Introduction: At the Crisis-Migration Crossroads: Scope and Limits

Abstract

Talk about crisis abounds nowadays, frequently conveying meanings that are assumed as a given. When commonplace, undiscriminating, (over)uses of crisis are taken at face value – whether in the realms of politics, economics, or public health – such notion loses analytical power. In this respect, the idea of crisis in connection to migration phenomena can be most revealing because practices and discourses ascribed to the crisis-migration equation may serve specific purposes. For instance, current restrictions on human mobility worldwide enable the wielding of a crisis migration narrative among anti-immigrant groups when certain measures fail to work, namely discretionary immigration procedures, strict border closures, and mass deportations. This introductory chapter offers a framework to problematize rhetorical and non-discursive ways of understanding, and employing, the crisis-migration duet. Through a critical examination of the literature on the topic, the chapter unpacks the complex, and at times uneasy, relationship that is embedded in the migration-crisis nexus; then, it goes on to identify the two approaches that dominate current debates on the matter, namely the crisis of migration and the migration due to crisis perspectives. Contributions in the book offer, to a larger or lesser extent, empirical examples that relate to either approach in the context of Latin America.KeywordsMigration crisisCrisis migrationStructural crisisCrisis-as-juncture