Envisioning futures at new destinations: geographical imaginaries and migration aspirations of Nepali migrants moving to Malta

ABSTRACT

Imagination is central to migration. Geographical imaginaries, often shaped by historical narratives and mainstream media, allow people to envision futures elsewhere and influence migration aspirations. Using interviews with Nepalis who migrated to Malta in recent years, this article seeks to uncover how people imagine new destinations about which they have limited or no prior knowledge, and how these imaginaries compare to those of established destinations. Through this lens, the article then examines participants’ aspirations to migrate to Malta. The analysis shows how participants contextualised the information they found about Malta by drawing extensively from imaginaries of better-known European destinations, in a mechanism I call spatial imaginary spillover. Participants moved to Malta seeking increased personal freedoms, rights and safety, economic stability and affluence, exploration and social prestige linked to migration to Western destinations. As such, Malta is part of a group of new European destinations for Nepalis that are more accessible than established destinations in the West, and which participants prefer over historical destinations for Nepali workers. This article provides novel insights into how imaginaries of new destinations and other unfamiliar places are produced, and how the lens of geographical imaginaries yields rich perspectives on migration aspirations and destination preferences.

KEYWORDS:

• Geographical imaginaries
• migration aspirations
• destination hierarchies
• Nepal
• Malta

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the participants for sharing their thoughts, aspirations and experiences with me. My gratitude also goes to Simona Vezzoli, Yentl de Lange, Julia Kirmes-Daly, Afroditi Konstantopoulou, Sorcha Lyne, research cluster participants at the University for Continuing Education Krems, and two anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback on this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was granted by the thesis supervisor as part of the research master’s programme at the University of Amsterdam.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 International Organization for Migration, United Nations.

2 Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security, Government of Nepal.

3 This article uses the term ‘Western countries’ or ‘the West’ to refer to countries in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand.

4 Third-country national here refers to any person who does not hold a citizenship from an EU or Schengen member country.

5 Throughout the article, some grammatical corrections to quotes were made for ease of reading, without altering the meaning or emphasis of the participants’ statements.

6 Note that Valenta and Garvik (2023) make a further distinction between India and Malaysia and GCC countries: India ranks the lowest, with the lowest migration costs and wages.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported indirectly through an Erasmus + traineeship grant from the European Union, and a study scholarship from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Germany.