International Migration Review Research Articles

The Glaring Gap: Undervalued and Unrecognized Knowledges and Expertise in International Migration Research

As we reach the 60th anniversary of the International Migration Review, a key question for those engaged in migration research remains: has migration studies become more inclusive of knowledges and expertise outside the Global North? In short, the answer is no, and both the passage of time and the persistent awareness of this inequality require urgent and immediate action. In this article, we draw on our experiences as first- and second-generation migrant women, and as practitioner-researchers working in the humanitarian sector, to reflect on the significance of undervalued and unrecognized knowledges and expertise on migration research. We share insights from our recent work with the Red Cross Red Crescent Global Migration Lab, an initiative established to conduct migration research that informs humanitarian operations and advocacy, and we reflect on key opportunities and challenges that have impacted our efforts to generate knowledge that is more inclusive of migrants, and of practitioners and researchers from the Global South. In doing so, we highlight the possibility—even if still limited—of doing research that engages more ethically and meaningfully with those whose knowledge and expertise has long been excluded from dominant debates. We do this with a sense of hope and urgency that, by the 70th anniversary of this journal, the landscape of migration research will have changed—as a result of a concerted investment of time, resources and new ways of working—to broaden the questions asked, the objects of study and the methodologies adopted.

The Migration Intersections Grid: An Organizing Framework for Migration Research in and through the Twenty-first Century

For this special issue of the International Migration Review, we develop and provide a comprehensive organizing framework, the Migration Intersections Grid (MIG), to inform and guide migration research in and through the remainder of the twenty-first century. We motivate our work by conducting a high-level scoping review of summaries and syntheses of different directions of travel in migration research over time. Informed by these results, we then identify and describe 12 components that constitute the MIG, which, as we later discuss, is an interactive intersectional organizing framework. Finally, we illustrate the MIG's interactive intersectional nature by applying it to several areas of migration research where a comprehensive organizing framework of this sort is needed to address existing and emerging issues and questions now and in the coming decades.

Towards a global governance of migration? From the 2005 Global Commission on International Migration to the 2022 International Migration Review Forum and beyond

Towards a global governance of migration? From the 2005 Global Commission on International Migration to the 2022 International Migration Review Forum and beyond

The developmental migration state

ABSTRACT What drives some states to liberalise immigration policies while others resist doing so? Why do states expand rights for some migrants and not for others? Building on Hollifield’s [(2004). ‘The Emerging Migration State’. International Migration Review 38 (3): 885–912] theory of the migration state, this article explores how the process of political economic development in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan shaped their citizenship regimes and, later, their immigration policies. We argue that the specific patterns of migration management in East Asian democracies – characterised by partially open borders and discrete institutionalised rights for specific subcategories of migrants – is not a reflection of an incomplete liberal migration state but rather, migration control by (formerly or contemporary) developmental states that have historically prioritised economic development, social stability, and national security over democracy and equality. Based on an analysis of archival, policy, and legal documents collected in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan from 2010 to 2019, this article analyzes the emergence of the ‘developmental migration state’ that correlates migrants’ access to rights and permanent settlement with their utility towards national developmental goals.

Through the Looking-Glass: The IOM Recasting the Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration Narrative at the UN and in West Africa

ABSTRACT The stated aim of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM) is to facilitate ‘safe, orderly and regular migration’. Yet, plain meaning alone fails to reveal who is shaping this formative narrative. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has played a crucial role in the preparatory phase of the GCM and is coordinating its implementation. In this article, we shed light on two out of the IOM’s global roles – a first one of coordinating the United Nations Network on Migration and the other role of organising the first International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) of the GCM. Hence, the IOM’s institutional upgrade leads us to question to what extent the IOM has designed the GCM’s narrative of ‘safe, orderly and regular migration’. Through a non-systematic document analysis of UN and IOM reports and briefs, we find evidence that the IOM adjusts the meaning behind the ‘safe, orderly and regular migration’ depending on whether a global, respectively, regional mandate is at stake. To this end, we investigate the IOM’s activities in West Africa where it faces an increasingly divided mission that lies at the intersection of its global and (trans-) regional roles. A closer look at how the IOM applies the narrative at global and West African levels reveals that it deliberately rearranges the order of the adjectives ‘safe, orderly and regular’ to produce different meanings for different policy purposes. Viewed strategically, we find the IOM generates such word combinations to either pursue its abovementioned multilevel strategy, or to affirm its new position among UN agencies. Hence, one and the same adjective deployed at the global and regional level amounts to a different meaning, with implications for policy attribution. In result, the IOM’s strategy to recast the narrative of ‘safe, regular and orderly migration’ depending on whether it is fulfilling a regional or global role, ultimately leads to greater tension within the IOM as a whole.

Climate Induced Migration of Wolof Farmers Into Foni Bondali District, Gambia

Adger, W.N., Kelly, P.M., Winkels, A., Huy, L.Q. and Locke, C. (2002). Migration, remittances, livelihood trajectories, and social resilience. AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment, Vol. 31 No. 4, p. 358-366. Alagie Bah. (2018). Farmers Awareness and Adaptation to Climate Change in Kaffrine Region of Senegal. German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the West African Science Service Centre in Climate Change and Adapted Land Use Bhatta, G.D., Aggarwal, P.K., Kristjanson, P. and Shrivastava, A.K. (2016). Climatic and non climatic factors influencing changing agricultural practices across different rainfallregimes in South Asia”, Current Science Vol. 110 No. 7, p. 1272. Census of the Gambia (2014). Government of the Gambia, Banjul Chandan Kumar, Jha, Vijaya Gupta, Utpal Chattopadhyay, Binilkumar and Amarayil Sreeraman. (2017). Migration as adaptation strategy to cope with climate change: A study of farmers’ migration in rural India. International Journal of Climate ChangeStrategies and Management. Volume 10:1 Cho Renee. (2021). Climate Migration: An Impending Global Challenge. Columbia ClimateSchool. Climate, Earth and Society. Climate of Foni Bondali District (2022). Ministry of Water Resources, Banjul, Gambia. Conway, D. and Cohen, J.H. (1998). Consequences of migration and remittances for Mexicantransnational communities. Economic Geography, Vol. 74 No. 1, pp. 26-44. Bradatan, C. and Hayhoe, K. (2013). Migration and Climate change in Senegal. Texas Tech University De Haan, A., Brock, K. and Coulibaly, N. (2002). Migration, livelihoods and institutions:contrasting patterns of migration in Mali. Journal of Development Studies. Vol. 38 No. 5, pp. 37-58. De Haas, H. (2010), Migration and development: a theoretical perspective1. The InternationalMigration Review. Vol. 44 No. 1, pp. 227-264. Jha, C.K., Gupta, V., Chattopadhyay, U. and Amarayil Sreeraman, B. (2018). Migration as adaptation strategy to cope with climate change: A study of farmers’ migration in rural India. International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management. Vol. 10 No.1, pp. 121-141. Massey, D.S., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., Pellegrino, A. and Taylor, J.E. (1993).Theories of international migration: a review and appraisal. Population and Development. Review. Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 431-466. Oli Brown. (2007). Fighting Climate Change: Human solidarity in a divided world. Human Development Report 2007/2008. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/climate-forced-migration.pdf Science for Environment Policy. (2015). Migration in response to environmental change. European Commission. Thematic Issue 51. Taylor, E.J. (1999). The new economics of labour migration and the role of remittances in the migration Process. International Migration (Geneva, Switzerland). Vol. 37 No. 1, pp. 63-88. Woodruff, C. and Zenteno, R. (2007). Migration networks and microenterprises in Mexico. Journal of Development Economics. Vol. 82 No. 2, pp. 509-528.

A Systems ‘Analysis of Latine Education in Massachusetts: A Call for Critical Intercultural Integration

AbstractDespite attending schools in a state internationally recognized for innovation, research and education, Latine students in Massachusetts, USA continue to disproportionately experience discrimination, economic segregation, health disparities and racial inequities that have shaped their schooling experiences and outcomes across the educational pipeline (Colón, “We are beautiful people”: The schooling experiences of Puerto Rican school‐aged mothers [PhD Thesis]. Tufts University, 2019). Grounded in critical analysis of intercultural education towards social justice (Pica‐Smith et al., Social justice education in European multi‐ethnic schools. Addressing the goals of intercultural education. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, London, 2019), this paper critically examines publicly available data to highlight barriers, opportunities and the need for educational researchers, policymakers and administrators to collectively reimagine an educational project that attends to the needs of this population. In the context of the unyielding disparate impact of COVID‐19, we argue that more ever, this reimagination needs to be grounded in the dynamic conception of culture (Levitt et al., International Migration Review, 38, 1002, 2004), intercultural perspectives on education that are based on critical notions of intergroup contact, dialogue and exchange (Allport, Forms and techniques of altruistic and spiritual growth: a symposium, 1954, 367; Council of Europe, White paper on intercultural dialogue. Living together as equals in dignity, Strasburgo, 2008) and multidimensional notion of belonging at the micro and macro levels for a more just education writ large.

Mass Migrations And The Emerging Socio-Political Constructs Of Identity, Interest And Security In Hosts State

Mass Migrations And The Emerging Socio-Political Constructs Of Identity, Interest And Security In Hosts State

Mobile Phone Network and Migration: Evidence From Myanmar

This International Migration Review research note explores the effect of the expansion of mobile phone networks on migration decisions in Myanmar. Building on the work of scholars in economics, the empirical strategy uses variation in lightning frequency across space as an instrumental variable for the expansion of mobile phone networks. Our results suggest that villages with longer exposure to mobile phone networks exhibit reductions in out-migration. Specifically, an increase of one standard deviation in the time exposed to mobile phone networks diminishes the probability that household members migrate by 17 percent. We find empirical evidence suggesting that such findings are driven by the positive effects of mobile phone networks on labor market outcomes and the perceived well-being of individuals.

Dead papers: migrant ‘illegality’, city brokers, and the dilemma of exit for unauthorised African migrants in Delhi

ABSTRACT Through the empirical optic of ‘dead papers’, this article highlights the lived complexities of documentary regimes in Global South contexts by exploring strategies and responses to the agency of migration documentation that are past their expiry date. Drawing upon 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork with African migrants and city-based actors such as property brokers conducted in two unplanned settlements of Delhi between 2015 and 2017, it focusses on the intersections between paperwork, im/mobility, and emergent ‘migration infrastructures’ (Xiang, Biao, and Johan Lindquist. 2014. “Migration Infrastructure.” International Migration Review 48 (1): 122–148) mediating the impermanent trajectories of racialised and legally precarious African migrants in Delhi. It argues that colonial era laws that criminalise visa transgressions necessitate flexible strategies of urban navigation for unauthorised migrants and substantially complicate their capacity to return to home contexts. In this way, the article highlights the role played by property brokers as situated intermediaries critical to urban transformations, whose entrepreneurial ‘connections’ are often instrumental in the facilitation of mobility within the city and beyond. In tracing the ways in which the mediations of such localised migration infrastructures regulate broader processes of transnational migration, the article considers ‘new’ entanglements between migrants and city actors as integral to a conceptualisation of exit practices for unauthorised migrants, beyond binary oppositions of forced/voluntary movement.

Popular Attitudes Toward the Distribution of Vaccines Against COVID‐19: The Swiss Case

With the arrival of vaccines against the novel coronavirus in late 2020, the issue of how vaccines should be distributed and which groups should be prioritized has become salient. We study popular attitudes toward the distribution of COVID‐19 vaccines and how these have changed over the course of the pandemic in Switzerland, drawing on data from two rounds of an original public opinion survey conducted in the spring and winter of 2020. We find that the public supports prioritizing vulnerable groups such as health care workers or the elderly. We also find a notable degree of cross‐generational solidarity: younger age cohorts prioritize the elderly, while older groups prioritize (typically younger) health care workers. We then examine whether this finding is not in fact driven by vaccine hesitancy. This is not the case for older age groups, whose solidarity thus seems to be genuine. Vaccine hesitancy is an issue among younger groups, however.

4 Migration research and analysis: Growth, reach and recent contributions

4 Migration research and analysis: Growth, reach and recent contributions

Refugees’ Dreams of the Past, Projected into the Future

Refugees’ Dreams of the Past, Projected into the Future

We are at Full Capacity": Social care workers persisting through work-related stress in a new immigrant settlement context in the United States.

Cities without a prior established history of Latina/o migration are experiencing the fastest rate of growth in new immigrants in the United States (Wainer, A tale of two cities (and a town): Immigrants in the Rust Belt, 2013; Lichter & Johnson, Immigrant gateways and Hispanic migration to new destinations. International Migration Review, 43, 496, 2009). These new immigrant settlement cities experience the challenge of adapting their social care context to become more responsive to the needs of immigrants. Yet as cities and social care organisations struggle to keep up with the "lag" time in the availability of culturally and linguistically responsive resources and services, social care providers often work in conditions of scarcity in a social care context that is often lacking in its ability to fully respond to the needs of immigrants. Literature indicates that such conditions of scarcity can lead to work related stress, burn-out, and can have a negative impact on the quality of services delivered by social care workers. Yet little is known regarding social care providers' motivations and responses to work stress; and how providers may positively respond and persist in their jobs despite such stressors. This study conducted in the new immigrant settlement city of Baltimore from 2014 to 2016, utilises semi-structured interviews to qualitatively explore the personal motivational beliefs, workplace and demographic factors associated with buffering stress and frustration among social care workers in a new immigrant settlement city (N=29). Findings highlight important motivational and work-related factors that appear to minimise the impact of stress and frustration for social care providers and can be used in the development of burn-out interventions as well as improving quality of services for vulnerable populations such as, immigrants, especially in low-resource new immigrant settlement contexts.

Refugee Settlement in New Brunswick

Refugees who try to settle in sparsely populated areas often leave these areas for major metropolitan areas within a few years of arrival in Canada. The refugees often feel discouraged by the lack of satisfactory employment possibilities. If refugees settle in a rural area longer than 2 years, however, they are likely to remain there long-term (Carter et. al., International Journal of Migration and Integration 9:161-183, 2008; Donato et al., Rural Sociology 72:537-559, 2007; Fonseca, Population, Space and Place 14:525-535, 2008; Hugo, Population, Space and Place 14:553-571, 2008; Krahn et al., International Migration Review 39:872-894, 2005). For New Brunswick, this statistic is particularly important. New Brunswick is the only province in Canada with a declining population, and this demographic situation deeply worries the provincial government (Government of New Brunswick 2014). The province of New Brunswick sees refugee reception as a way to grow the population. However, the province suffers from high unemployment rates, which brings the issue of refugee retention into sharp focus for the region. This paper investigates the extent to which refugee experiences of settlement in New Brunswick correspond with evidence about the barriers and opportunities found in research regarding immigration settlement in rural communities and welcoming communities in other areas of the country. It then details the evidence collected from 40 refugee respondents in New Brunswick through semi-structured interviews (in Fredericton, Moncton, and Saint John) and one focus group (in Fredericton). The respondents identified several key systematic problems that impeded their settlement in the province, as well as suggested solutions to these problems.

Chapter 6 – Mobility, migration and transnational connectivity

Chapter 6 – Mobility, migration and transnational connectivity

Chapter 10 – Migrants and cities: Stepping beyond world migration report 2015

Chapter 10 – Migrants and cities: Stepping beyond world migration report 2015

Chapter 8 – Media reporting of migrants and migration

Chapter 8 – Media reporting of migrants and migration

The disinterested state: negative diasporic policy as an expression of state inclusion and national exclusion

ABSTRACTThis article engages with the understudied phenomenon of the ‘disinterested, denouncing’ diaspora state (Levitt, P., and N. G. Schiller. 2004. “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society.” International Migration Review 38 (3): 1002–1039. doi:10.1111/j.1747-7379.2004.tb00227.x) or ‘indifferent’ diaspora state (Ragazzi, F. 2009. “Governing Diasporas.” International Political Sociology 3 (4): 378–397. doi:10.1111/j.1749-5687.2009.00082.x). Focusing on U.S. citizens abroad, the article argues that there is negative diasporic outreach on the part of the state – ‘disinterested’ from the state's perspective, but ‘denouncing’ from that of the diaspora. Negative diasporic outreach is exemplified by the 2010 FATCA legislation, which sought to root out tax evaders resident in the U.S., but has, instead, affected millions of American emigrants through increased financial control and the repercussions of those policies, and has resulted in sharply higher citizenship renunciation figures. Impact on an American diaspora was not considered in the law's proposal, debate and passage into law. Second, the article argues that this negative diasporic outreach, in combination with the continued facilitation of the right to vote, is a reflection of the inclusion of these American emigrants in the American state, but their simultaneous exclusion from the American nation.

(Im)mobility and Mediterranean migrations: journeys ‘between the pleasures of wealth and the desires of the poor’

ABSTRACTForegrounding (im)mobility to engage with experiences of human displacement, this study seeks to disrupt and set a change of emphasis in current debates about migration in literary and cultural studies. It engages with Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits [2005. Tangier: Altopress, Moroccan Cultural Institute] to explore the novel’s representation of Morocco-Europe migration, the journeys between what Badiou aptly defines as ‘the pleasures of wealth and the desires of the poor’ [2008. “The Communist Hypothesis.” New Left Review 49: 29–42]. Through reading the stories of Murad and Halima – the two characters in the novel who fail to make it into Europe – this paper draws on anthropological studies of contemporary migration and examines the ways in which failure and (im)mobility stimulate fruitful transformations. It explores the complexities at the heart of migratory projects and the role that both mobility and immobility play in shaping the characters’ lives, and thereby problematises understandings of migration which privilege mobility and border-crossing. A focus on immobility reveals cultural and social processes which would otherwise remain obscured by an increased focus on narratives of mobility; through an insight into experiences of displacement beyond mere movement, this paper identifies acts of resistance, empowerment and agency activated by what Carling calls forced, ‘involuntary immobility’ [2002. “Migration Control and Migration Fatalities at the Spanish-African Borders.” International Migration Review 41 (2): 316–343].