Politics Of Migration Research Articles

MIGRATION SITUATION AND SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF MIGRANTS IN THE NORTHWESTERN FEDERAL DISTRICT

It is necessary to take into account many factors while creating a migration politics; one should understand the specifics of the territories involved in migration exchange, and study the migrants themselves. The Northwestern Federal District includes eleven regions and each is absolutely unique. The article presents the results of the migration situation analysis of the NWFD and in its regions: the migration growth and the number of departures per 1000 arrivals were considered. The regions can be divided into two groups: regions where there is a decrease in migration (Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Murmansk regions) and regions where is an increase in migration (Saint-Petersburg, NAO, Pskov, Novgorod, Kaliningrad, Leningrad regions). For a better understanding of the migration situation in the regions of the NWFD, we analyzed data on the number of departures per 1000 arrivals. As a result, the regions of the NWFD were divided into three groups: regions where the number of departures is less than the number of arrivals (Leningrad, Kaliningrad, Novgorod, Pskov regions, NAO and St. Petersburg); regions where the number of departures is greater than the number of arrivals (Vologda, Murmansk regions and the Komi Republic); regions where the number of departures is equal to the number of arrivals (the Republic of Karelia and the Arkhangelsk region (without the NAO)). An attempt was also made to compile a socio-demographic portrait of a migrant from the NWFD. We took into account the gender, age and educational characteristics of migrants. The most dynamically moving groups of the population, both among incoming and outgoing migrants, are people of working age, women with higher education. The analysis showed that, in general, the NWFD is attractive for migrants, but this statement could not be used for all regions. Delving into the specifics of the regions, it becomes clear that not all subjects of the district are attractive, and these regions attract migrants with different socio-demographic characteristics.

The geopolitics of international higher education prior and during Covid-19: a decolonial feminist analysis

ABSTRACT Thinking with four non-EU academic migrants from the global South, and their experiences of working/studying or starting to work/study during the Covid-19 pandemic, we are unravelling the current geopolitics of the internationalised higher education in the global North. Our central argument is that Covid-19 has not simply affected the national and global politics of migration, including international academic migration, but it has also worked as a magnifying glass of the historically established inequalities sustained and perpetuated by physical, biomedical and epistemic borders. Most importantly, we are not following the rather obvious theoretical route of biopolitics while analysing the internationalisation of higher education in relation to the Covid-19 health crisis and migration politics. Instead, we are looking at this geo-biopolitical and epistemic assemblage through a decolonial lens. In doing so, we want to contribute with our and our interviewees’ reflections to the ongoing discussion on what currently counts as ‘internationalisation’ in higher education, pointing out the colonial and neoliberal foundations of it, and the possibilities of aligning it with the efforts of decolonising the university.

Migration Crisis and Conspiracy in Kazuo Ishiguro

ABSTRACT Migration and its crises constitute an insistent theme in Kazuo Ishiguro’s fiction, where – as in real recent history – the politics of migration have a dangerously close relationship with conspiracy narratives. At the heart of such narratives lies the fetishised ideal of the organic, original home and “homeland”: conspiracist paranoia is bound up in desire for epistemological security, responding to the traumatic rifts that migrations expose in a world torn between resurgent nationalisms and fraught globalisations. This essay explores how Ishiguro’s characters register a series of psycho-cultural functions for conspiracy theory that are fundamental to modern and contemporary migration crises, their causes, and their brutal consequences. I argue that Ishiguro’s interrogation of his own protagonists’ narratives of migration alongside international crisis, in novels including A Pale View of Hills, The Remains of the Day, and When We Were Orphans, forms a subtle intervention against the power of conspiricist thought.

Reading Kazuo Ishiguro in Times of Crisis

ABSTRACT International crises are central to Kazuo Ishiguro's work. This introduction situates Ishiguro alongside contemporary global emergencies, including the COVD-19 pandemic, climate change, and reactions to emancipatory movements. It suggests that Ishiguro's work interrogates ‘crisis' by confronting his characters with both individual and collective crises, a theme explored in Catherine Charlwood's essay here. It shows how Ishiguro's work indirectly relates to the vast health crisis of COVID-19, which Sebastian Groes explores in his essay on empathy, (robot) ethics, digital well-being, and inequality. Connected to the pandemic, the introduction traces how Ishiguro's writing evidences growing concern for the climate crisis. The politics of migration are a key theme in Ishiguro: here Dominic Dean explores their longstanding and dangerous relationship with conspiracy theories, while Ivan Stacy, Melinda Dabis and Richard Robinson all connect Ishiguro to anxieties over resurgent nationalisms, cosmopolitan internationalisms, and complex transnationalisms. This introduction sets out how the essays in this Special Issue collectively explore the ethical difficulties in Ishiguro's crisis narratives, their refusals of easily satisfying resolutions, and their implicit critique of crisis frameworks for understanding political and historical problems. Sharply distinct from passivity or disinterest, Ishiguro’s work elicits an attitude of humility against apparently perpetual, end-dominated crises.

European Politics towards Muslim-Migrants

Book review: Annemarie Profanter, Elena Maestri (2021). Migration and Integration Challenges of Muslim Immigrants in Europe. Series Title: Politics of Citizenship and Migration. Palgrave Macmillan. 289 p. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-75626-0

The Bible in Migration Politics in Northern Europe

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States Interests and the Politics of Migration

The establishment of Global Compact for Migration (GCM) was considered as the first important step for the international community to comprehensively address the issue of global migration. However, there are certain objectives within the compact that is considered as vague and unfavourable by several states. Previous studies have explored the advantages and disadvantages of GCM but did not address the specific argumentation that creates disagreements between states. This paper uses the theoretical approach from realist perspective to investigate how certain stipulations within the compact are in contrary to certain actors’ interests, specifically the interests of key state actors in global migration governance. Using qualitative methodology, the analysis began by exploring stances of notable states that opposes the compact. The findings discovered that the GCM failed to recognise the core problem of migration itself which is the management of regular and irregular migrants. The result of the study indicates that states’ rejection towards the Global Compact for Migration are mainly driven by the incompatibility of the compact’s goals and objectives with their national interest, particularly concerning sovereignty and national security.

Reorganization of borders, migrant workers, and the coloniality of power

ABSTRACT In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries introduced measures to restrict mobility, both cross-border and internal. Nevertheless, people employed in certain sectors and designated as ‘essential workers’ were allowed to bypass these mobility restrictions. In this article, I take essential workers’ seemingly paradoxical assemblage of rights and value as a fruitful entry point to scrutinize both the tensions present in citizenship arrangements governing mobility and people and the contradictions of today’s labor and migration politics. Expanding on these contradictions, I argue that what appear to be ambiguities of citizenship – ambiguities which became more visible during the COVID pandemic – can actually be seen as contradictions inherent to citizenship itself. These ambiguities and contradictions reveal the coloniality in today’s nation states and their citizenship regimes. In short, we can relate them to colonial forms of power producing governable subjects and regulating mobility closely connected to processes of accumulation.

“Everything / we husband is always shedding”: intimacy, distance, and the politics of migration in Ailbhe Darcy’s Insistence

ABSTRACT Ailbhe Darcy’s Insistence observes both the importance of intimacy and the fundamental irreducibility at the heart of intimacy. The collection highlights family ties, but it also concedes that there remains a strangeness at the core of those ties: sometimes “kin insists,” sometimes the child feels less “son” than uncanny “monster.” Darcy then inverts this point: if there is something foreign about our kin, we might also find kinship with beings whom we would otherwise consider foreign. Darcy’s primary concerns here are refugeeism (especially the European migrant crisis) and ecological devastation. On the former point, Insistence imagines transnational community, asking us to move beyond pity and towards motivating empathy for displaced peoples. On the latter, Darcy illuminates our interspecies interrelationships, reminding us that even our planet’s most seemingly alien creatures (cockroaches; silverfish) are the cohabitants of our shared biosphere. Ultimately, Insistence develops a deep ethic of care for all living beings.

Dramatizing Displacement in Israel

Dramatizing Displacement in Israel Chen Alon (bio) and Sonja Kuftinec (bio) As coauthors, we have been in dialogue about theatre and nation-formation for close to two decades. We enter this dialogue from perspectives of ancestral displacement that index the flux of national borders, identities, and movements. In Kuftinec's Croatian family, this migration pattern traced economic opportunity to the United States, where assimilation into the dominant culture was eased by a passage into whiteness. For Alon's grandfather, migration from Europe to Israel offered asylum from the Holocaust. As Zionists, Alon's family felt saved by a return to their "homeland"; serving in the Israeli Defense Force to guard the Jewish "shelter" became a point of generational duty. But serving in the army in Occupied Palestinian territory eventually radicalized Alon. He began to see Israel not only as a safe haven, but also as a colonizing state, one which did not fully recognize Palestinian human rights. He created alliances with Palestinian ex-combatants, cofounding Combatants for Peace in 2005 (cfpeace.org). Shared rituals, theatre, and storytelling became key tools in rehumanization and dialogue, as well as prompting nonviolent direct action resisting Israeli Occupation. These practices of animating dialogue and engaging direct action—grounded in personal stories and collective analysis—informed later activist theatre work with African asylumseekers in Israel. Israel has a complicated relationship with the politics of migration and the embrace of asylumseekers. On the one hand, the state openly welcomes the diasporic return of Jewish refugees to their "homeland." Israel also strongly supported the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, advocating for global asylum. On the other, Israel struggles to navigate its relationship with the Palestinian diaspora, demands for return to (sometimes erased) ancestral communities, and with welcoming African asylum-seekers from areas such as Eritrea and Sudan. We focus in this essay on migration, movement, and polarization in Israel, with particular attention to refugees and asylum-seekers. We examine how vectors of migration align with ethno-national imaginaries—both iterated and challenged through theatre. We first sketch out the emergence of Israel as a state and as a Jewish refuge, while naming the tensions that mark its existence. We then review recent scholarship about Hebrew and Arab-language theatre that structures the social identity of the Zionist subject and reflects on the status of the refugee in Israel more broadly. Finally, we outline adaptations of Theatre of the Oppressed with Holot Theatre (2014–22). This case study of polarized alliances between African asylum-seekers and Israeli citizens models how theatre can reflect and shift the dynamics of migration and belonging, activating ethical citizenship beyond national identity. Establishing Israel as a State of Jewish Refuge The narrative of migration in and around the state of Israel is itself a polarized one, featuring two main historiographic accountings, both oriented around exile and return. For the purposes of this essay, we focus on a timeline beginning with Jewish immigration in the late nineteenth century, prompted by organized massacres (pogroms) in Eastern Europe, and further migration in the 1930s and '40s around the Holocaust. This migration pattern aligns Judaism with asylum-seeking and European nationalism. In the nineteenth century, Jewish intellectuals in Europe began to understand [End Page 61] themselves as a nation rather than only as a religion (Berkowitz 84–85). Zionism emerged as a cultural framing for potential Jewish statehood in an Israeli "homeland," then known as Palestine, part of the Ottoman Empire and later British Mandate. Under the pressure of Jewish migration following the Holocaust, in November 1947 the United Nations proposed the creation of two independent states: Israel and Palestine. The Arab world refused to take part in this division, which they saw as an illegal land grab by newly arrived immigrants. The UN affirmed Israeli statehood in May 1948 and, from Israel's perspective, the Arab world attacked and Israel defended itself through the Independence War, in which Arab villagers "ran away" from their homes. In contrast, Palestinians frame the 1948 exodus as the nakba (catastrophe), a violent expulsion of natives by colonial settlers. In 1967, Israel fought allied Arab forces resulting in the occupation of Palestinian land and residents in the Gaza Strip and West...

Theorising migration politics: do political regimes matter?

Research on the politics of migration has so far largely produced context-bound analyses that tie specific migration policies to specific political regimes. This introduction charts existing migration research, including its gaps and biases, and introduces new avenues for empirically grounded theory-building. We draw upon the rich collection of empirical cases assembled in this volume to demonstrate that political regimes – be they liberal or illiberal, democratic or authoritarian – do not strictly and mechanically determine migration politics. Instead, we argue that migration politics and political regimes co-produce each other. Studies of migration politics in Argentina, Tunisia, Japan and South Korea, the United States and Australia, the Philippines, China, and Saudi Arabia showcase the imbrication of migration politics with broader dynamics of regime change, state formation and nation-state ideology, and dissect the role of civil society, legal actors, employers, and international norms across democratic and un-democratic contexts. They reveal unexpected similarities in migration policies in different political regimes at a time when states across the globe are increasingly adopting illiberal practices and policies. Ultimately, we suggest that, beyond contextual variations, migration politics offers an ideal vantage point for understanding state transformations and political changes around the world.

Cities and the Contentious Politics of Migration

Cities and the Contentious Politics of Migration

Migration, development and depoliticization in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) was adopted in 2018 under the auspices of the United Nations. In a context in which the global governance of international migration remains weak, and in which states regularly confront migration/refugee crises, the GCM provides an internationally agreed-upon assessment of the political issues raised by international migration and identifies non-binding policy recommendations regarding how governments should address them. This article analyses the content of the GCM in light of the migration-related discussions at the international level since the 1990s. It critically examines its core arguments and argues that, because of the diverging worldviews and interests among governments and other stakeholders, the GCM is marked by major internal contradictions. This results into a depoliticized document and in a political language that hides the dilemmas raised by migration politics. There is therefore little consensus among states regarding the nature of migration and the political responses to govern the transnational mobility of people.

Mediterranean migration governance and the role of the Italian coast guard: varying political understandings of maritime operations in the 2010s

ABSTRACT Situated on the EU’s Mediterranean borders, Italy provides the setting for a case study aimed at understanding Mediterranean migration governance in the 2010s. We adopt an actor-centred approach to explore how the Italian coast guard’s humanitarian agency was constrained and reshaped in a changed environment. We draw upon the sense-making of Italy’s political leaders and its impact on the humanitarian practices of the Italian coast guard. Migration politics is marked by political discourses framing interests and priorities according to the sense-making of the political leadership. In the last decade, Italian political leaders have constructed and reconstructed discourses on migration, providing a different understanding of the technical capacity to respond to crisis situations. In a few years, the Mare Nostrum operation was dismantled and replaced by a restrictive ‘closed-ports’ strategy to guarantee border control. Humanitarian operations at sea, a pillar of migration governance in the mid-2010s, were de facto constrained. Focusing on the pivotal role of the Italian coast guard in conducting maritime operations, we explain why its role of vanguard in developing humanitarian practices was marginalized over time.

Climate refugees: A useful concept? Towards an alternative vocabulary of ecological displacement

Against the background of climate scepticism and raging anti-immigrant sentiments across Europe, the politics of climate change and the politics of migration are fraught with tension. The two converge over discussions about ‘climate refugees’. But what merit does the term ‘climate refugee’ have, and are there potential problems associated with it? This article pays attention to how racialised discourses underwrite the concept of climate refugees in ways that further exclude already marginalised populations. In place of ‘climate refugees’, it proposes ‘ecological displacement’ as a notion which stresses how and why people are displaced within or across borders. While, indeed, anthropogenic climate change is a real threat to the livelihoods of humans (among other species), it is not the only environmental driver of displacement. By using the term ‘ecology’, this article argues that we allow for a description which encompasses other potential displacement drivers beyond climate change, such as volcanic eruptions, landslides, and political violence. Citing ‘displacement’ makes the term available to populations who are displaced by damaged ecologies both within and across borders, in and outside of Europe. The notion of ‘ecological displacement’ and ‘ecologically displaced people’ tries to rehumanise those carrying the heaviest social and climate burdens on a burning planet.

Emma Carmel, Katharina Lenner, Regine Paul (eds.), Handbook on the Governance and Politics of Migration (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2021)

The study of migration governance requires a global and interdisciplinary framework of analysis. The editors of the “Handbook of the Governance and Politics of Migration” bring together multifaceted perspectives to further understanding on how migration is governed and politicized today. This anthology is edited by Emma Carmel, an Associate Professors in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath, UK, Katharina Lenner, Assistant Professor at the same department, and Regine Paul who is an Associate Professor of Comparative Policy Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. The book is divided into six sections comprising “Conceptualising the Politics and Governance of Migration”, “The Politics of Categorising Migration”, “Institutions and Regimes of Migration Governance”, “Spaces of Migration Governance”, “Processes and Practices of Migration Governance”, and “Contesting Migration Governance”.

Migráció és Kelet-Európa: Az elképzelt nemzet kihívásai

Ruxandra Trandafoiu: The Politics of Migration and Diaspora in Eastern Europe. Media, Public Discourse and Policy. Routledge, 2022.

Torturing environments and multiple injuries in Mexican migration detention

Mexico’s role in the US-Central American migration regime is threefold: not only is it a country of origin, and a transit country, but also increasingly becoming a receiving country for migrants who flee from violence, insecurity and poverty. The Mexican state responds with detention enforcement. Clinical research usually puts emphasise on the negative impact of detention enforcement on the detainees‘ mental health. Yet, it often disregards the spatial configurations of detention centres and their socio-political context. This study aims to fill this gap by analysing how such factors create harmful environments that affect both the detainees‘ mental health and their social life in Mexico’s migration detention centres. The study’s mixed method approach builds on semi-structured interviews with a sample of N = 56 migrants of diverse nationalities and varying socioeconomic status of whom 22 were still detained while 34 had been released. The interviews include the Torturing Environment Scale (TES), a novel instrument for the analysis of detention environments, as well as clinical psychological measures of emotional distress. Additional n = 10 in-depth interviews with human rights advocates to explore the interconnections between the detention environments, their impact on mental health, and Mexican migration politics. Facultative counter-mappings of the detention centres complement the interviews. Without exception, all interviews of detainees underline that the manipulation of detention conditions creates torturing environments that cause harm to basic physiological and psychological needs. A comparison between detained vs. released interviewees revealed lasting feelings of fear and shame. The study emphasises that immigration detention immobilises migrants in a necropolitical limbo, which destroys hope as much as human integrity. It indicates that detention is part of deterrence politics, which perpetuates harm and inequality through detention and deportation. Highlighting structural human rights violations, the findings stress the need to review current migration policies.

The Balkan Route (and Its Afterlife): The New Normal in the European Politics of Migration

ABSTRACT This article examines the political and policy-related developments regarding the Balkan Route intended both as a migration path and as a conceptual node where both symbolic and physical re-bordering processes converge. The article argues that these two processes represent the foundation on which the sum of the policies to address migration issues enacted in the last years are based: specific constructions of migrants and asylum seekers as well as of the Balkan region have shaped policies to push back migrants, eventually halting mobility and implementing containment in formal and informal camps in the region. This is not the result of challenges connected to ‘crises’ and ‘emergencies’, but rather the intended aim of both EU and non-EU national governments in the absence of more far-reaching strategies on migration and integration. These developments represent the political background of vulnerability and precariousness experienced by stranded migrants along the Balkan Route.

Refusing Refusal: The Struggles of Stateless Palestinians in the Swedish Migration Regime

This article explores the ways in which contemporary Swedish migration politics are manifested and performed in relation to stateless Palestinians. A qualitative case study shows how the migration regime of Sweden aggravates conditions of statelessness through managerial aspects of categorisations, temporalities, passivisation and spatialities. The article illustrates how securitised migration politics are detrimental to how statelessness is lived and experienced but also that stateless migrants actively engage with this regime in order to resist, protest and achieve change. Using counter-conduct as a prism through which to analyse migrant resistance, the article further explores how stateless migrants do not passively submit themselves to the outcome of penalising regimes, but struggle for a right of presence.