Traditional migration studies have focused predominantly on immigration studies. A shift in focus to emigration – to which this book contributes – nuances migration research and frees it from its implicit nativist bias. This bias reflects a historically dominant ideology that assumes that all migrants – in both receiving and sending societies – are outsiders: like immigration, emigration is an anomaly because it disrupts the communitarian basis of the nation and impoverishes it of mobile populations. This final chapter counters such a narrative by arguing that emigration – as well as immigration and shorter-term forms of mobility (particularly tourism) – tends to be used by states to enhance their political legitimacy. In capitalist political economies, emigration, immigration and tourism are selectively activated by ideal-typical states as ‘supplementary engines’ that fuel socio-economic growth or the expectation of future growth. The resulting theoretical scheme and its implications are discussed and considered in light of the possible exceptionalism of the EU case, where the free movement regime limits the state’s capacity to regulate entry and exit from other member states.