There is a massive amount of empirical material on (and burgeoning theoretical and conceptual approaches to) migration, but there remains a lack of a theoretical framework that can easily be applied empirically to understanding it as an ongoing process. However, various authors are beginning to suggest a structuration theory of practice might provide a fruitful way forward, especially when the theory is used critically with attempts to address the body of criticism directed towards it. This paper draws from several threads in practice theory to establish a set of useful concepts that can be applied empirically when employing practice theory as a framework for migration. I talk of \u2018practice theory\u2019 in recognition of Bourdieu\u2019s work and acknowledgement of the difficulties in the way \u2018structuration\u2019 has been understood. A key difficulty with Giddens\u2019 structuration theory is its over-emphasis on agency and its inability to define concepts through which to empirically identify and describe structures as external, causal, and real. This paper proposes the concept of emergence as a way out of this impasse, enabling the identification of structures and actions and their interaction over time, in the context of an empirical case. The second half of the paper illustrates how practice theory can be employed to understand the structuration processes involved in a given migration trend: British migration to Spain\u2019s coasts since the 1970s.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper will take its cue from recent work in international migration, particularly the writings of Ewa Morawska and Karen O\u2019Reilly, that has explicitly placed structuration theory at its heart in analysing issues of causality. While firmly endorsing this work, I argue that it is possible to further strengthen the use of structuration in international migration studies by paying more attention to certain tenets of strong structuration theory (SST), synthesised with aspects of critical realism. This entails closer engagement with issues of epistemology and methodology, and also a more fine-grained approach to ontological concepts, the relationships between them, and their use in empirical analysis. The device of a \u2018theorised contextual frame\u2019 is introduced as a reference point that can be used to systematically evaluate the status and adequacy of individual migration studies. The device combines attention to the structural context or field relevant to a particular migration issue with the systematic focus demanded by a specific research question or objective. In sketching out the structural context, I draw out the relationship between critical realism\u2019s emphasis on plural causal mechanisms or \u2018planes of analysis\u2019, and strong structuration theory\u2019s emphasis on clusters of position-practice relations. The device is also designed to highlight the phenomenological and interpretative dimensions within particular causal processes, while insisting that such dimensions need to be grounded within the relevant structural aspects of the contextual frame. Two ideal types of \u2018hermeneutic-structural\u2019 text \u2013 contextualising and floating \u2013 are presented to help sharpen a sense of how to employ the theoretical model to heighten critical awareness of the status and quality of particular research accounts of international migration. Finally, I conduct a close analysis of Ewa Morawska\u2019s recent structuration-inspired account of large-scale migration across the Atlantic from Polish villages in the longue dur\u00e9e from the 1870s to the 1930s. This is undertaken in order to illustrate, clarify and exemplify the strengths of the approach.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper explores the changing relationship between the people of North-Western Zambia and the nearby border with Angola, focusing on the period as Angola has moved from war to peace. Drawing on research conducted between 1996 and 2010, the paper examines how people\u2019s interactions with the border have changed, focusing on their cross-border livelihoods, identities and mobility. With the end of the war and the rehabilitation of the formal border crossing, legal restrictions and practical obstacles to movement have relaxed; at the same time, the conventions \u2013 based on informal, \u2018illicit\u2019 understandings between local officials and inhabitants on both sides of the border \u2013 that operated for many years have been undermined. Hence, there has simultaneously been both an \u2018opening\u2019 and \u2018closing\u2019 of the border. Moreover, the breaking of these conventions since the end of the war has reduced the size of the zone of informal exchange and hybridity, or borderlands.
\n \n\n \n \nWe argue that social media are not only new communication channels in migration networks, but that they actively transform the nature of these networks and thereby facilitate migration. Despite some limitations stemming from the \u2018digital divide\u2019 and the reduced trustworthiness of virtual ties, qualitative data reveal four relevant functions of social media that facilitate international migration. First, social media enhance the possibilities of maintaining strong ties with family and friends. Second, they are used to address weak ties that are relevant to organizing the process of migration and integration. Third, social media establish a new infrastructure consisting of latent ties. Fourth, they offer a rich source of insider knowledge on migration that is discrete and unofficial. This makes potential migrants \u2018streetwise\u2019 with regard to the undertaking of migration. Based on these empirical findings we conclude that social media are transforming migration networks and thereby lowering the threshold for migration.
\n \n\n \n \nResearch on post-migration processes usually focuses either on micro-level behaviours or on macro-level interactions between states and their diasporas. This paper aims to fill a gap by proposing a structure/agency approach likely to address the micro-, meso- and macro-level factors that account for cross-border phenomena. The first section compares the main structure/agency approaches (Bourdieu\u2019s theory of practice, Giddens\u2019 structuration theory and Archer\u2019s morphogenetics) with a view to highlighting the core elements that characterise these theories. The second section outlines an innovative framework that combines Habermas\u2019 theory of communicative action and the \u2018plural man\u2019 theory of Bernard Lahire. The central idea is to use a renewed concept of social institutions (family, associations and businesses) as an entry to the study of social practices and structuration processes.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper draws on qualitative and quantitative data on the migration experiences of Brazilians living in Portugal and the Netherlands to reflect and expand upon the existing knowledge on the role of social networks in migration processes. We consider different migrant profiles based on principal migration motives to identify differentiated socio-demographic profiles and relate these to migration strategies. We show that differences in the ways migrants access and use social networks in their migration projects can be related to these different migration motives and profiles. Simultaneously, we compare two distinct immigration contexts both in terms of contemporary immigration regimes and working opportunities and historical links to Brazil. Our findings demonstrate that migration scholars need to move beyond the narrow conceptualisation of social networks based on community or kin relationships, to consider multiple configurations involving different agents \u2013 both in the origin and destination countries \u2013 at different stages of the migration process. In addition, we show that future analyses would benefit from taking into account the differences between migrants driven by distinct motivations in different places.
\n \n\n \n \nScholars have long noted how migration streams, once initiated, obtain a self-feeding character. Studies have attributed this phenomenon \u2013 the cumulative causation of migration \u2013 to expanding social networks that connect migrants in destination to individuals in origin. Studies however, often disagree on how social networks influence migration decisions. While many establish a positive association between individuals\u2019 ties to prior migrants and their migration propensities, only few acknowledge that multiple social mechanisms might account for these interdependencies. To address this issue, we adopt a typology developed by DiMaggio and Garip (2012) and consider three mechanisms by which social ties may influence individuals\u2019 migration choices. We study the prevalence of these mechanisms in the Mexico-US migration context using a mixed methods approach. First, analysing data from more than 90,000 individuals surveyed by the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) we establish the presence of network effects in migration and test how prior migrants in the family or community increase individuals\u2019 migration propensities, and whether prior migrants reduce the effect of economic or political indicators on migration propensities. Second, we analyse qualitative data from 120 in-depth interviews to determine the different mechanisms that lead to interdependencies in individuals\u2019 migration choices. We thus provide a deeper understanding of migration as a social process, which we contend is crucial for anticipating future flows and policy responses.
\n \n\n \n \nAlthough it is commonly believed that the volume, diversity, geographical scope and overall complexity of international migration have increased as part of globalisation processes, this idea has remained largely untested. This paper aims to fill this gap by mapping shifts in global migration patterns between 1960 and 2000. In order to simultaneously capture changes in the spread, distance and intensity of migration, this paper elaborates indices for emigration dispersion, immigration diversification and migration globalisation. The results challenge the idea that there has been a global increase in volume, diversity and geographical scope of migration. While international migration has not accelerated in relative terms, main migratory shifts have been directional and are linked to major geopolitical and economic transformations, such as the rise of new \u2018migration magnets\u2019, development-driven emigration hikes and the lifting of emigration restrictions. Migration has globalized from a destination country perspective but hardly from an origin country perspective, with migrants from an increasingly diverse array of non-European origin countries concentrating in a shrinking pool of prime destination countries. The global migration map has thus become more skewed. Rather than refuting the globalisation of migration hypothesis, this seems to reflect the asymmetric nature of globalisation processes in general.
\n \n\n \n \nWhat is \u2018creolisation\u2019, and at what point do processes that might be called \u2018creolisation\u2019 no longer warrant the name? At what point do creole societies cease to be \u2018creole\u2019? Creolisation, in the Hannerzian sense of the word, conjures up images of hybridity, globalisation, cosmopolitanism; while not a uniquely contemporary phenomenon it is nevertheless widely associated with the political and economic expansion of the European world, and the cultural implications thereof, in the colonial and post-colonial eras. On the Comorian island of Ngazidja in the western Indian Ocean, processes of social change have been the product of interactions with the outside world since first settlement of the islands some two millennia ago. Much as in neighbouring Mauritius or R\u00e9union, but on a longer timescale, waves of immigrants have arrived on the island, interacting with the inhabitants, each other, and their external partners. They have constituted Ngazidja society and culture as \u2018hybrid\u2019, through processes of interaction that today\u2014and they continue today\u2014would be called \u2018creolisation\u2019. This paper considers whether the term \u2018creolisation\u2019 is an appropriate and useful description of these processes or whether the widening of the term to such long-term (and perhaps less visible) processes diminishes its acuity.
\n \n\n \n \nWe examine environmental change as a potential determinant of international migration. We distinguish between unexpected short-run factors, captured by natural disasters, as well as long-run climate change and climate variability captured by deviations and volatilities of temperatures and rainfall from and around their long-run averages. Starting from a simple neo-classical model we use a panel dataset of bilateral migration flows for the period 1960-2000 that allows us to control for numerous time-varying and time invariant factors. We find no direct impact of climatic change on international migration across our entire sample. These results are robust when conditioning on characteristics of origin countries as well as when further considering migrants returning home and the potential endogeneity of our network variable. In contrast, there is evidence of indirect effects of environmental factors going through wages. We further find strong evidence that natural disasters beget greater flows of migrants to urban environs.
\n \n\n \n \nIt is not surprising that conflict and crisis are often seen as the dominant features moving across the across the socio-political landscape in the African Great Lakes. As a result, many areas of life are analysed in its shadow \u2013 politics, economics, cultural norms, and, most pertinent for this paper, mobility. Here, we propose a framework that examines the extent to which crisis and conflict overlay, contravene, and inform mobility in the African Great Lakes; and that tentatively explores these underlying mobility dynamics, which might be expected to remain when conflict and crisis subside. \r\nThe framework draws from sociological theories of \u2018normal\u2019 life and agency to examine mobility by looking along three analytical dimensions: aspirations, norms, and practices. It is then tentatively applied to analyse migration associated with three underlying social processes that continue within the Great Lakes: migration relating to education, urbanisation, and family formation. The paper concludes with a reflection upon the challenges of applying this framework for empirical research in the Great Lakes region. We argue that adopting a life-course approach that views movement related to \u2018key, transitional events\u2019 during the span of a person\u2019s life may be particularly suited to operationalising this framework.
\n \n\n \n \nExpressions of popular culture (here we consider music and carnival) have often been analysed as manifestations of indirect resistance to oppression. Alternatively, they can be seen as displays and practices that dominant political and social elites can easily co-opt. Using a combination of published material and fieldwork observations in Cape Verde and Louisiana, we show how a complex interplay between resistance and co-optation arises. As prior or incoming cultures are creolized they become nationalized, officialized or commercialized, thereby becoming subject to mechanisms of \u2018destructive tolerance\u2019. However, processes of appropriation are continuously challenged by internal dissent, demands for authenticity and fresh creative inputs. Such inputs are frequently drawn from original (or imagined original) societies and emergent diasporic practices and identities, which we have deemed \u2018diasporic echoes\u2019.
\n \n\n \n \nMigration research offers abundant research and theories to describe and explain why migration flows, once started, appear to have an inherent tendency to grow, but offers few insights into why established migration corridors may also decline. This paper focuses on an empirical example of declining migration: migration from Morocco to the Netherlands. Although the Netherlands accommodates a large Moroccan immigrant community, formed by former guest workers who arrived from the mid-1960s onwards and their offspring, immigration from Morocco to the Netherlands has been diminishing steadily since the mid-1990s. This paper explains this declining migration with the concept of diminutive causation, the counterpart of the concept of cumulative causation (Massey, 1990). Diminutive causation also entails a longitudinal multi-level explanation with interconnected macro, meso and micro-factors. We analyse in particular the strategic role played by individual migrants and their networks in reducing immigration. Three aspects are examined: first, changing beliefs of migrants in the Netherlands; second, migration-undermining feedback provided by migrants to prospective migrants; and third, the changing nature of migration cultures and migratory aspirations in Morocco due to the migration-undermining feedback by migrants.
\n \n\n \n \nIn analyses of migration policy outcomes, existing theoretical approaches focus on explaining whether or not migration policies realise their intended effects. Through an in-depth analysis of the bilateral return agreement between Norway and Ethiopia, this paper explores a different avenue for analysing migration policy. By exploring the context of the agreement, this paper discusses what constitutes the diverse effects and outcome of the policy. While focusing on changes in public discourse on migration and changes in the two countries\u2019 bilateral relationship, this paper concludes that research on migration policy would benefit from extending its scope of analysis to include other societal effects since these can be as significant as the effect of numerical changes in migration flows. The inclusion of policy effects and the bargaining power of Ethiopia in the analysis, further demonstrates the importance of including the sending state perspective in order to reach more detailed and fruitful research on migration policy and migration policy outcomes.
\n \n\n \n \nDiscussions of high-skilled mobility typically evoke migration patterns from poorer to wealthier countries, the focus of which ignores movements to and between developing countries. This paper presents, for the first time, a global overview of human capital mobility, i.e. bilateral migration stocks by gender and education in 1990 and 2000 and nuanced brain drain indicators. Building upon newly collated data, we identify key determinants of international migration using a novel estimation procedure based upon a pseudo-gravity model, which we subsequently use to impute missing data. Non-OECD destinations account for one-third of skilled-migration, while OECD destinations are declining in relative importance.
\n \n\n \n \nThe Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority group in Arakan State, Burma, are among the most vulnerable and persecuted populations across the globe. Despite their significant historical presence in the country, the Government of Burma does not recognise the Rohingya as citizens, thus rendering the population stateless. Many observers argue that the root cause of the crisis is the group\u2019s denial of legal status, suggesting that granting them citizenship would offer a lasting solution. While the possession of legal status is fundamental to an inclusive notion of citizenship, consideration of other non-formal dimensions of citizenship are just as necessary in expanding the boundaries of inclusion. Drawing on the case of the Rohingya, I will conduct a genealogy of exclusion to illustrate that their status is not merely a product of lacking citizenship, but rather embedded in more elaborate processes of nation building, ethno-political identification, and religious intolerance. This paper challenges the centrality of the concept of legal citizenship through an interrogation of the Rohingya\u2019s exclusion from historical narratives, their ambiguous status, and their current socioeconomic insecurity in an attempt to move the conversation beyond their statelessness and lack of formal status to understand the true nature of their exclusion.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper examines the ways in which recent family migration policy and its practice in the form of enquiries into the character of bi-national marriages (\u2018mixed marriages\u2019, in French terminology) shape the experience of citizenship in contemporary France. Like other European states, France has recently come to regard bi-national marriage as a \u2018weak link\u2019 in immigration control, and as a result there is growing focus on policing marriage between French and non-EU citizens, particularly from countries with high numbers of migrants to France. Successive laws passed between 2003 and 2006 have thus made it increasingly difficult for foreign spouses to obtain residence rights, and eventually citizenship. Nevertheless, marriage remains a privileged route to citizenship for many migrants, partly as a result of the difficulty to secure longer-term legal status via other routes. Bi-national marriage thus accounts for an increasing percentage of new French citizens. Since 2006 however, French-foreign couples wishing to marry, or to apply for a spouse visa after being married abroad, have been required to demonstrate the genuine character of their romantic attachment to state agents with a powerful mandate to determine the outcome of applications. How, then, do individuals experience this growing intrusion of the state into their intimacy? How do bureaucratic practices affect the subjective experience of citizenship? This paper addresses these questions by drawing on fieldwork with couples and their families as well as a civic association, and a limited number of state agents. The paper suggests that the policing of intimacy in contemporary France intensifies existing distinctions between \u2018good\u2019 and \u2018failed\u2019 citizens. Ultimately, this paper seeks to make an original contribution to the growing literature on changing notions of citizenship in modern states.
\n \n\n \n \nWhy do states establish and empower diaspora engagement institutions? Origin-state institutions dedicated to emigrants and their descendants have been largely overlooked in mainstream political studies, perhaps because they fall in the grey area between domestic politics and international relations. Now, diaspora institutions are found in over half of all United Nations member states, yet we have little theory and broad-sample statistical evidence to guide our understanding about when they are more likely to emerge and increase in importance. In response, we identify and then investigate empirical support for three theoretically-grounded perspectives on diaspora institution emergence and importance: instrumentally rational states tapping resources of emigrants and their descendants; value-rational states embracing lost members of the nation-state; institutionally-converging states governing diasporas consistent with global norms. We document support for these alternative perspectives in regression and related analyses modelling diaspora institution emergence and importance in 144 states observed from 1990-2010. Tapping perspective estimations exhibit better overall model fit compared to estimations based on other perspectives. Estimations combining perspectives exhibit the best model fit. Individual terms exhibiting signs contrary to prediction suggest new directions for theoretical and empirical research from different perspectives. We advance international relations research by identifying, distinguishing and testing alternative perspectives explaining diaspora institution emergence and importance. We also advance international relations practice and policy with evidence-guided insight on near-term trends in institution emergence and importance.
\n \n\n \n \nWhereas Realistic Conflict Theory claims that there is a negative relationship between the share of immigrants and the level of support for the extreme-right, Contact Theory claims that the relationship is positive. Using the technique of multilevel modelling, I will challenge these mutually exclusive theories by arguing that the relationship between immigration and extreme-right support is more complex. Instead of working in opposition to each other, Conflict Theory and Contact Theory operate simultaneously but at different levels of aggregation. The focus on immigrants as a contextual factor gives the impression that the Front National is an \u2018urban phenomenon\u2019 concentrated in high-immigration suburbs, however recent headlines suggest that the vote is declining in urban strongholds and spreading to rural areas. In a second analysis, I will demonstrate that the level of support for the Front National is higher in rural communes than in urban communes. Drawing from Social Disintegration Theory, I will argue that the party\u2019s appeal to rural areas is a result of: 1) France\u2019s agricultural crisis; 2) the growing divide between rural and urban spaces; and 3) the cut-backs on public expenditures.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper analyses relations between aspiring migrants and migration brokers from the perspective of a place of departure, such as Anglophone Cameroon. The paper seeks to go beyond a statist perspective on so-called irregular migration by drawing on empirical insights into the perspectives of aspiring migrants, their family members, as well as on direct observations between migrants and brokers within their respective context. Relations between aspiring migrants and migration brokers cannot be understood through the lens of legal paradigms, such as trafficking and smuggling. This paper thus sets out to explore locally relevant terminology and factors: how do aspiring migrants come to evaluate the credibility and \u2018powers\u2019 of migration brokers? By exploring locally operated distinctions between doki men, feymen and big men, this paper questions the relative place of state-enforceable law as opposed to other regulatory norms in places of departure. The paper draws on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork on migration aspirations and emigration trajectories in Anglophone Cameroon (2007 and 2009).
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