people try to make sense of migration‐related transformations in both the physical and the social context in which they are embedded. These transformations impinge on people's economic and social perceptions of migration, encouraging them to credibly view the possibility to operate migration in an independent fashion. Concurrently, potential migrants increasingly consider transnational networks as structures characterized by high levels of connectivity and receptivity toward compatriots in migration destination. Potential migrants thus become audacious in their willingness to migrate alone and connect to the network once in destination. Ethnographic data demonstrate that in most cases this strategy of migrants has been proven effective. Focusing on this new type of migration can help explain the changing role of transnational networks in the decision‐making process of potential migrants. It might also clarify the limited effect that restrictive migration policies, directed to curb the extension of established transnational networks, have had on the continuation of migration.