The UK’s decision to leave the EU illustrates some of the tensions embedded in European integration, enabling us to examine how nationalism and cosmopolitanism operate simultaneously, thus reinforcing each other. Furthermore, the prolonged Brexit negotiations have created a climate of protracted insecurity where the only certainty is uncertainty. This is particularly reflected in the migratory experiences of European citizens currently residing in the UK. Academic research has begun exploring the affective impact of Brexit; however, little is known about how processes of connection and disconnection operate simultaneously, nor which coping strategies European migrants have employed to navigate this state of in-betweenness. Using the anthropological notion of liminality as a lens, we draw on participant observation and semi-structured interviews to explore the experiences of Brexit and the coping practices of a range of (new) Bulgarian and (old) Italian European migrants. We argue that Brexit results in a loss of frames of reference for European migrants in the UK – which can be both liberating and unsettling, depending on migrants’ positioning as unequal EU subjects as well as their views on the nature of their future re-incorporation in post-Brexit Britain.

To date, the literature on gender and migration continues a longstanding bias towards female over male experiences. Similarly, research on Polish post-EU accession emigration has not sufficiently addressed the male experiences of migration. Drawing on 20 interviews with migrant men, this paper contributes to the existing research on the variety of masculinity practices and gendered migration from the Central and East-ern Europe. In so doing, it focuses on the relationship between masculinity, religion and migration in the context of migration from Poland to the UK. While religion is also rarely addressed in discussions on the post-EU accession migration of Poles, it proves to be important in shaping world views and influencing migrants’ positionalities in the new social context. Indeed, in migrants’ narratives, gender, religion and the nation intertwine with one another. Analysis shows how certain aspects of men’s social identities that were originally assets turn into burdens and how the men reach to religion, while distance from the institutional Church, to renegotiate their new positionality in order to avoid denigration or to support social recognition – which is especially important in the social reality shaped by Brexit.

Ukraine remains today one of the main migrant sending countries in Europe, with thousands of Ukrainians working in Czechia, Italy, Poland and Russia. In this regard, Ukraine shares the previous experience of Central European countries such as the Baltic States, Poland and Slovakia, that in the 1990s and early 2000s registered first temporary, and later permanent, outflows. In more recent years, however, many Central and Eastern European countries started to register increasing numbers of immigrants and some of them have switched from net sending to net receiving migration regimes. The objective of this article is to discuss the possibility of a similar turnaround in Ukraine; to this end, we investigate the main quantitative data on mi-gration from and to Ukraine, and interpret this information in the light of selected theoretical approaches that have been used to explain migration in Central and Eastern Europe. The available data reveal high levels of labour emigration of both temporary and permanent character, the increasing propensity of mi-grants to settle down in the host countries, and the growing involvement of the youngest cohorts in the emi-gration. Despite this evidence we argue that the current situation by no means constitutes a premise for reversing the outflow from Ukraine. We conclude that the most recent improvements in general economic indicators will not lead to high levels of immigration without an active labour market policy towards foreigners.

Based on 25 interviews with high-skilled migrants, this article examines the migration of IT profession-als from Ukraine in Australia. Their migration experience – identified as ‘migration for achievement’ – is examined in three ways. First, the article sets out the structural context for migration and the formation of the achievement life strategy: (1) the emergence and growth of the IT industry in Ukraine, in combination with (2) shifts in Australian migration policy triggered by the growth of the innovation economy and demand for highly skilled migrants. Second, it examines migration decision-making and the individual motivations, values, aims and agency of migrants. Third, the article explores how achievement life strategies are recreated or transformed after migration by looking into the migrants’ adaptation, occupational outcomes, language and national identity, future plans and aspirations. The narratives of the ‘achievement migrants’ in Australia form a story of well-integrated members of Australian society and active agents of social and economic life. Given their capacity to successfully main-tain their social and economic status after migration, along with their positive contributions to Australian society in terms of social cohesion, innovation and economic production, this group can be considered a ‘brain-gain’ for Australia.

This article is devoted to contemporary return migrations by Kazakhs – a process of great significance for the population and cultural policies of the government of independent Kazakhstan. I examine the repatriation process of the Kazakh population from the point of view of the cultural transformations of Kazakh society itself, unveiling the intended and unintended effects of these return migrations. The case of the Kazakh returns is a historically unique phenomenon, yet it provides data permitting the formulation of broader generalisa-tions. It illustrates the dual impact of culturally different environments, which leads to a simultaneous pre-serving and changing of the culture of the new immigrants. The analyses found in this article are based upon data collected during two periods of fieldwork conducted in June–July 2016 and March 2018 at several locations in Kazakhstan and in cooperation with a Kazakh university. The research methodology is anchored in multi-sited, multi-year fieldwork.

This article focuses on the interrelationship between homeland and diaspora at times of crisis. It adopts a comparative lens to look into diasporic (dis)engagement with the homeland, specifically analysing the cases of Greece and Ukraine. The main research issues are how crises affect the engagement between homeland and diaspora – taking Greece and Ukraine as case studies – and which the defining contextual factors are that transform the diaspora engagement. The article unpacks the homeland–diaspora nexus concerning two states with different socio-political backgrounds, both going through severe political and economic crises. In so doing, the article gives prominence to the differentiation between the en-gagement of the two different diasporas with their home countries at times of crisis. Evidence suggests substantial engagement in the Ukrainian case while, in the Greek case, a more mixed attitude – leaning towards disengagement – is apparent.

This paper analyses diaspora advocacy on behalf of Ukraine as practiced by a particular diaspora group, Ukrainian Canadians, in a period of high volatility in Ukraine: from the EuroMaidan protests to the Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine. This article seeks to add to the debate on how conflict in the homeland affects a diaspora’s mobilisation and advocacy patterns. I argue that the Maidan and the war played an important role not only in mobilising and uniting disparate diaspora communities in Canada but also in producing new advocacy strategies and increasing the diaspora’s political visibility. The paper begins by mapping out the diaspora players engaged in pro-Ukraine advocacy in Canada. It is followed by an analysis of the diaspora’s patterns of mobilisation and a discussion of actual advocacy outcomes. The second part of the paper inves-tigates successes in the diaspora’s post-Maidan communication strategies. Evidence indicates that the dias-pora’s advocacy from Canada not only brought much-needed assistance to Ukraine but also contributed to strengthening its own image as an influential player. Finally, the paper suggests that political events in the homeland can serve as a mobilising factor but produce effective advocacy only when a diaspora has already achieved a high level of organisational capacity and created well-established channels via which to lobby for homeland interests.

Recent research has reported that an increasing number of migrants in Norway are concentrated in the low-skilled sectors of the labour market, irrespective of their educational background, thus facilitating the formation of migrant niches in the long term. Despite the growing body of literature that raises the problem of downward professional mobility and deskilling among migrant populations, little scholarly attention has been paid to migrants’ struggles and vulnerabilities as a result of underemployment. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews, this article explores the common experience of habitus mismatch and suffering among Poles who have worked below their level of competence or professional experience since migrating to Norway. By an-alysing subjective experiences of downward professional and social mobility and the conflict between valued and stigmatised identities, the article examines the various habitus mismatches that contribute to suffering in downwardly mobile Polish migrants.

This article focuses on the emotionality of belonging among European Union (EU) citizens in the context of the United Kingdom’s (UK) 2016 referendum and its result in favour of the UK leaving the EU, commonly referred to as Brexit. Drawing from testimonies of EU27 citizens in the UK (mainly mid- to long-term residents) published in a book and on blog and Twitter accounts by the not-for-profit and non-political initiative, the ‘In Limbo Project’, it explores a range of emotions which characterise the affective impact of Brexit and how they underpin two key processes disrupting the sense of belonging of EU citizens: the acquisition of ‘migrantness’ and the non-recognition of the contributions and efforts made to belong. The resulting narratives are characterised by senses of ‘unbelonging’, where processes of social bonding and membership are disrupted and ‘undone’. These processes are characterised by a lack of intersubjective recognition in the private, legal and communal spheres, with ambivalent impacts on EU citizens’ longer-term plans to stay or to leave and wider implications for community relations in a post-Brexit society.

This paper explores the ways in which young people aged 12 to 18 who were born in Central and Eastern European EU countries but now live in the United Kingdom construct their future imaginaries in the context of Brexit. It reports on findings from a large-scale survey, focus groups and family case studies to bring an original perspective on young migrants’ plans for the future, including mobility and citizenship plans, and concerns over how Britain’s decision to leave the European Union might impact them. While most of the young people planned to stay in Britain for the immediate future, it was clear that Brexit had triggered changes to their long-term plans. These concerns were linked to uncertainties over access to education and the labour market for EU nationals post-Brexit, the precarity of their legal status and their overall concerns over an increase in racism and xenophobia. While our young research participants expressed a strong sense of European identity, their imaginaries rarely featured ‘going back’ to their country of birth and instead included narratives of moving on to more attractive, often unfamiliar, destinations. The reasons and dynamics behind these plans are discussed by drawing on theories of transnational belonging.

This paper explores how people live together in different places in the context of Brexit. This issue seems more relevant than ever due to the continued attention being paid to immigration, identity and nation and raising questions about conviviality – understood in this paper as a process of living and interacting together in shared spaces. Building on my earlier research in 2012/13 and drawing on qualitative interviews conducted with Polish migrant women after the EU referendum in 2016, this paper explores the complexity of my participants’ everyday interactions with the local population in Manchester in the context of Brexit, viewed by many as a disruptive event impacting on social relations. The paper shows that conviviality is a highly dynamic process influenced by spatio-temporal characteristics, revealing not only tensions but also various forms of conviviality, in some cases sustained over time. It illustrates that, while Brexit poses challenges to conviviality, there are instances of thriving and sustained conviviality that endures despite exclusionary anti-immigration rhetoric. The paper also reflects on the possibilities of maintaining social connections and belonging in the context of Brexit, whereby some migrants become more rooted in their local areas and are likely to be settled on a more permanent basis, contrary to earlier assumptions that post-accession migrants are temporary.

In the summer of 2019 as the UK was in the midst of heated Brexit debates and Theresa May’s minority government clung on to power, Professor Louise Ryan interviewed Professor Nira Yuval-Davis about her recent book Bordering (Yuval-Davis, Wemyss and Cassidy 2019). Although things have changed in some significant ways since that interview, for example Boris Johnson has now replaced Theresa May as Prime Minister, and won a landslide election victory in December, 2019, and the controversial Brexit Bill was passed by the British Parliament, many of the issues about borders and bordering remain extremely relevant today. The current pandemic has not only revealed Britain’s dependence on migrant workers, especially in health and social care, but also exposed health inequalities among migrants and ethnic minorities. As the post-Brexit immigration landscape begins to emerge, the analysis of Nira Yuval Davis remains as pertinent as ever.

This Guest Editorial introduces a special issue entitled Brexit and Beyond: Transforming Mobility and Immobility. The unfolding story of Brexit provided the backdrop to a series of events, organised in 2018 and 2019, which were the result of a collaboration between migration researchers in Warsaw and the UK, funded by the Noble Foundation’s Programme on Modern Poland. The largest event – held in association with IMISCOE – was an international conference, arising from which we invited authors to contribute papers to this special issue on the implications of Brexit for the mobility and immobility of EU citizens, particularly – but not exclusively – from Central and Eastern Europe, living in the UK. As we outline in this Editorial, collectively, the papers comprising the special issue address three key themes: everyday implications and ‘living with Brexit’; renegotiating the ‘intentional unpredictability’ status and settling down; and planning the future and the return to countries of origin. In addition, we include an interview with Professor Nira Yuval-Davis, based on the substance of her closing plenary at the conference – racialisation and bordering. Her insightful analysis remains salient to the current situation – in June 2020, as the UK enters the final months of the Brexit transition period – in the unexpected midst of a global pandemic and an imminent recession.

The main aim of this paper is to assess the extent to which the 2016 Brexit referendum impacted on the decisions of young Polish and Lithuanian migrants to stay in the UK or return to the country of origin. We analyse information from 76 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Lithuanians and Poles living in the UK, as well as those who have returned to Lithuania and Poland since June 2016. We find that, for our interviewees, the referendum had little impact on the decision to stay in the UK or return to the country of origin, giving way, instead, to work, family and lifestyle considerations. Only for a select few did it act as a trigger, either adding to other reasons which eventually prompted the return to Lithuania or Poland, or motivating people to secure their rights in the UK and delay plans to leave the country. We conclude by discussing our results together with existing research on transnationalism and life-course migration theory: regardless of interviewees’ decisions to stay or return, these were never final, stressing the fluid nature of migration and the desire of our interviewees to maintain ties across multiple places.

The fate of European citizens living in the United Kingdom was a key issue linked with Britain’s departure from the European Union. Official statistics show that some outflow has taken place, but it was no Brexodus. This article investigates Brexit’s impact within a theoretical (push–pull) framework using a survey of long-term Polish migrants in the UK (CAPI, N = 472, conducted in 2018). Our results show that the perception of Brexit as a factor discouraging migrants from staying in the UK was limited. Still, those with experience of living in other countries, those remitting to Poland, and those on welfare benefits, were more likely to find Brexit discouraging. However, many claimed that the referendum nudged them towards extending their stay instead of shortening it. In general, when asked about what encourages/discourages them from staying in the UK, the respondents mainly chose factors related to the job market. Therefore, we argue, in line with Kilkey and Ryan (2020), that the referendum was an unsettling event – but, considering the strong economic incentives for Polish migrants to stay in the UK, we can expect Brexit to have a limited influence on any further outflows of migrants, as long as Britain’s economic situation does not deteriorate.

Due to globalized business operations, companies in different economic sectors are part of complex supply chain networks. Their value-added processes comprise product and information flows, e.g. with a focus on manufacturing, service or trade. Until the final product is delivered to the end customer, it needs to pass many different processes in cooperating organizations. As a result, there a lot of business-to-business (B2B) interactions with crossenterprise transactions, often including cross-border communications and sometimes even cross-industry trades with technological and often cultural implications. Especially the interfaces of supply chain networks are prone to inefficiencies, misunderstandings and delays due to a lack of standardized B2B transactions, which leads to waste in form of rework, errors and mistakes. In addition, new customers are hard to find for the manufacturing or trading company, since potential customers are so far limited to a regional network. The advantages of extending the customer base still need to be explored by many organizations. This paper discusses the opportunities by streamlining the communication along supply chain networks in a general fashion and then describes the application in a B2B automotive retail business. A concept of a web-based trading platform, which provides a seamless service for all steps of a convenient and efficient used vehicle remarketing business, is developed. It includes all phases, like offering and price finding in a comprehensive online platform, which also covers further activities, such as logistic services, financial transactions, and a mandatory feedback loop. The suggested B2B vehicle-trading platform enables a quick turnover of each transaction, which is analyzed and optimized based on the application of cross-enterprise Value Stream Management.

This paper reports the results of an analysis of indicators describing the effectiveness of actions taken and repairs made by the maintenance services in a food industry company which had implemented a new manufacturing execution system (MES) 10 months prior to the study. The application of the above effectiveness indicators plays a significant role in the rationalization of functioning of maintenance services. Therefore, it is vital that they are calculated correctly and interpreted in a way that has a positive effect on the organization of maintenance works. The paper investigates four effectiveness indicators employed by the maintenance services of the company in question, i.e., mean time to failure (MTTF), mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair (MTTR) and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). The objective of the analysis was to verify the correctness of determination of the above indicators in the analysed company. In addition, the study was to determine whether the use of correctly determined indicators and results interpretation could lead to a higher effectiveness of the actions taken by the maintenance services department. Moreover, the paper presents a diagnosis of problems connected with incorrect determination and visualization of the above-mentioned indicators in the analysed company.

One of the key factors of a competitive economy is creating a strong, internationally competitive SME sector. This essay is based on the fact that management tools used in the SME sector are insufficient. With the development of these tools, the competitiveness of companies could improve. According to the literature, using lean thinking has a positive influence on the company’s effectiveness, and also proved that lean approach can be successfully extended out of the car industry, into the limitedly resourced SME sector, too. Even though the topic of lean manufacturing is analysed by many studies, there is a lack of papers dealing with its usage in the SME sector. The originality of this paper lies in analysing the current status of using lean manufacturing practices among the Hungarian SMEs operating in the manufacturing industry. The paper includes an examination about how deeply the elements of lean thinking are present in the Hungarian SME sector, how large the development reserves are, and whether there is a difference between the usage of lean practices. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. SMEs’ representatives, mostly CEOs and managers from the Hungarian manufacturing industry participated in the survey. The sample contained 128 observations. The study has two control variables, which are the size of the company and the relation to the lean management. The survey brought the following results. First of all, it shows that the level of using lean is low among the Hungarian SMEs. Furthermore, customer orientation is a key factor in the sector, however, there are considerable possibilities for progress by the inner processes and the handling and involvement of the suppliers. Firstly, a good basis to increase the effectiveness could be the creation of thinking in processes influencing the supply chain. Secondly, the development of the leadership and the involvement of the employees at some level are also significant. Key findings is that without state incitement and the involvement of outside experts, progress cannot be expected to spread on a broad scope. The background of the research method was created to fit the available literature and to capable to be used in other countries, too. Moreover, this way the available information can be expanded with a regional dimension, in case further studies are going to be made.

This paper presents the modeling and the resolution of a two dimensional cutting stock problem for a wooden industry. It is about a real problem of minimization of the wood wastes for an industry of furnishing. The raw material to be cut is a set of beams of various sizes. The purpose of the cut is to supply a list of orders characterized by a set of articles of various sizes. The problem is converted into an integer linear program where the decision variables are the numbers of beams to cut according to a set of feasible “patterns”. The designed solution is a heuristic in two stages: – Generation of the feasible patterns by various classic heuristics of the Bin-packing Problem. – Resolution of the integer linear program with the generated patterns as input variables. Moreover, based on this approach, the “Application Cutting Optimization” is developed to allow the immediate resolution of the problem and widening the stock management horizon. To end, a real case is studied to confirm the effectiveness of this approach.

A product is referred to as robust when its performance is consistent. In current product robustness paradigms, robustness is the responsibility of engineering design. Drawings and 3D models should be released to manufacturing after applying all the possible robust design principles. But there are no methods referred for manufacturing to carry and improve product robustness after the design freeze. This paper proposes a process of inducing product robustness at all stages of product development from design release to the start of mass production. A manufacturing strategy of absorbing all obvious variations and an approach of turning variations to cancel one another are defined. Verified the application feasibility and established the robustness quantification method at each stage. The theoretical and actual sensitivity of different parameters is identified as indicators. Theoretical and actual performance variation and accuracy of estimation are established as robustness metric. Manufacturing plan alignment to design, complimenting the design and process sensitivities, countering process mean shifts with tool deviations, higher adjustable assembly tools are enablers to achieve product robustness.

Research focused on integration of machine operators with information flow in manufacturing process according to Industry 4.0 requirements are presented in this paper. A special IT system connecting together machine operators, machine control, process and machine monitoring with companywide IT systems is developed. It is an answer on manufacture of airplane industry requirements. The main aim of the system presented in the article is full automation of information flow between a management level represented by Integrated Management IT System and manufacturing process level. From the management level an information about particular orders are taken, back an on-line information about manufacturing process and manufactured parts are given. System allows automatic identification of tasks for machine operator and particular currently machined part. Operator can verify information about process and tasks. System allows on-line analyzing process data. It is based on information from machining acquired: machine operator, process and machine monitoring systems and measurement devices handled by operator. Process data is integrated with related order as a history of particular manufactured part. System allows for measurement data analysis based on Statistical Process Control algorithm dedicated for short batches. It supports operator in process control. Measurement data are integrated with order data as a part of history of manufactured product. Finally a conception of Cyber-Physical Systems applying in integrated Shop Floor Control and Monitoring systems is presented and discussed.

Over the years laser welding has evolved as a fabrication process capable of overcoming the limitations of conventional joining methodologies. It facilitates the welding of diverse range of materials like metals, non-metals, polymers etc. Laser transmission welding is a technique employed for fabricating intricate shapes/contours in polymers with better precision compared to the other conventional processes. Nylon6, a synthetic semi-crystalline polymer is utilized as an engineering thermoplastic due to its high strength and temperature resistant properties. In the earlier researches, various welding techniques were employed for the fabrication of polymers and metals keeping the laser beam stagnant, and much emphasis was given only to temperature distribution along the different axes and limited attention was given to residual stress analysis. Therefore, in this research work, a three-dimensional time-dependent model using a moving laser beam is used to fabricate unreinforced Nylon6 specimens.

The article discusses the relationship between energy quality technologies cutting and their environmental friendliness. Based on the energy analysis shows that energy consumption in the individual technological process is connected with the cutting power and power loss, which form the environmental indicators of the cutting process and reduce its energy efficiency. In addition, it is shown that at implementation of technological processes on the equipment, electrical systems are AC systems the implementation of the cutting process occurs when excessive consumption of currents. The article presents the results of studies on the energy efficiency of cutting processes, definition of the complex influence of cutting processes on the environment and humans, the formation of ways of improving environmental and energy performance quality of these processes.