Framing International Migration: from National Models to Transnational Critique

Abstract

As the social scientific study of international migration has developed over the last half century, it has frequently been marked by a division into two quite separate bodies of social scientific investigation, each with its own researchers, theories, publications, university courses and conferences. One area of research has been concerned with the determinants, patterns and dynamics of international mobility. A second area of research has focused on the ways in which immigrants are incorporated into receiving societies and the changes this brings about for both migrants and host populations. These two areas could be called, more briefly, mobility studies and immigrant incorporation studies. However, some scholars have argued that a full understanding of the role of migration in a world with increasingly porous borders requires analysis of the migratory process as whole, from the initial causal factors right through to the long-term impacts on society (Castles and Miller 2003: 16–17). Migration studies or the social science of migration should thus both include and transcend mobility studies and incorporation studies.