This forward-looking Research Handbook showcases cutting-edge research on the relationship between international migration and digital technology. It sheds new light on the interlinkages between digitalisation and migration patterns and processes globally, capturing the latest research technologies and data sources. Featuring international migration in all facets from the migration of tech sector specialists through to refugee displacement, leading contributors offer strategic insights into the future of migration and mobility.

This Open Access book investigates the methodological and ethical dilemmas involved when working with digital technologies and large-scale datasets in relation to ethnographic studies of digital migration practices and trajectories. Digital technologies reshape not only every phase of the migration process itself (by providing new ways to access, to share and preserve relevant information) but also the activities of other actors, from solidarity networks to border control agencies. In doing so, digital technologies create a whole new set of ethical and methodological challenges for migration studies: from data access to data interpretation, privacy protection, and research ethics more generally. Of specific concern are the aspects of digital migration researchers accessing digital platforms used by migrants, who are subject to precarious and insecure life circumstances, lack recognised papers and are in danger of being rejected and deported. Thus, the authors call for new modes of caring for (big) data when researching migrants’ digital practices in the configuration of migration and borders. Besides taking proper care of research participants’ privacy, autonomy, and security, this also spans carefully establishing analytically sustainable environments for the respective data sets. In doing so, the book argues that it is essential to carefully reflect on researchers’ own positioning as being part of the challenge they seek to address.

Migrants and diaspora communities are shaped by their use of information and communication technologies. This book explores the multifaceted role played by new media in the re-location of these groups of people, assisting them in their efforts to defeat nostalgia, construct new communities, and keep connected with their communities of origin. Furthermore, the book analyses the different ways in which migrants contribute, along with natives, in co-constructing contemporary societies – a process in which the cultures of both groups are considered. Drawing on contributions from a range of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, psychology and linguistics, it offers a more profound understanding of one of the most significant phenomena of contemporary international societies – the migration of nearly a billion people worldwide - and the relationship between technology and society.

This dynamic Handbook unpacks the entanglements between the two notions of home and migration, which illuminate the lived experiences of (in)voluntary mobilities and the contested terrain of inclusion and belonging. Drawing on cross-disciplinary contributions from leading international scholars, it advances research on the social study of home in relation to migration, refugee, displacement, and diaspora studies. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

Uniquely informed by a sociological perspective, this major new textbook introduces the underlying origins and consequences of international migration, placing individuals within a broader social, cultural and historical context. This comprehensive introduction analyses international migration and its effects on those who migrate, their families, and their places of origin and destination. Drawing on illustrative examples from around the world, the book covers the major theories concerning the origins of international migration and the manner, degree and consequences of migrants’ incorporation into the societies to which they move. It also includes in-depth discussion of how international migration is relevant to key issues – gender, the family, and religion; the so-called refugee ‘crisis’ in much of the developed world; and offers insights throughout into cutting-edge research from emotions and lifestyle migration to the proliferation of digital communication technologies. This text expertly offers students the necessary skills to unpack common myths that are used to inform policy and media discourse, including abstract distinctions between ‘refugee’ and ‘economic migrant’, the complex and ambiguous nature of migrant national identity, and that while many richer countries of the world are characterized by a perceived refugee ‘crisis’, it is in fact poorer and developing countries that see the vast majority of the world’s refugees and displaced persons.

In this thoroughly revised and updated second edition, William Allen and Carlos Vargas-Silva bring together a diverse range of experts to explore the latest research methods in migration studies, taking stock of major changes that have been salient for migration research—as well as the social sciences more broadly—in the last decade. Spanning a variety of different methodologies, this second edition of the Handbook of Research Methods in Migration provides practical guidance on designing, completing, and communicating migration research, considering diverse audiences including migrants themselves. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

Adeptly navigating one of the most pressing issues on the current global agenda, this topical Research Handbook provides a comprehensive and research-based exploration of the sociology of migration. As well as highlighting the field’s achievements and current challenges, it explores key concepts used in current research, methods employed, and the spheres and contexts in which migrants participate.

The Routledge Companion to Migration, Communication and Politics brings together academics from numerous disciplines to show the legal, political, communicative, theoretical, methodological, and media implications of migration. The collection makes the compelling case that migration does not occur in a vacuum; rather, it is driven by and reacts to various factors, including the political, economic, and cultural worlds in which individuals live. The 25 chapters reveal the complex nature of migration from various angles, not only looking at how policy affects migrants but also how individuals and marginalized groups are impacted by such acts. In Part I contributors examine migration law, debating the role of the state in managing migration flows and investigating existing migration policy. Part II offers theories and methods that integrate communication studies, political science, and law into the study of migration, including cultural fusion theory and Gebserian theory. Part III looks at how contemporary perceptions of migration and migrants intersect with media representations across media outlets worldwide. Finally, Part IV offers case studies that present the intricacies of migration within different cultural, national, and political groups. Migration is the key political, economic, and cultural issue of our time and this companion takes the next step in the debate; namely, the effects of the how, in addition to the how and why. Researchers and students of communication, politics, media, and law will find this an invaluable intervention.

This edited volume explores migration movements to Norway, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Portugal from Brazil, Morocco and Ukraine, focusing on how the migration processes of yesterday influence those of today. The central analytical tool for this undertaking is the concept of feedback. This volume identifies various feedback mechanisms that initiate, perpetuate and reverse migration movements. It pays attention to the role of personal networks, but it also moves beyond networks by analysing the role of institutions, macro-level factors and forms of broadcast feedback operating through impersonal channels. Based on extensive surveys and in-depth interviews, it changes our understanding of how and why patterns of international migration change over time.

Media practices and the everyday cultures of transnational migrants are deeply interconnected. Mediating Migration narrates aspects of the migrant experience as shaped by the technologies of communication and the social, political and cultural configurations of neoliberal globalization. The book examines the mediated reinventions of transnational diasporic cultures, the emergence of new publics, and the manner in which nations and migrants connect. By placing migration and media practices in the same frame, the book offers a wide-ranging discussion of the contested politics of mobility and transnational cultures of diasporic communities as they are imagined, connected, and reproduced by various groups, individuals, and institutions. Drawing on current events, activism, cultural practices, and crises concerning immigration, this book is organized around themes legitimacy, recognition, publics, domesticity, authenticity that speak to the entangled interconnections between media and migration. Mediating Migration will be of interest to students in media, communication, and cultural studies. The book raises questions that cut across disciplines about cutting-edge issues of our times migration, mobility, citizenship, and mediated environments.