Migration – Michael Samers and Michael Collyer
Chapter 1: Introduction
Social networks allow migrants to communicate the value of particular destinations to other would-be
migrants.
Different scales (territories) of regulation: national states decide who can enter and who cannot, and
supra-national territories such as the EU step in to shape migration control.
Migrants seem to fit both into and across different types or categories of migration that imply a certain
citizenship or residence status (e.g. internal or international, temporary and permanent, legal and
undocumented), and different modes of entry (e.g. as asylum-seekers, refugees, low-income and highly
skilled workers, students, and so on).
Categories around legal status and modes of entry should still be seen as meaningful, even if this book
acknowledges the complexity of migrants’ trajectories; that migration is a process rather than an event,
and that migration categories may reinforce an ‘us’ and ‘them’ politics.
Internal and International
Internal: involves those who move within their own countries.
International: can be defined as the act of moving across international boundaries from a country
of origin (or country of emigration) to take up residence in a country of destination (or country of
immigration).
o Such international migration may involve just one country of origin and destination, but
it might also involve different steps or stages between various countries, before a
migrant moves on to her or his final destination temporary of sojourner migration. In
official terms, temporary migration refers to international migrants whose duration of
stay in a given country is greater than three months but less than 12 months.
Immigrants: those who will stay in a foreign country for years as permanent residents without
‘naturalizing’ (becoming a citizen of a particular country).
Migrants: those who find themselves in a condition of more temporary residence in a country of
destination.
In practice the distinction between the two is far from clear.
While there’s a tendency to focus on an individual’s longer-term legal residence, the same person may be
constantly dreaming of returning to the country of origin ‘the myth of return’.
Legal and undocumented
Legal: those individuals who have express authorization of (usually) a national government to
enter, reside or work in the country of destination.
Undocumented: those individuals who cross international boundaries either without being
detected by authorities (often called clandestine entry) or who overstay their visas.
The widely used term ‘illegal migrant’ is inaccurate since individuals may behave in ways that are
technically illegal (such as crossing borders or working without authorization) but they cannot be illegal.
Forced and voluntary
Two types of forced migration:
o The migration of asylum-seekers and refugees, as recognized by international
conventions
o Those who are forced to migrate for reasons of poverty or low wages economic
migration
Using the definitions generated by these agreements, asylum seekers are to be understood as individuals
who are seeking asylum or refugee status in another country.
,Two ways of seeking asylum:
1. Claiming asylum on arrival and so enter a country as ‘asylum-seekers’
2. Direct resettlement of individuals who have already been recognized as refugees, by a nearby
government or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
A refugee or an asylum-seeker should not be subject to refoulement; that is no state should return a
refugee or asylum-seeker to a country where she or he fears persecution without ‘due process’ (in other
words, the right to a legal hearing).
Adjudicating between who is or is not a ‘genuine’ asylum-seeker is far from straightforward. Those who
are not deemed to be fleeing immediate and serious political danger are unlikely to be accorded much
sympathy by these governments. In short, those who are forced by poverty are imagined by governments
as voluntary and so-named ‘economic migrants’.
Fault lines between forced and voluntary migration, and the relationship between highly skilled and low-
skilled/low-income migration.
There’s no globally accepted definition of ‘skilled’ and ‘less skilled’, and certainly no-one is ‘unskilled’.
Governments’ and firms’ definition of skilled and not-so-skilled varies over space and time.
We should shy away from a neat correspondence between skill and the voluntary or forced motivations
for migration. There are many highly skilled migrants whose movement may be deemed voluntary, but
there are also many highly skilled migrants who are fleeing political persecution and poverty.
Key issues and debates concerning migration
The causes and consequences of migration
Many different causes: unequal trading systems, war, environmental stress, chronic unemployment,
cultural, political, and social marginalization of specific groups, social networks which connect individuals
between different places, gender expectations and oppressions, etc.
These various causes cannot be divorced from each other and may be mutually reinforcing.
The causes of migration are not unrelated to the consequences of migration in the countries of
emigration. Relationship between migration and development the migration-development nexus.
Low-skilled and low-income migration from poorer countries has been seen generally as a ‘bad thing’ by
governments. They sought ways to stem the movement of low-skilled and low-income migrants. And it
was a commonplace assumption that ‘development’ would stem such a movement of people.
The question of employment for migrants
Many migrants around the world are relegated to some of the most low-paid and arduous jobs. Why?
They lack necessary education, qualifications or skills to compete with citizens in job markets.
Stereotypes and racist assumptions held by employers, which are decidedly geographic in
character.
The networks of information among migrants about the availability of certain jobs in
neighborhoods with an already existing immigrant population.
The conflicted task of governing migration
When migration and other social phenomena are regulated at and through various levels of government,
this regulation is often referred to as governance. Governance is also used to refer to the growing role
played by private companies and civil society groups in responding to migration, often referred to as the
‘migration industry’.
The reaction to migration is not simply a matter of the level of government involved nor a product of
distinct groups in society with different interests, but related to complex geographies, with some regions,
cities or towns more welcoming than others. This points to a sometimes unrecognized dimension of
governance, and that is how migration, migrants and pro-migrant and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) also serve to shape migration policy. To put it differently, we can say that governments are far
from in control of migration.
, Governments of the richer countries struggle to find a balance between on one hand, meeting the literal
dictates of the Geneva Convention and on the other, the desire to severely limit the number of asylum-
seekers and refugees.
Poorer countries are concerned with how to reduce unemployment; how to retain skilled labor and how
to export low-skilled labor in order to ensure the continual flow of money sent back by migrants
(remittances).
The question of citizenship and belonging for and among migrants
A final issue concerns citizenship and what is often called ‘belonging’. One of the fundamental desires for
many migrants today is obtaining legal (or formal) citizenship in a country of immigration. Nation-states,
administrative regions within nation-states and even cities have different laws and construct different
rules for especially formal citizenship.
Migrants are also plagued by problems that impact on their substantive citizenship. Substantive
citizenship can be understood as the issue that concern the daily lives of immigrants: accessing health
care, finding an adequate place to live and work, etc. These challenges are exacerbated on a daily basis by
racism or expectations of certain kinds of cultural behavior, often generated by a variety of state-based
organizations, or citizens, and even other migrants.
Global tendencies and estimated patterns of migration across the globe
Six general trends associated with migration (Castles et al. 2014):
1. The globalization of migration, or what might be better called its diversification; that is an
increasingly wide array of countries are involved in migration with a consequential diversity of
migrant backgrounds.
2. The changing direction of dominant migration flows.
3. The differentiation of migration, in other words, the diversification of types and modes of entry
discussed in the previous section.
4. The proliferation of migration transition: some long-time countries of emigration have
themselves either become countries of transit or countries of more permanent immigration.
5. The feminization of labor migration, or the higher percentage of women migrating relative to
men.
6. The growing politicization of migration, meaning that migration has moved to the center of global
and national political debates.
The world’s refugee population is very unevenly distributed. At the end of 2014, a third of the world’s
refugees were hosted by just three countries (Turkey, Pakistan and Lebanon).
Concentration of student migration in Anglophone countries. Explained by the possibility of learning
English combined with the perceived quality of higher education institutions in these countries, and the
possible employment and settlement prospects that one might be afforded afterwards.
Yet with the exception of maybe Australia, there are grounds for making the case that migrants’ countries
of origin have diversified, while their ‘destinations’ have narrowed, especially since the post-WWII period
in the wealthier countries.
1950s – 1980s: most migrants to the wealthier countries labelled as ‘post-colonial’ or ‘neo-colonial’
people from former European colonies migrating to the former colonial powers in northern and Western
Europe in particular.
Social theory, spatial concepts and the study of migration
Social concepts and the study of migration
For many social scientists, the concepts of structures, institutions, agents, and social networks provide the
fundamental, if conventional elements of what’s called ‘social theory’. The most contested are structures.
Two understandings of ‘structure’:
Chapter 1: Introduction
Social networks allow migrants to communicate the value of particular destinations to other would-be
migrants.
Different scales (territories) of regulation: national states decide who can enter and who cannot, and
supra-national territories such as the EU step in to shape migration control.
Migrants seem to fit both into and across different types or categories of migration that imply a certain
citizenship or residence status (e.g. internal or international, temporary and permanent, legal and
undocumented), and different modes of entry (e.g. as asylum-seekers, refugees, low-income and highly
skilled workers, students, and so on).
Categories around legal status and modes of entry should still be seen as meaningful, even if this book
acknowledges the complexity of migrants’ trajectories; that migration is a process rather than an event,
and that migration categories may reinforce an ‘us’ and ‘them’ politics.
Internal and International
Internal: involves those who move within their own countries.
International: can be defined as the act of moving across international boundaries from a country
of origin (or country of emigration) to take up residence in a country of destination (or country of
immigration).
o Such international migration may involve just one country of origin and destination, but
it might also involve different steps or stages between various countries, before a
migrant moves on to her or his final destination temporary of sojourner migration. In
official terms, temporary migration refers to international migrants whose duration of
stay in a given country is greater than three months but less than 12 months.
Immigrants: those who will stay in a foreign country for years as permanent residents without
‘naturalizing’ (becoming a citizen of a particular country).
Migrants: those who find themselves in a condition of more temporary residence in a country of
destination.
In practice the distinction between the two is far from clear.
While there’s a tendency to focus on an individual’s longer-term legal residence, the same person may be
constantly dreaming of returning to the country of origin ‘the myth of return’.
Legal and undocumented
Legal: those individuals who have express authorization of (usually) a national government to
enter, reside or work in the country of destination.
Undocumented: those individuals who cross international boundaries either without being
detected by authorities (often called clandestine entry) or who overstay their visas.
The widely used term ‘illegal migrant’ is inaccurate since individuals may behave in ways that are
technically illegal (such as crossing borders or working without authorization) but they cannot be illegal.
Forced and voluntary
Two types of forced migration:
o The migration of asylum-seekers and refugees, as recognized by international
conventions
o Those who are forced to migrate for reasons of poverty or low wages economic
migration
Using the definitions generated by these agreements, asylum seekers are to be understood as individuals
who are seeking asylum or refugee status in another country.
,Two ways of seeking asylum:
1. Claiming asylum on arrival and so enter a country as ‘asylum-seekers’
2. Direct resettlement of individuals who have already been recognized as refugees, by a nearby
government or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
A refugee or an asylum-seeker should not be subject to refoulement; that is no state should return a
refugee or asylum-seeker to a country where she or he fears persecution without ‘due process’ (in other
words, the right to a legal hearing).
Adjudicating between who is or is not a ‘genuine’ asylum-seeker is far from straightforward. Those who
are not deemed to be fleeing immediate and serious political danger are unlikely to be accorded much
sympathy by these governments. In short, those who are forced by poverty are imagined by governments
as voluntary and so-named ‘economic migrants’.
Fault lines between forced and voluntary migration, and the relationship between highly skilled and low-
skilled/low-income migration.
There’s no globally accepted definition of ‘skilled’ and ‘less skilled’, and certainly no-one is ‘unskilled’.
Governments’ and firms’ definition of skilled and not-so-skilled varies over space and time.
We should shy away from a neat correspondence between skill and the voluntary or forced motivations
for migration. There are many highly skilled migrants whose movement may be deemed voluntary, but
there are also many highly skilled migrants who are fleeing political persecution and poverty.
Key issues and debates concerning migration
The causes and consequences of migration
Many different causes: unequal trading systems, war, environmental stress, chronic unemployment,
cultural, political, and social marginalization of specific groups, social networks which connect individuals
between different places, gender expectations and oppressions, etc.
These various causes cannot be divorced from each other and may be mutually reinforcing.
The causes of migration are not unrelated to the consequences of migration in the countries of
emigration. Relationship between migration and development the migration-development nexus.
Low-skilled and low-income migration from poorer countries has been seen generally as a ‘bad thing’ by
governments. They sought ways to stem the movement of low-skilled and low-income migrants. And it
was a commonplace assumption that ‘development’ would stem such a movement of people.
The question of employment for migrants
Many migrants around the world are relegated to some of the most low-paid and arduous jobs. Why?
They lack necessary education, qualifications or skills to compete with citizens in job markets.
Stereotypes and racist assumptions held by employers, which are decidedly geographic in
character.
The networks of information among migrants about the availability of certain jobs in
neighborhoods with an already existing immigrant population.
The conflicted task of governing migration
When migration and other social phenomena are regulated at and through various levels of government,
this regulation is often referred to as governance. Governance is also used to refer to the growing role
played by private companies and civil society groups in responding to migration, often referred to as the
‘migration industry’.
The reaction to migration is not simply a matter of the level of government involved nor a product of
distinct groups in society with different interests, but related to complex geographies, with some regions,
cities or towns more welcoming than others. This points to a sometimes unrecognized dimension of
governance, and that is how migration, migrants and pro-migrant and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) also serve to shape migration policy. To put it differently, we can say that governments are far
from in control of migration.
, Governments of the richer countries struggle to find a balance between on one hand, meeting the literal
dictates of the Geneva Convention and on the other, the desire to severely limit the number of asylum-
seekers and refugees.
Poorer countries are concerned with how to reduce unemployment; how to retain skilled labor and how
to export low-skilled labor in order to ensure the continual flow of money sent back by migrants
(remittances).
The question of citizenship and belonging for and among migrants
A final issue concerns citizenship and what is often called ‘belonging’. One of the fundamental desires for
many migrants today is obtaining legal (or formal) citizenship in a country of immigration. Nation-states,
administrative regions within nation-states and even cities have different laws and construct different
rules for especially formal citizenship.
Migrants are also plagued by problems that impact on their substantive citizenship. Substantive
citizenship can be understood as the issue that concern the daily lives of immigrants: accessing health
care, finding an adequate place to live and work, etc. These challenges are exacerbated on a daily basis by
racism or expectations of certain kinds of cultural behavior, often generated by a variety of state-based
organizations, or citizens, and even other migrants.
Global tendencies and estimated patterns of migration across the globe
Six general trends associated with migration (Castles et al. 2014):
1. The globalization of migration, or what might be better called its diversification; that is an
increasingly wide array of countries are involved in migration with a consequential diversity of
migrant backgrounds.
2. The changing direction of dominant migration flows.
3. The differentiation of migration, in other words, the diversification of types and modes of entry
discussed in the previous section.
4. The proliferation of migration transition: some long-time countries of emigration have
themselves either become countries of transit or countries of more permanent immigration.
5. The feminization of labor migration, or the higher percentage of women migrating relative to
men.
6. The growing politicization of migration, meaning that migration has moved to the center of global
and national political debates.
The world’s refugee population is very unevenly distributed. At the end of 2014, a third of the world’s
refugees were hosted by just three countries (Turkey, Pakistan and Lebanon).
Concentration of student migration in Anglophone countries. Explained by the possibility of learning
English combined with the perceived quality of higher education institutions in these countries, and the
possible employment and settlement prospects that one might be afforded afterwards.
Yet with the exception of maybe Australia, there are grounds for making the case that migrants’ countries
of origin have diversified, while their ‘destinations’ have narrowed, especially since the post-WWII period
in the wealthier countries.
1950s – 1980s: most migrants to the wealthier countries labelled as ‘post-colonial’ or ‘neo-colonial’
people from former European colonies migrating to the former colonial powers in northern and Western
Europe in particular.
Social theory, spatial concepts and the study of migration
Social concepts and the study of migration
For many social scientists, the concepts of structures, institutions, agents, and social networks provide the
fundamental, if conventional elements of what’s called ‘social theory’. The most contested are structures.
Two understandings of ‘structure’:
