Migration studies need to be expanded and made more inclusive. In the last several decades, single-discipline, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches have advanced the study of international migration. New concepts were crafted that gave rise to instructive research and studies. However, significant realities of international migration have not been captured. And existing concepts are not applicable in the study of all instances of international migration.
The progress in international migration studies was made in industrialized countries receiving international migrants. The need to understand the unaccustomed large flows of international migrants these countries received and to address their economic, social and political consequences prompted the development of the concepts and associated theories. In sum, understandably, migration studies developed out of industrialized immigration countries’ perspective.
To be sure, studying migration in the Global South benefited from the Global North perspective. However, some concepts developed in the Global North are of little use or convey different concerns than those in the Global South. Conversely, subjects of importance for Global South countries are absent or not sufficiently taken up in migration studies. A few examples follow.
Cohesion is a concept that figured in IMISCOE’s original title. The cohesion of the population is of great importance for immigration countries governed by liberal values. But cohesion is not a concern for emigration countries in the Global South. Their populations’ cohesion will not be affected by the migration outflows of their nationals, in large or small volumes. A far more important concern for these countries is the consequences of the outflows, especially of the highly-educated, highly-skilled, for the functioning of their labour markets. At the moment, these consequences are a preserve of employment or labour market research that does not connect them to international migration. Shouldn’t migration studies develop research and hypothesize about these linkages? Such research would come to usefully add to the still evolving brain drain/brain gain debate. When labour markets are at all researched in migration studies, it is to reveal how their malfunctioning may generate undesired migration flows. A good number of countries in the Global South consider meeting labour demand at a variety of skill levels in labour shortage countries of the Global North and the Global South a partial solution to their employment ailments. Employment, from this perspective, is also little addressed in migration studies.
Differences in conceptual significance are not confined to immigration and emigration countries. Concepts crafted in Western Europe don’t apply in fellow immigration countries in parts of the Global South. In the former, cohesion is that of the entire population, made up of a large majority of nationals and of a small minority of immigrants. In contrast, in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), in most of its countries, concern is with the cohesion of their small native populations relative to the much larger immigrant communities. Integration, another concept of great importance for West European immigration countries, is a means to realizing cohesion. But how can you integrate the large majority of immigrants in the very small national minority? In some GCC countries, the former and latter’s percentages reach 85% and 15%. Integration, as a concept, aims at ensuring equality of treatment and inclusiveness. A new concept that achieves these aims and expands migration studies may be needed.
Cohesion is also problematic in regions such as Africa, and Central and South America. Historically cohesive ethnic communities with shared identities now straddle the borders between nation states that were drawn by previous colonial powers. In West Africa, 85% of migrants remain in this African sub-region, traveling in what may be considered old circuits of economic activity. The nation states’ cohesion demanded by the logic of the international system, requires the undoing of that of ethnic groups.
By changing its name and opening its membership to research institutions of the Global South, IMISCOE has obviously realized that, to deserve it name, migration studies need to expand and encompass different manifestations of international migration. The hope is that it will push for this realization to become a reality and thus enrich migration studies.
Prof. Ibrahim Awad, The American University in Cairo (AUC)
Ibrahim Awad is a Professor of Practice of Global Affairs and Director of the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Geneva. He has held senior positions at the League of Arab States, UN and the ILO. He chaired the KNOMAD Labor Migration Group (World Bank) and the EuroMedMigSteering Committee, and he is a member of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Working Group on Reimagining Global Economic Governance, member of the Advisory Board of the Center on Forced Displacement, Boston University, member of the Advisory Board, Gulf Labour Markets, Migration and Population (GLMM) Programme, and Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Centre (MPC) of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. He also serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals. With Ricard Zapata Barrero, he recently co-edited Migrations in the Mediterranean: IMISCOE Regional Reader, Springer, 2024.