Abstract
AbstractResearch on migration’s internal dynamics has focused on labour migration and drawn heavily on cumulative causation theory. It is often believed that pioneer labour migrants of middling socioeconomic selectivity facilitate the migration of others in their networks by reducing the costs and risks of migration through practical assistance. Expanding migrant networks can allow for labour migration to grow although macrostructural conditions change. For asylum migration in the context of armed conflict, the mechanisms whereby migration grows may very well differ. For one thing, pioneer asylum migrants in such contexts are often social elites. What is the relationship between the movement of these elites and that of subsequent asylum migrants? This article traces the evolution of Iraqi Kurdish asylum migration to Europe from its inception by elite pioneer migrants to its continuation by non-elites, during four decades of altered contextual conditions. The analysis is based on 106 semi-structured interviews with Iraqi Kurdish migrants. An evolving interplay between exogenous and endogenous dynamics is observed, and so are commonalities with the social processes that underpin labour migration. The basic principles of cumulative causation seem to be operating, yet there is little to indicate that established migrants functioned as ‘bridgeheads’ for newcomers. The empirical analysis feeds into a concluding conceptual discussion in which I argue that, compared to labour migration, asylum migration from conflict-affected areas may be relatively less driven by the interpersonal networks that reduce costs and risks, and relatively more driven by what the article coins ‘emulation’, the observational learning of migration.
Highlights
The analysis reveals some sociological commonalities between labour migration and asylum migration
Additional contextual information was elicited from 10 key informant interviews in Iraqi Kurdistan—including high-level officials in the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and organisations working with migrants such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and various NGOs—as well as six return visitors normally resident in the UK and Norway
In this historically grounded analysis of the evolution of Iraqi Kurdish asylum migration to Europe through nearly four decades, the basic principles of cumulative causation seem to be at work
Summary
There was a theoretical omission in their seminal book Reviewing it for Journal of Refugee Studies, Van Hear (1999: 430–1) noted that ‘forced migration and refugee movements do not feature strongly in the text’ and saw this as evidence of the ‘deep, inexplicable and frustrating divide between the nebulous subject areas “migration studies” and “refugee (or forced migration) studies”’. Cumulative causation theory can add theoretical substance to our understanding of asylum migration in the context of armed conflict and sensitise us to its social dynamics and path dependency. This article traces the historical evolution of Iraqi Kurdish asylum migration to Europe since 1974. It deliberately focuses on social dynamics and examines the relationship between the movement of the pioneer migrants who initiated this migration system and the movement of subsequent migrants. As I theorise in the conclusion, asylum migration in the wake of elites may be distinctly emulative
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