Migration and Social Transformation: Interdisciplinary Insights and European Perspectives

Abstract

Over the past few decades both migration policies and practices of migration and mobility have undergone significant changes. This introductory chapter argues for a social-transformation perspective to contextualize and analyze these dynamics. The chapter emphasizes the manifold ways in which migration and borders are linked to changing political-economic constellations, to orders of power and inequality, to political discourses, and to institutional contexts. It introduces the four main parts of this volume that in their interplay reflect the complexity that this understanding entails. First, from this perspective, the analysis of migration requires a profound anchoring in social theory. Second, the social-transformation-approach forces us to take into account shifts in the political regulation of migration and borders. Third, the social-transformation perspective points to dynamic changes of individual migration patterns themselves and to the agency of mobile subjects. Finally, it leads us to consider how both policies and practices of migration are linked to struggles over identity and belonging. Furthermore, the chapter provides insights into manifold ways, in which the chapters collected in this volume, reflect on the European project, which on its part is embedded in profound societal transformation processes.