Hoofdstuk 1
Or to put it more broadly, why do people migrate, despite significant obstacles, and what sort of
reception will they find in their new destination?
How are such regions, countries or places connected, and how can an explicit attention to
geographical concepts help to shed light on these series of events?
1. social networks (see the glossary at the end of the book and the discussion later in this
chapter) allow migrants to communicate the value of particular destinations to other would-
be migrants, and places such as Lampedusa may have both an imagined and potentially real
promise for migrants.
2. different scales (territories) of regulation, among them the continuing ability of territories
such as national states to decide who can enter and who cannot, and how supra-national
territories such as the European Union step in to shape migration control. Yet the
enforcement of migration regulation happens in particular places, and the interaction
between migrants and Italian authorities in Lampedusa produce a particular local geography
of enforcement. These more local spaces of regulation and enforcement seem to shape an
entire migratory system which extends as far south as Eritrea
‘The new mobilities paradigm’ in the social sciences; in other words, the idea that the social sciences
can be renewed again by exploring ideas of mobility rather than taking stability and stasis as the
world’s natural state of affairs.
While we applaud much of this emphasis on mobility rather than stability, stasis, or
territorial/nation-state centred analyses, and we recognize that mobility is part and parcel of the
lives of millions of people across the world, it also questions whether international migration –
particularly of asylum-seekers, refugees and low-income migrants – can be uncritically subsumed
within this mobility approach. We say this since territorially defined borders and immigration
regulations do much to impede mobility, though they also serve to create it and to shape it.
While this distinction between south and north may seem crude given the enormous diversity within
these two hemispheres, we show in this book that making this distinction is important for explaining
why people migrate, but may be less so for other issues related to immigration
MIGRANT STORIES AND KEY TERMS AND CATEGORIES IN THE STUDY OF MIGRATION AND
IMMIGRATION
What they suggest at the very least is that migration is a complicated, challenging, and diverse
phenomenon involving changing statuses and multiple geographical trajectories.
The point of this anecdote is to assert that categories around legal status and modes of entry should
still be seen as meaningful, even if this book acknowledges the complexity of migrants’ trajectories;
that migration is a process rather than an event (King 2012), and that migration categories may
reinforce an ‘us’ and ‘them’ politics (Anderson 2013). Onderscheid in categorieën:
- Internal vs international
Such international migration may involve just one country of origin and destination, but it
might also involve different steps or stages between various countries, before a migrant
moves on to her or his final destination. This is sometimes referred to as temporary or
sojourner migration.
- Others will stay in a foreign country for years as permanent residents without ‘naturalizing’
(that is becoming a citizen of a particular country). It may make sense to call these individuals
immigrants rather than migrants.
, - Legal vs psychological standpoint
- legal vs undocumented migration.
legal: Legal migrants are those individuals who have express authorization of (usually) a
national government to enter, reside or work in the country of destination.
Undocumented: those individuals who cross international boundaries either without being
detected by authorities (often called clandestine entry) or who overstay their visas.
- between forced and voluntary migrants.
It should be emphasized that the reasons people migrate exist on a continuum between
forced and voluntary. However, it is common to distinguish between two types of forced
migration: the migration of asylum-seekers and refugees, as recognized by international
conventions, and those who are forced to migrate for reasons of poverty or low wages –
what is commonly called ‘economic migration’
- highly skilled vs poorly skilled
It would be tempting to simply map low-skilled and highly skilled on to forced and voluntary
migration respectively, but this would be in many instances an erroneous mapping.
Governments’ and firms’ definition of skilled and notso-skilled varies over space and time.
Second, there are many highly skilled migrants whose movement may be deemed
voluntary. . However, there are also many highly skilled migrants who are fleeing political
persecution and poverty, and low-skilled and low-income migrants who may be migrating for
higher wages, to join families, to seek adventure or any combination of these. In this case
then, we should shy away from a neat correspondence between skill and the voluntary or
forced motivations for migration.
KEY ISSUES AND DEBATES CONCERNING MIGRATION
I. The causes and consequences of migration
These various causes cannot be divorced from each other and may be mutually
reinforcing. What seems clearer now after more than a century of intensive migration
research is that the causes of migration are not unrelated to the consequences of
migration in the countries of emigration.
II. The question of employment for migrants
Work is a core dimension of migrants’ livelihoods, even if migrants such as asylum-
seekers, family members or students may not move simply for the purposes of work and
they may never engage in waged labour when they reach their destination. Why are
migrants relegated to such (low-skilled, low-paid) work, or why do migrants find the
work they do? What obstacles do they face in finding work? A simple response to these
questions is that they lack the necessary education, qualifications or skills to compete
with citizens in job markets. A more rounded response might turn to the stereotypes and
racist assumptions held by employers, which are decidedly geographic in character.
Another fuller response might turn to the networks of information among migrants
about the availability of certain jobs in neighbourhoods with an already existing
immigrant population.
III. The conflicted task of governing migration
For some governments and citizens, migration is a process to be actively encouraged; for
others, it is something to be vigorously resisted, sometimes at great financial and social
cost. The reaction to migration is not however simply a matter of the level of government
involved nor a product of distinct groups in society with different interests, but related to
complex geographies, with some regions, cities or towns more welcoming than others.
This points to a sometimes unrecognized dimension of governance, and that is how
migration, migrants and pro-migrant non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also serve
to shape migration policy. To put it differently, we can say that governments are far from
in control of migration. Governments of the richer countries struggle to find a balance
between on one hand, meeting the literal dictates of the Geneva Convention, the 1967
, protocol on refugees and other regional directives (e.g. in the EU), and on the other, the
desire to severely limit the number of asylumseekers and refugees. Nonetheless, it
would be incorrect to assume that these same governments are not actively seeking
immigrants. Paradoxically, governments also recognize the vital contribution of
undocumented migrants to perform work now abandoned by more upwardly mobile
citizens. This need to balance complex objectives has given rise to the doctrine of
‘migration management’, a host of international migration management committees and
organizations, and increasing chatter about the possibilities of a ‘global mobility regime’.
IV. The question of citizenship and belonging for and among migrants.
One of the fundamental desires for many (but certainly by no means all) migrants today
is obtaining legal (or formal) citizenship in a country of immigration. While citizenship in
most countries is not easily obtained, some countries’ citizenship is more easily
obtainable than others, depending on one’s officially recognized ethnic or national
background as well as other characteristics that a migrant may possess (money, skills,
time spent in the country, to name just a few). For migrants, obtaining such citizenship is
only one part of the process of what might be called ‘integration’ within the countries of
immigration. Migrants are also plagued by problems that impact on their substantive
citizenship. Substantive citizenship can be understood as the issues that concern the
daily lives of immigrants: matters of family, finding an adequate place to live and work
etc. Substantive citizenship also concerns a sense of ‘belonging’.
GLOBAL TENDENCIES AND ESTIMATED PATTERNS OF MIGRATION ACROSS THE GLOBE
Worldwide migration has increased in volume from about 173–176 million migrants in 2000 to 244
million in 2015. In total though, international migrants comprised ‘only’ 3.2 per cent of the world’s
population in 2015 (UN 2016), which suggests that migration as a percentage of the world’s total
population has remained relatively stable since 1960. Relative vs. Absoluut groot verschil. The
world’s refugee population is very unevenly distributed. At the end of 2014, a third of the world’s
refugees were hosted by just three countries (Turkey, Pakistan, and Lebanon).
From 2001 to 2014, the number of overseas students more than doubled from about 2.1 million to
about 4.5 million (IIE 2015b), concentration in the Anglophone countries. The US hosts by far the
greatest number of foreign students (some 974,000) but they account for only 5 per cent of the total
student population in the US, compared to the UK (roughly 22 per cent) or Australia (about 21 per
cent).
We have seen the numerical significance of migration in the section above, but we have hardly
spoken of its diversity beyond the vignettes cited in the previous section. Yet with the exception of
maybe Australia, there are grounds for making the case that migrants’ countries of origin have
diversified, while their ‘destinations’ have narrowed, especially since the post-WWII period in the
wealthier countries.
SOCIAL THEORY, SPATIAL CONCEPTS AND THE STUDY OF MIGRATION
I.Social concepts and the study of migration
For many social scientists, the concepts of structures, institutions, agents, and social networks
provide the fundamental, if conventional elements of what is called ‘social theory’. Perhaps the most
contested are structures. Giddens says that structures constrain and enable social practices, but
social practices also shape structures (i.e. rules and resources). This ‘duality of structure’ formed part
of what he calls ‘structuration theory’.
Returning to the idea of the ‘global economy’ or ‘global capitalism’ above, we will tread a fine line in
this book between on the one hand, viewing global capitalism as a set of forces that has a relatively
fixed architecture and which, we argue, does impel people to migrate from poorer to richer
, countries; and on the other, the idea that the global economy is itself composed of institutions,
individuals, and social networks that make the rules and control resources
Other concept: institutions. Can be organizations. Yet ‘institutions’ might also include less tangible
entities such as marriage, the family, household, and other forms of social arrangements. This brings
us to the third social concept or category that concerns us, namely ‘agents’. By ‘agents’, we mean
human groups (e.g. Moroccan immigrants in a small town in Spain) and individuals (a particular
migrant). Here, agents are not to be understood as the passive “dupes of structural determination”,
they can and do exercise power to shape structures, institutions, other agents, and social networks.
In what degree is discussed further on in this book.
The idea of social networks has become extremely popular in the social sciences and particularly in
migration studies as a way of overcoming ‘dualisms’ such as global/local, and macro/micro, to
connect structures, institutions, and agents, as well as quite simply, to explain migration and
understand immigration. Such networks assume many different forms. The structure and operation
of such networks have been viewed as inadequately theorized for at least two reasons. First, they
miss significant agents and institutions such as employers and employment recruitment agencies
(Goss and Lindquist 1995; Krissman 2005). Second, since social or migrant networks have become
quite dominant in sociological understandings of migration, this has the effect of eclipsing matters of
space. In other words, one might get the impression that migrants are un-problematically connected
across the globe without the impediment of distance or borders. It is for this reason that we divert
our attention now to some spatial concepts.
II.Spatial concepts and the study of migration
In particular, we are motivated by a spatial dilemma created by two seemingly opposed concepts. On
one hand is the problem of taking the nation-state as the starting point or basic lens for analysing
migration issues. This has been variously called ‘embedded nation-statism’ (Taylor 1996), the
‘territorial trap’ (Agnew 1994) or now more commonly ‘methodological nationalism’. d. On the other
hand are the limitations of what might be labelled ‘methodological transnationalism’ in the context
of migration (see e.g. Harney and Baldassar 2007), that is, the emphasis is on the “multiple ties and
interactions linking people or institutions across the border of nation-states”: failed to adequately
conceptualize what ‘national’ means, and how ‘supra-nationalism’ or ‘localism’ figured in shaping
migration and immigration. One solution might be to think in terms of both territories and networks
together. We need a plurality of spatial concepts to understand migration.
Meanings of Space: In short, space has no meaning by itself, and we should therefore speak of ‘socio-
spatial’ relations (Soja 1989), in other words, how space and society interact.
Representation of space vs. space of representation
Representations of space refer to the ‘spaces’ conceived by architects, government officials, urban
planners, and well, authors of books on migration! In contrast, the spaces of representation refer to
people’s lived understanding of space, the vernacular spaces if you will of migrants
Five spatial concepts that are essential to understanding migration:
Place: For humanistic geographers, space is more abstract and more ‘empty’ than place (a
‘place’ of lived experience and a site of meaning). But place may also be simultaneously the
site (or not) of the provision of basic necessities, such as food, clothing, and shelter. It is
common to view place as something more localized – or on a smaller scale than space
Nodes
For Voigt-Graf, nodes refer to “Countries, regions or places that are linked by flows”. As a
vast and long-standing literature on networks now argues, nodes form part of networks in a
‘space of flows’. The important point here is that such nodes are part of networks or the
trajectories of certain migrant groups that can span the globe, but that these nodes are also
real and complex places (cities, towns, neighbourhoods, etc.), in which migrants grow up,
