The notion of migration crisis has become pervasive in scholarly, media, and political migration discourses, with significant impact on the way international migration is understood and responded to. Despite its ubiquity, the concept is vaguely defined and applied to a wide range of migration-related phenomena. In the introduction to my last edited publication, I argue that migration crisis currently works as a ‘joker card’ in political and policy discourses, largely because indefiniteness or unspecified definition permits endless re-elaborations and interchangeably use of the term to label diverse disruptive issues and justify apparently contradictory rationales (e.g., humanitarian and securitization arguments). This idea is further developed throughout a collaborative publication. The origins of such collaboration lie in the 2023 MIGCITPOL Annual Workshop. The event gathered around 30 scholars from Europe, North and South America, Asia, Middle East, and Oceania; it was held at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Buenos Aires, Argentina) on July 20, 2023. As a result, we have just published a Special Issue of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, which gathers some of the contributions –all of them available through Open Access.
While our articles converge towards a working definition of the concept of ‘migration crisis’ as a socio/political construction that characterizes diverse events involving migration flows as disturbing of the normal and the source of unusual, overwhelming stress, we aimed at pushing current discussions further. Our main goals were to critically discuss the application of the concept of crisis to migration-related phenomena and to analyze the institutional practices (broadly conceived as responses) triggered by real-world developments constructed as distinct migration crises. Our contributions are thus linked by a common analytical strategy: defining with precision the usage of the concept of crisis in specific contexts.
We examine cases spanning several regions (including Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Latin America) to assess institutional and political responses and impact at various levels of analysis. This differentiates our project from other collections with a focus on sociological aspects of migration crises mostly in the Anglophone world. However, our analytical focus is not geographical; our studies instead zoom on key concepts, dynamics, and contexts, such as physical and social borders, local politics, national policies, regional and local narratives, and transnational networks. Overall, the methodological approach reflects the multidisciplinary and global character of the project. Authors rely on qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis techniques. Taken together, the use of various levels of analysis (local, national, regional, transnational) contributes to address some gaps in existing literature and introduces richness and nuances that transcend traditional views of state-centred or bordered processes and the North-South divide.
The adjectives we use to qualify migration crisis are part and parcel of the articles’ substantive arguments. Qualifying permits a refined characterization of case studies. Accordingly, the first two pieces examine migration crisis within Europe, with an emphasis on physical and non-physical borders. While Berfin Nur Osso offers a holistic approach to post-2015 management of a ‘creeping migration crisis,’ Anna Marino and Vestin Hategekimana follow an actor-based research strategy to explore the framing of migration and migrants during ‘border crises’ in Melilla and Ceuta (2021-2023). The third contribution, of my sole authorship, focuses on a unique, region-wide institutional response to the ‘protracted displacement crisis’ triggered by Venezuelans’ massive emigration to Latin American countries, within which international organizations have taken a leading, decisive role since 2018. Dorothea Pozzatto’s work illustrates that policy change often emerges amid intertwined crises. The Covid19 pandemic, characterized as an ‘exogenous crisis’ in its relationship to immigration indeed impinged on the viability of the 2020 amnesty in Italy. Natalia Dziadyk also investigates the interplay of various crises. Her use of ‘(poly)crisis’ shows that some actors selectively politicize certain disruptions while silencing others, thus shaping the dynamic of migration politics between displaced Ukrainians and far-right movements in Prague today. The last two contributions explore the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on Turkey’s citizenship regime, unveiling different institutional processes atthe national and local levels. Zeynep Sahin Mencütek and Soner Barthoma show that the ‘protracted crisis’ facilitated the implementation of an ambiguous exceptional citizenship scheme for some refugees. Cagla Güner applies the qualification of ‘protracted governance crisis’ to explain the fostering of inclusive urban citizenship practices in Izmir.
The qualifications or specific adjectives emerged from the analysis of evidence collected in our field research. In other words, following the analogy mentioned above, we explored how the joker card is played and what meaning it acquires in different scenarios. Qualifying the notion of migration crisis helped us to disentangle the specifics of the crises unfolding in concrete (regional, national, or local) contexts and assess the implications of political and policy responses. This analytical strategy avoids conceptual overstretching and permits a detailed characterization of each case-study; it may potentially illuminate under-appreciated attributes of other case studies, too, and thus invites all to explore the topic further in other world regions.
Our approach is consistent with the premises of conceptual thinking in migration studies; it builds upon classical works in social sciences (particularly in political science and comparative politics), which indicate that pursuing conceptual precision by adding defining attributes is the appropriate strategy when scholars simultaneously seek to differentiate diverse instances of a phenomenon and avoid conceptual overstretching. We also make the case for conceptualizing crisis as a socio-political construction and highlight that crisis narratives are inextricably linked to governance practices.
Overall, our project is innovative in several respects. First, rather than seeking generalizations and endorsing broad notions used in various fields, our approach proposes context-specific qualifications for the phenomenon. Second, our institutional perspective distinguishes our work from an overwhelming number of studies with a focus on migrant issues and migrant-related dynamics. Such focus on institutional factors contributes to integrate within migration studies fields that have been underrepresented (such as law, political science, and international relations); at the same time, it highlights the relevance of migration issues to mainstream debates in said disciplines, thus connecting migration crises with wider and complex turbulences. Third, our approach is both critical and constructive. On the one hand, instead of looking for a discrete and pre-determined outcome, we focus on the entire process of crisis unfolding and its aftermath to identify old and new elements in the resulting configuration. On the other hand, we move away from the biological notion of crisis as an acute malfunction or threat and towards a socio-political construction of what crisis entails and the complex emerging order, which embodies as many challenges as opportunities. Fourth, we unveil the complexity of the topic by assessing responses to crises and impact on migration governance at various levels of analysis, thus including national perspectives but avoiding territorial and state-centred straitjackets that have characterized studies in the past. In addition, rather than focusing only on the most publicized and politicized crisis (e.g., those involving refugees), we also investigate crises affecting migrants in other statuses, such as immigrant workers, displaced populations, and mixed flows. Fifth, our collaboration facilitates the integration of scattered insights on the generalized ambivalence in institutional responses to crises. It expands our knowledge of this issue via original cases studies from various world regions and constitutes a solid starting point for systematic comparisons.
We kindly invite MIGCITPOL/IMISCOE members and all other readers to explore the application of our approach in the recently published JIRS Special Issue (23:3, July 2025), entitled “Migration Crisis with Adjectives: Towards a New Conceptualization and Assessment of Institutional Responses to Migration Crises across World Regions.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ana Margheritis (PhD, Political Science, University of Toronto) is Research Professor at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina and Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. She is also co-coordinator of MIGCITPOL. Her expertise is in transnational migration, international political economy, and foreign policy. Her most recent work focuses on migration policy and governance, diaspora engagement policies, and migrant political rights. For a short bio and link to her publications, see here