Summary of politics of migration and diversity GMD year
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Course
Politics Of Migration And Diversity
Institution
Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam (EUR)
It's a summary of all the themes, theories/authors we dicussed during politics of migration and diversity course of GMD class . It includes 8 weeks of classes. I used it for the exam and got a nice grade.
Castles. Et al: Developments in Migration and Diversity:
Increase of migration: from 153 million (2.9 % of world population) in 1990 to 224 million
(3.3 % of world population) in 2015. Don’t overstate the amount of migrants: this is often
made bigger than it actually is.
Globalization of migration: migration happens from all parts of the world to all parts of the
world (whereas earlier it would happen specifically in ‘migrant cities/countries’). New hubs of
migration are formed; new centres.
Differentiation of migration: The share of those that are staying permanently has diminished.
Furthermore, the journey is no longer from A to B and that’s it, it’s a very long procedure with
place C and D, too. Not so simple. Lengths of the trajectory have changed, too (back and forth
migration/circular migration and seasonal migration)
Politicization of migration: migration used to be less of a political subject, but is now leading
in the political agenda. Before, migration was far less contested. There is now a growing anti-
immigrant sentiment. This has however been something of all times that reoccurs.
Castles et al: Consequences of growing migration/developments migration?
Brain-drain for the sending country.
Democratic deficit for the sending country; a lack of especially young voters.
Remittances to the sending country
Growing diversity for the receiving country: large number of different places of origin, but
also diversity among the migrants in their gender, stay, sort of origin [so not
ethnically/racially/nationally but if they are postcolonial migrants or newer ones; internal or
external migrants, different layers of migration are represented],
Diversification of diversity (superdiversity? Vertovec): populations of cities become less and
less homogenous; think of cities like Rotterdam, Dubai, Chicago, London.
Complexification of migration and diversity?
A ‘deepening’ of migration and diversity: no longer the traditional way of a family moving to another
country, but there are developments/changes in patterns of migration (increase in scale of migrants,
different and more places they go to, people in different areas of the world take part, different
durations of stay, different reasons for migration/sort of migrants [refugee, labour, family
reunification, climate], different genders/classes and so on): makes it more complex to grasp and to
govern.
,Conceptualization of what ‘Politics’ are?
Social construct: Something that we have created;
Values: Central keyword. ‘’The authoritative allocation of values’’. Values here are things
people find important for them that should be regulated by the government: clean drinking
water, a good job market. When it comes to migration: security of population, freedom of
movement, trafficking (airports, roads, and so on). Authoritative allocation: there are
institutions that force us to stick to these values. Politics need to make sure these values are
protected.
Interrelationship of politics and law: Laws are a consensus at a given point in time; politics
has the role of redefining these laws according to time. So: politics have a role of defining
what the law means or maybe changing that.
Politics in broader sense: politics in media (which is shaping public opinion), protests against
certain things/trying to set them on the political agenda.
Conceptualization of what a ‘migrant’ or ‘migration’ is?
Always relating to other concepts: how citizenship, integration, where people are coming
from are seen/defined. We define what migration/who is a migrant is socially, institutions
[nation states, the boundaries that are created] shape what we see as migration; people from
other countries coming in, but there’s a great difference in where they are coming from that
defines who is a migrant? Then: who is a refugee? Has everything to do with dominant
discourse. What/who is perceived as a migrant changes over time.
Immigration ‘interacts with the (conceptual) boundaries of membership, belonging and
entitlements between us and them’.
What is migration-related diversity?
Usually first measured by ethnicity: however, how do we define ethnicity? Primordial
(blood, biological, something you always carry with you) or as a social construct, man-made,
like culture (constructivist)? So: primordial attachment (blood) or situational ethnicity
(ethnic identity that is particular to a social setting or context). Latter one makes measurement
of migration-related diversity harder.
Solution for measuring: measure through how long migrants are part of an ethnic
community; first and second generation (foreign vs. native born).
In superdiverse societies, ethnicity is only one amongst many identity markers. There is an
increasing role of ‘hybrid identities’.
Relation migration-related diversity and intersectionality?
, Migration-related diversity refers to any form of diversity associated with first or second
generation migrants: ethnic, religious, cultural, political diversity.
These various markers of identity intersect: which is central to the theory of
intersectionality; as ethnicity (which is often stressed when measuring migration-related
diversity) is just one dimension of our identities, we have to look at how it intersects with
these various other identity markers. How does power come to play here?
In relation to that, in superdiverse societies, there is an increasingly amount of
hybridization: where cultural boundaries are no longer fixed, they are shaping each other and
it’s a process of cultural intermixture.
Note: difference multiculturalism and hybridization. Multiculturalism occurs more on a
macro-level: how do politics respond to various cultures? Whereas hybridization is more a
micro-level concept.
Two key aspects of multiculturalism?
1. There are different cultural values in a society.
2. There should be an equal recognition of these cultures in society.
Concrete example: giving subsidies based on ethnicity/culture.
Migrant integration and integration policies
Integration: the process of becoming part of society. Very abstract, unclear and ill-defined
concepts, because: what defines the society they integrate into? Why? And who is (allowed) to
become part of this on what conditions? What does it mean to become part of the society?
What problem does integration solve?
Has assumptions with the nation-state: one ‘we’, a unity, a part of ‘something’; often very
unclear what this ‘something’ is.
Question about what role the state should play: stimulate participation, inclusion, non-
discrimination?
There is a lot of discontent with the term integration, as it’s so unclear defined, but it’s still
used.
Methodological nationalism in migration scholarship?
The assumption that the nation-state-society is the ‘natural’ social and political form of the
modern world; a colored way of researching/’self-evident’
Migration and integration are often defined from a nation state perspective
By problematizing migration, the nation state becomes naturalized: it becomes normal to view
migration in terms of ‘who belongs in this nation’ and who doesn’t.
Critique on Methodological Nationalism and integration, by Anderson (week 3):
, Nationalism brings ‘imagined national communities’ that are in constant need of political
reproduction and reproduction in discourse;
It naturalizes the nation state (as already described above), which legitimizes integration
though the ‘ethnic lens’: so when groups are culturally homogenous, there can still be feelings
of the ‘establishment’ and the ‘outsider’.
Article Favell: Integration and nations: The nation-state and research on immigrants in Western
Europe.
Within migration/integration studies, there is a central paradigm among scholars whom see
the ‘nation state society’ as the central organizing unit of society. Integration is a popular,
important term here when describing the developing relation between ‘old European nation-
states’ and their growing non-European ‘ethnic’ immigrant populations. However, the use
of this term is linked to a deeper association of the concept with a longstanding intellectual
paradigm at the root of modern western societies conception of itself: The nation state, the
principal organizing unit of society on which social/political thinking is based. Society is thus
seen as a ‘bounded, functional whole, structured by a state which is able to create policies
and institutions to achieve this’.
However: the nation-state-society paradigm is no longer appropriate to study the evolving
relationship of new immigrants and their host contexts in Europe; because in a world that is
increasingly transnational or global, the nation state shouldn’t be that important anymore.
A transnational approach of research has showed that migrant groups have accessed new
sources of power by organizing themselves and their activities in ways not already organized
for them by an integrating nation state.
Still, many governments and researches choose to stay using integration; as a symbolic,
rhetorical term to ‘rescue’ the nation state, because nation building benefits them. However,
academics should escape their role in ‘underwriting nation-building’ efforts.
Article: Wimmer and Schiller, ‘Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation-state building,
migration and the social sciences’:
Methodological nationalism has characterized mainstream social science and therefore
influenced research on migration
Because of the assumption that the nation-state-society is the ‘natural’ social and political
form of the modern world; ‘self-evident’, postwar social scientists saw migration/migrants as
objects of special attention since they are NOT part of the ‘original’ nation-state-society.
Article: Castles. Et al, ‘The factors that make and unmake migration policies’.
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