Editorial: Migrant Horizons

Abstract

The articles in this issue were first presented at the inter-congress conference of the International Sociological Association Research Committee 31 (Migration) 'From Emigration to Immigration Countries in Europe: New Patterns', which took place in Cerisy-la-Salle, France, in June 2005. Attracted by the conference title and focus, we wanted to explore the implications of a typology that distinguishes and characterizes countries in terms of their emigration or immigration flows. Without denying that migration developed in unprecedented ways in the twentieth century, we wanted to interrogate the ways in which the envisioning of Europe as one of the 'primary regions of immigration in the world' (as stated in the call for papers) impacts on political, economic, cultural and ideological practices in Europe and, more specifically, how it may impact differently in different European countries. How is Europe re(con)figured in terms of migration flows? What does it mean to declare that countries have changed from being spaces of emigration to spaces of immigration? What does it mean to deny that one is any such space? How does it relate to 'new' discourses of national and continental identity and becoming? How do migrants relate to, and negotiate, such narratives? The articles in this issue together interrogate discourses, narratives, imaginings, envisionings and their impact on, and relationship with, political, economic, cultural and ideological practices. Following Foucault (1997, p.68), we could consider how im/migration is conceived as a 'shock' that interrupts established histories of national and continental uninterrupted continuity. In Il faut defendre la societe´, Foucault distinguishes between two types of political functions of historical discourse: one that seeks to tell the story of uninterrupted sovereignty, and one that recounts stories of servitude, domination and exile. While we question Foucault's assumptions about the existence of a unified European history (cf. 1997, p.68 inter alia), we take from his intervention the argument that immigration is presently conceived as interrupting the idea of Europe in unprecedented ways. In this sense, our aim is to interrupt a narrative of a pre-social homogeneous, united and continuous European whole comprising unified national European entities.