About

Controlling, classifying and selecting mobile populations in the era of neoliberalism​

In a world of massive inequalities between nations, and where citizenship at birth is the biggest determining factor of anyone's life chances, migration and international mobility are often seen as dramatic mechanisms of change. Yet strict borders and hierarchies between nations persist.

The European Research Council funded MIGMOBS project investigates how and why global inequalities are reproduced through the shifting classification of mobile populations. Building a database with studies across 23 sending and receiving countries, it charts how nations have preserved power through the era of neoliberalism by selectively opening and closing channels of mobility: making immigration and asylum the obsessive target of sovereign control, while rendering invisible and fluid the mass mobilities of tourism, students, business and commuter travel.

Objectives

The objectives of the MIGMOBS ERC AdG project are:

1. Explore how from 1970 to the present – across and between a range of states worldwide – the changing categorization of migration, mobilities or minorities, and the population flows and other connections they denote, relate to in- and between-country inequalities.
2. Identify how and why these processes vary across world regions in terms of political economy and regional integration in the context of growing economic, electoral, ecological and geo-political crises.
3. Investigate how marginal and disadvantaged populations to and from particular European, African, Asian and South American states experience, narrate and resist global inequality, as they struggle within and against the categories, statuses and borders imposed upon them.
4. Develop a new paradigm in the study of “political demography” that charts the origins and trajectory of a post-neoliberal “viral liberalism”, moving into a new phase of late capitalism.

Sub-Projects

Sub-Projects of the MIGMOBS ERC AdG project

More information about MIGMOBS available on the EU CORDIS website

Project A

Migration, Mobilities and Inequality in a Globalising World 1970-2020

How can quantitative and qualitative changes in classification systems of migration, mobilities and diversity be measured and mapped across countries, regions and major periods of change in political economy? How do these shifts over time relate to global indexes of in- and -between country inequalities? How and why do these vary across more specified receiving-sending state migration and mobilities systems? Thinking on a transnational and planetary scale, how have physical mobilities related to virtual ones, and how have human mobilities related to certain non-human ones? What have been the effects of the COVID pandemic and other humanitarian emergencies on these mobilities and their recognition, and are they permanent?

Project B1

Migration and Mobilities in East Asia: The Chinese in Japan and Korea

How are new trends in migration and mobilities affecting the shifting relations of power and inequality in East Asia? Are the most advanced East Asian states moving towards becoming immigrant integration nations on the North American and European model, or do they better reflect innovative Asian modes of organisation and technologies of migration and mobilities? How does the most numerous mobile global population of all – the Chinese – position itself in this regional context? In particular, how do gender, social mobility and identity questions play out for the growing number of women moving internationally?

Project B2

MIGMOBS-Refuge: Syrians in the UK

How has the distinctive reception context of the UK affect Syrian economic and political self-organisation, as well as their survival strategies in the receiving state, particularly in relation to other significant reception countries, such as Germany and Italy? Have they encountered different dynamics of solidarity and racialisation as they have been recognised as a special humanitarian case? How might fieldwork (particularly local and non-local ethnography) establish a mode of co-productive and participative work, where lived experiences of migrants can provide a resource and inspiration for further political mobilisation and self-organisation? How does the Syrian experience of refuge compare to the other recent massive flow in Europe: the Ukrainians?

Project B3

MIGMOBS-Refuge: Ukrainians in Ireland

Why have recent “European” refugees been racialised differently to Middle Eastern and African migrants? What have been the qualitative shifts in the perception and categorisation of Ukrainians in Western Europe over time? How have Ukrainian refugees experienced their forced movement westwards, and has their reception varied across different destinations? How does the Ukrainian experience of refuge compare to the other recent massive flow in Europe: the Syrians?

Project B4

Africa-Ireland Migration and Mobilities Systems

How have different types of migration and mobilities from Africa to Ireland, with different colonial relations or religious background, varied and changed from the 1990s to the present? How do these different African migrants and movers experience the encounter with the UK specific race and ethnicity categorisation around “blackness”? Have they been able to effectively mobilise solidarity and demands with the political resources offered by the decolonial and Black Lives Matters movements to achieve reparatory effects back through the systems to homeland contexts?

Project B5

Indonesian Migration-Mobilities Systems in Asia

What have structured the labour flows and mobility patterns from Indonesia in different highly developed Asian destinations? How do Indonesian migrants make migratory decisions, given the shifting politics of categories they face, and how do they experience these different migration destinations and labour regimes? How are migrant workers’ human and labour rights protected in this context of sharp global inequality, that has sometimes been analysed in terms of modern-day systems of indenture and service? In the case of violation, are they able to self-organise or mobilise along the lines of the dramatic public mobilisations of Indonesian women seen in Hong Kong? Are these East Asian examples pioneering new migration-mobilities system very different to the North Atlantic West?

Project B6

MIGMOBS-Latam: Bolivians & Venezuelans in Buenos Aires & Santiago

What difference has regional integration, open borders and recent changes in migration patterns and governance made to vulnerable economic and humanitarian migrant groups in South America? What variation is there in the reception context for these migrants in the capitals of Argentina and Chile? How do issues with hospitality, cross-movement solidarity, mobilisation for rights, and indigenous homeland politics play out with these migrants?

Project C

Synthesis: New Worlds in Motion - a Treatise in Political Demography

Structured around findings from all the projects, and including a substantial presentation and analysis of the enhanced Global Mobilities Project database, this will be a treatise combining the new theory, data and documentation generated. This will develop a new paradigm for understanding migration/mobilities and inequalities, in the context of global comparative political economy from 1970 to the present, projecting scenarios to 2030.