Towards A Systemic Theory Of Irregular Migration

This open access book provides an alternative theoretical framework of irregular migration that allows to overcome many of the contradictions and theoretical impasses displayed by the majority of approaches in current literature. The analytical framework allows moving from an interpretation biased by methodological nationalism, to a more general systemic interpretation. It explains irregular migration as a structural phenomenon or contemporary society, and why state policies are greatly ineffective in their attempt to control irregular migration. It also explains irregular migration as a diversified phenomenon that relates to the social characteristics of the context, and why states accept irregular migrants. By providing new comparative, empirical, qualitative material which allows to start filling an evident gap in the current research on irregular migration, this book is of interest to graduate students, scholars and policy makers. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

This open access book provides an alternative theoretical framework of irregular migration that allows to overcome many of the contradictions and theoretical impasses displayed by the majority of approaches in current literature. The analytical framework allows moving from an interpretation biased by methodological nationalism, to a more general systemic interpretation. It explains irregular migration as a structural phenomenon or contemporary society, and why state policies are greatly ineffective in their attempt to control irregular migration. It also explains irregular migration as a diversified phenomenon that relates to the social characteristics of the context, and why states accept irregular migrants. By providing new comparative, empirical, qualitative material which allows to start filling an evident gap in the current research on irregular migration, this book is of interest to graduate students, scholars and policy makers.

This open access book provides an alternative theoretical framework of irregular migration that allows to overcome many of the contradictions and theoretical impasses displayed by the majority of approaches in current literature. The analytical framework allows moving from an interpretation biased by methodological nationalism, to a more general systemic interpretation. It explains irregular migration as a structural phenomenon or contemporary society, and why state policies are greatly ineffective in their attempt to control irregular migration. It also explains irregular migration as a diversified phenomenon that relates to the social characteristics of the context, and why states accept irregular migrants. By providing new comparative, empirical, qualitative material which allows to start filling an evident gap in the current research on irregular migration, this book is of interest to graduate students, scholars and policy makers.

Michael Bommes (1954–2010) was one the most brilliant and original scholars of migration studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This posthumously published collection brings together a selection of his most important essays on immigration, transnationalism, irregular migration, and migrant networks. “In Bommes, the academy lost a scholar with penetrating analyses of migration, the welfare state and social systems where the two interact. By completing his last project, Boswell and D'Amato have done scholarship a lasting service. A major contribution to public debate and a tribute to a very great man.”—Randall Hansen, University of Toronto

This collection of essays is the outcome of an international conference on Irregular Migration and Human Rights, which gathered together prominent scholars, policy-makers and practitioners working in the migration and human rights field. The objective of the book, in contrast to the prevailing political approach which focuses almost solely on prevention, is to discuss the human rights dimensions of irregular migration from theoretical, European and international perspectives.

This edited volume approaches waiting both as a social phenomenon that proliferates in irregularised forms of migration and as an analytical perspective on migration processes and practices. Waiting as an analytical perspective offers new insights into the complex and shifting nature of processes of bordering, belonging, state power, exclusion and inclusion, and social relations in irregular migration. The chapters in this book address legal, bureaucratic, ethical, gendered, and affective dimensions of time and migration. A key concern is to develop more theoretically robust approaches to waiting in migration as constituted in and through multiple and relational temporalities. The chapters highlight how waiting is configured in specific legal, material, and socio-cultural situations, as well as how migrants encounter, incorporate, and resist temporal structures. This collection includes ethnographic and other empirically based material, as well as theorizing that cross-cut disciplinary boundaries. It will be relevant to scholars from anthropology and sociology, and others interested in temporalities, migration, borders, and power. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com , has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Irregular migration, including trafficking in migrants, has emerged as a major international challenge. It now represents one-third or more of the yearly legal inflow in the United States and half in Europe. At the global level some US$7 billion is channelled every year into human trafficking. Its close interlocking with trafficking in arms and drugs, as well as with prostitution of women and child abuse, makes it an increasingly alarming menace.

This open access short reader provides an introduction to the theoretical debates regarding irregular migration and aims to bridge these theoretical debates to current empirical developments. It defines irregular migrants and irregular migration by discussing the wide variety of definitions and highlights the reasons for the presence of irregular immigrants in developed countries. The book provides an overview of the variation in policies regarding irregular migrants and elaborates on how irregular migration is facilitated and supported. It discusses the trends and dynamics between border enforcement, human smuggling/trafficking, and on the support irregular migrants obtain by citizens and civil society while residing in the EU. Last but not least, the book also focuses on the agency and political mobilization of irregular migrants. As such, it provides a great resource for everyone interested in learning more about irregular migration.