Countries depend on both high- and low-skilled immigration to meet economic needs. But most voters prefer high-skilled immigrants, despite the fact that multiple economic sectors structurally depend on low-skilled immigrants. In this paper, we examine voter preferences toward low-skilled immigrants as one barrier to effective immigration policy, even in political regimes where immigration is the consequence

There is a growing interest in the question of immigrants’ legal trajectories, but there have been few quantitative surveys on the subject, due to the lack of satisfactory data. Most existing statistical studies use biographical surveys where current or past legal status is used as an explanatory variable for studying other social phenomena, but these studies rarely question the quality of that measurement

Over the last two decades and with notable increase since 2015, millions of euros have been invested in territorial border governance in West Africa. Targeting migration policy frameworks, capacity building, and the provision of material, the EU and individual European states have sought to improve control mechanisms along these vast and porous borders. This article explores the local impact and broader

To what extent do national governments protect the human rights of migrants, and what are the political and economic circumstances associated with more robust protection? To address these questions, we leverage a rigorous, novel database of migrant rights derived from international laws and standards. We evaluate the extent to which 64 indicators—divided into 17 different categories of migrant rights—appear

Overseas remittances improve the economic conditions and influence the financial behaviors of international migrants’ families that remain in the country of origin. Remittances affect family relationships in the hometown and across transnational borders, but migration research has not yet analyzed these family dynamics through the lens of household finance. Recent studies address the remittance–emotion

This paper examines ‘state brokerage’ in migration infrastructure through South Korea's Employment Permit System (EPS). It introduces the concept of state-led multilevel governance (sMLG)—a synthesis of multilevel governance (MLG) and state transformation (ST)—as a framework for understanding state brokerage, thereby contributing to the greater diversity in migration infrastructure scholarship. By

While recent studies have focused extensively on the reflexive use of categories and methodologies in research on migrants and refugees, they have paid less attention to individuals whose parents are migrants. Previous studies have noted that the terms second generation migrants and migrant descendants are centered on migration, thereby homogenizing experiences and deepening social exclusion of the

As we reach the 60th anniversary of the International Migration Review, a key question for those engaged in migration research remains: has migration studies become more inclusive of knowledges and expertise outside the Global North? In short, the answer is no, and both the passage of time and the persistent awareness of this inequality require urgent and immediate action. In this article, we draw

In the wake of recent interventions to better connect the subfields of international migration and race and ethnicity through a sociology of racialized immigration, we push this further by arguing for the necessity of a global Blackness perspective on global migration. Such a focus does not just reflect the role of race in the dynamics of migration, and vice versa, but more importantly shifts assumptions

For nearly two decades the European Union and its member states have invested in migration awareness and information campaigns (MICs) in West Africa to prevent unwanted migration. While a growing body of migration scholarship has critically engaged with the larger-scale, European-funded MICs in Africa, local activist-led campaigns have received less attention. The article addresses this gap by focusing

International migration literature has shown that infrastructures consisting of people and institutions sustain migration and help migrants cope in new environments. However, analytic focus on these infrastructures is often limited to the migration process and its impact on migrants. This article extends the growing literature on migration infrastructure by analyzing its socially reproductive capacities

Over a quarter century has passed since theoretical debates surrounding competing assimilation models emerged, and durably structured research on immigrants and their descendants in America and beyond. In this article, I offer a three-pronged reflection on the contemporary state of assimilation research. First, I aim to take stock of the relative merits of segmented and neoassimilation theories and

Immigrant entrepreneurship in the United States has grown steadily in the last four decades. In this paper, I study the occupational choices of legal permanent residents and their associated earnings in paid and self-employment. Using a unique data set with pre- and postmigration individual-level information, I analyze the role of home country work experience of immigrants in their probability of becoming

Previous work has found that adult children of international migrants in Western Europe have lower internal migration rates than individuals of native origin. This gap is important for differences in well-being, educational opportunities, and labor market outcomes. So far, however, little is known about the reasons for the greater geographical stability of migrant children. Theories suggest that structural

This contribution introduces the special issue commemorating the 60th anniversary of International Migration Review. We first review the scholarly themes of articles published in the journal during the last 10 years, since the 50th-anniversary issue. We identify seven broad trends and aspects of international population movements, migration, and the migrant experience, including mixed migration, access

The question of how the children of migrants compare to natives in destination countries has long occupied the research agenda of migration and integration scholars. But, while there are many studies that have explored this issue in the Global North, with special attention to South–North migrants, little is known about integration patterns of South–South migrants, that is, Southern migrants and their

Migration theory is adult-centric, failing to account for the experiences of children despite their increasingly important participation in migration flows. Using a life-course perspective and findings from research at the intersection of childhood studies and migration, this paper considers whether different migration theories apply to child migration as compared to adult migration. We examine this

Scientific and expert knowledge on migration is often disregarded in policy making and plays only a minor role in public debates - despite the massive growth and institutionalization of migration research in recent years. This article interrogates the limited impact of migration research(ers) by examining knowledge practices in both policy making and academia. We first look “outwards” at migration

This article examines the emergence of a new immigration regime in the United Kingdom, following its exit from the European Union, to uncover the entanglements and intersections of biopolitics, geopolitics and ideology in migration and migration governance. It draws a clear line between Brexit as a political and geopolitical rupture, the ideological project of “Global Britain” that emerged from it

Often, undocumented immigrants are considered a population living in the shadows. But living below the radar of U.S. governmental authorities is no longer as accurate. As of the end of 2023, estimates indicate nearly six million, or nearly half, of the undocumented population has some level of liminal or protected status. At the same time, these protections are more temporary than before as most immigration

In the last two decades, the Argentine and Chilean states have passed laws and policies targeting Afro-descendant populations. But while Argentine law has institutionalized Afro-descent through a broad notion of African ancestry and African-based culture, the Chilean state has legally defined Afro-descent in relation to a particular history, culture, and identity connected to a long-standing presence

The educational achievements of Asian American children, especially those from lower backgrounds, are substantially higher than other ethnoracial groups. Hyper-selectivity theory finds the origin of such an advantage in the double selectivity of Asian immigrants after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act and the formation of cross-class community resources. Utilizing the 1940 linked full-count Census

Despite the historical and contemporary instances of immigrants and their descendants engaging with the far-right, whether through long-distance nationalism or country of residence politics, migration scholarship has surprisingly paid very little attention to this process. In this paper we argue that insufficient engagement with instances of the far-right attracting and mobilizing immigrants and ethnic

Following the assumption that trends of online queries may indicate intentions and help to predict human behavior, this study addresses the general issue of analyzing, nowcasting, and predicting migrant decisions through an analysis of Google search patterns in the case of Syrians in Turkey. Aiming to contribute to the literature on predicting migration patterns, we examine the relationship between

A large literature on international labor migration explores how to improve low-skilled migrants’ experience of pursuing and obtaining overseas employment. Much of this scholarship focuses on describing and mitigating difficult, and sometimes exploitative, conditions in the host country. Scholars have paid less attention to factors in home countries that may affect aspiring migrants’ experience of

This article reflects on what migration studies have accomplished when researching the role of welfare in migration. It highlights that conventional migration theories do not sufficiently account for how people understand welfare and how they interpret and react to welfare perceptions. The article calls for more attention to the interplay of welfare's subjectivity and migration processes to better

This article examines UK “borderwork creep” into ever more sites in states across Africa and considers how it is transformed and produced by practitioners on the ground. The aim is to go beyond research focusing on the EU and Northern and Western Africa to show the more expansive and, in some cases, unexpected reach of UK borderwork. Drawing on interviews, documentary research, and freedom of information

This study examines international migration trends in Africa since the mid-1960s. It argues that African international migration trends are at a turning point that could significantly affect the future of migration studies. New African immigrant communities are emerging in Asia, South America, and other world regions, while the influence of state and non-state institutions is increasing. Moreover,

Migrants and refugees face hostile publics and organized political interests, and contend with new and evolving forms of surveillance, deportability, and political violence. Researchers show that these political dynamics are fundamentally shaped by the politics of race and ethnicity. Yet, even as this work is increasingly abundant, it has not always been taken up by mainstream accounts of migration

For this special issue of the International Migration Review, we develop and provide a comprehensive organizing framework, the Migration Intersections Grid (MIG), to inform and guide migration research in and through the remainder of the twenty-first century. We motivate our work by conducting a high-level scoping review of summaries and syntheses of different directions of travel in migration research

Scholarship in Migration Studies and Forced Migration and Refugee Studies recognizes that migration and immobility can be the result of various, mixed motivations. Empirical work and conceptualizations of forced and “lifestyle” migration consider some of this complexity. Scholarship on immobility has also examined various, mixed motives. Finally, migration theory development has recently begun to incorporate

This paper examines transit migration through the Darién Gap and the Mexico–Guatemala border, focusing on the commodification of migration, the transformative role of digital platforms, and the socio-economic impacts on local economies. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews conducted from 2021 to 2023, we explore how migration has evolved into a commodified journey where services

“Why do people migrate?” is a question that forms the pivot of migration studies, and migration theory in particular. But it has hardly found satisfactory answers. In this article, I reapproach the question from an array of diverse angles and provide eight responses. Some are aligned with recent theoretical developments, others unpack long-standing ideas with evolving significance, and still others

Health is an integral feature of immigration, providing not only insight into population health but also a critical lens into immigrant integration and the power structure in receiving countries. The goal of this article is to chart the trajectory of scholarship on immigrants’ health, focusing on the formative shift away from dominant individualistic perspectives focused on cultural and behavioral

The scholarship on migration and climate change has been rapidly developed over recent decades, moving away from apocalyptic predictions of mass displacement toward more nuanced modeling of the complex relationships between climate change and migration. Unfortunately, much of that development has happened in parallel to the core of migration studies and thus our prevailing migration theories do not

This paper explores Moldovas unique context within migration studies, highlighting its potential to enhance theoretical frameworks on migration. Despite its small size, Moldova has a significant portion of its population working abroad, offering insights into both migration and immobility. The study examines Moldova's dual migratory flows toward the European Union (EU) and Russia, influenced by cultural

Through financial and nonfinancial remittances such as intellectual capital, social capital, advocacy, political capital and voluntarism, diaspora women provide lifelines for their families and support to community development in their homelands. However, their contributions in humanitarian and development actions are poorly documented and reported, and their potential has not been fully harnessed

This study offers new insights into the phenomenon of overeducation by showing that the overeducation rates among immigrants and the wage returns of overeducated immigrants are closely linked to their admission classes. The overeducation rate in Denmark is highest among immigrants from countries that became members of the EU after 2003, 61% of whom are overeducated as compared to 24% of natives. Controlling

This article will explore three individuals (nurse Muriel Knox Doherty, pediatrician William Robert Fitzgerald Collis, and administrator Olga Eppel) who took on the role of caretakers but who were also, as James Young would call them, “eyewitness scribes”: those who aspire both “to represent the sense of discontinuity and disorientation in catastrophic events and to preserve [their] personal link to

Digital trace data presents an opportunity for promptly monitoring shifts in migrant populations. This contribution aims to determine whether the number of European migrants in the United Kingdom (UK) declined between March 2019 and March 2020, using weekly estimates derived from the Facebook Advertising Platform. The collected data is disaggregated according to age, level of education, and country

Although up-to-date information on the nature and extent of migration within the European Union (EU) is important for policymaking, timely and reliable statistics on the number of EU citizens residing in or moving across other member states are difficult to obtain. In this paper, we develop a statistical model that integrates data on EU migrant stocks using traditional sources such as census, population

Between October 1, 2014, and March 1, 2023, the US Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) took custody of 568,890 unaccompanied migrant children. Drawing on a unique dataset that ORR produced in response to Freedom of Information Act requests and litigation, we provide the first comprehensive, long-term demographic study of the population of unaccompanied migrant children while in ORR custody. Our analysis

Transit migration through Honduras has grown at a time of increasing US border externalization, which raises barriers to mobility through Central America. This research note presents a descriptive analysis of how Hondurans view transit migrants traveling across the country. Honduras is a major migrant-sending country, one that has become an important transit country for migrants of different backgrounds

This article employs the Bosnian notion of “inat,” often translated as spite, to perform auto(bio)psy of my writing about refugee lives in Sweden. Methodologically speaking, I begin with an assertion that the hybrid form of auto(bio)psy, a method that entangles creative and critical reflection, helps capture what it means to live with the traumas of war, especially in the face of genocide denial and