This open access book provides an alternative theoretical framework of irregular migration that allows to overcome many of the contradictions and theoretical impasses displayed by the majority of approaches in current literature. The analytical framework allows moving from an interpretation biased by methodological nationalism, to a more general systemic interpretation. It explains irregular migration as a structural phenomenon or contemporary society, and why state policies are greatly ineffective in their attempt to control irregular migration. It also explains irregular migration as a diversified phenomenon that relates to the social characteristics of the context, and why states accept irregular migrants. By providing new comparative, empirical, qualitative material which allows to start filling an evident gap in the current research on irregular migration, this book is of interest to graduate students, scholars and policy makers.

This open access book provides an alternative theoretical framework of irregular migration that allows to overcome many of the contradictions and theoretical impasses displayed by the majority of approaches in current literature. The analytical framework allows moving from an interpretation biased by methodological nationalism, to a more general systemic interpretation. It explains irregular migration as a structural phenomenon or contemporary society, and why state policies are greatly ineffective in their attempt to control irregular migration. It also explains irregular migration as a diversified phenomenon that relates to the social characteristics of the context, and why states accept irregular migrants. By providing new comparative, empirical, qualitative material which allows to start filling an evident gap in the current research on irregular migration, this book is of interest to graduate students, scholars and policy makers. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Irregular migration is one of the most momentous phenomena of the 21st century. While it is a life‐changing process for migrants themselves, it also entails a number of significant challenges for destination countries and their local populations. Consequently, irregular migration is now a heavily debated and polarising issue in most receiving states. However, the multiple perspectives on this phenomenon are rarely assessed together, and states’ role in shaping national and international responses remains understudied, which hinders a comprehensive understanding of irregular migration governance. To address this issue, this innovative book investigates irregular migration by concurrently analysing the viewpoints of migrants, states, and their local populations. To that end, it builds on multidisciplinary insights from international relations, migration studies, political science, and other disciplines, and adopts Italy and Australia as two highly relevant yet rarely compared case studies, with a focus on their migratory foreign policies. In arguing for a multidisciplinary and holistic interpretation of irregular migration, it sheds new light on an influential and permanent feature of our times through key theory, security, and policy implications, as well as with relevant proposals. It also provides an assessment of unfolding trends, novel insights, and potential future outlooks based on the latest data and published research. This book is therefore a valuable resource for academics, migration and security professionals, policymakers, diplomats, journalists, and students.

This open access short reader provides an introduction to the theoretical debates regarding irregular migration and aims to bridge these theoretical debates to current empirical developments. It defines irregular migrants and irregular migration by discussing the wide variety of definitions and highlights the reasons for the presence of irregular immigrants in developed countries. The book provides an overview of the variation in policies regarding irregular migrants and elaborates on how irregular migration is facilitated and supported. It discusses the trends and dynamics between border enforcement, human smuggling/trafficking, and on the support irregular migrants obtain by citizens and civil society while residing in the EU. Last but not least, the book also focuses on the agency and political mobilization of irregular migrants. As such, it provides a great resource for everyone interested in learning more about irregular migration.

Moving away from state categorizations on irregular migration, this Research Handbook critically examines processes and dynamics that generate and reproduce irregularity, and discusses who may count as an irregular migrant.

This open access book provides an analysis of the functioning, consequences and inherent limitations of internalised immigration control. By adopting the perspective of irregular residents as well as local service providers, the book sheds new light on the intricate mechanisms that either help or hinder the diffusion of immigration control into concrete institutional settings, like schools or hospitals. A simple and innovative analytical framework enables the systematic comparison of three different spheres of service provision across two distinct local as well as also national contexts. This is necessary to understand the complex interplay between formal law and policy, the intrinsic rules and logics operating within institutions, and the ethical or practical obligations and constraints attached to particular roles and professions. Based on empirical findings and rigorous analysis, the book argues that internalised control is part of the problem that irregular migration poses for society, rather than constituting a potential solution to it.

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.

This open access book provides insight into the domestic space of people with an immigrant or refugee background. It selects and compares a whole spectrum of dwelling conditions with ethnographic material covering a variety of national backgrounds - Latin America, North and West Africa, Eastern Europe, South Asia - and an equally broad range of housing, household and legal arrangements. It provides a fine-grained understanding of migrants' lived experience of their domestic space and shows the critical significance of the lived space of a house as a microcosm of societal constellations of identities, values and inequalities. The book enhances the connection between migration studies and research into housing, social reproduction, domesticity and material culture and provides an interesting read to scholars in migration studies, policy makers and practitioners with a remit in local housing and integration policies. “This wonderful edited collection extends our understanding of migration not only into the confines of the domestic space but also into the territory of the ethnographer. What does it mean to be a guest in a migrant home? This collection of chapters traverses this question in diverse settings and circumstances of homemaking [...]. Boccagni and Bonfanti have skilfully created an intricate lace of ethnographic accounts that provides a nuanced understanding of the built environments where migrants live, how they relate to their homes and how this is articulated in their attitudes toward majority society. The chapters, each on its own and together as a collection, advance our understanding of the researcher being a guest in the migrant home, just like the migrant being a guest in the host country. This complexity of ethnography and positionality makes this edited book an essential reading for migration scholars and ethnographers alike!” Iris Levin, Lecturer in Urban Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia “This book demonstrates how ethnographies of home and dwelling can bear on the study of migration and its manifestation in domestic space. Entering someone's home as a researcher challenges our ethical registers: the researcher moves between being a stranger and a guest. The authors point to the dilemmas researchers encounter in intimate settings and how they might be resolved. A valuable and timely book for researchers on dwelling, home and movement.” Cathrine Brun, Professor of Human Geography, Centre for Lebanese Studies, Oxford, UK "This excellent collection delves into the relationship between migration, domesticity, and material culture. It is ethnographically rich and impressively varied in its geographical scope, with insights that will prove extremely useful to scholars and practitioners alike. The great strength of the volume lies in the fascinating diversity, granular detail and methodological care of the contributions, with authors deploying concepts and arguments that prepare a great deal of fertile ground for future work." Tom Scott-Smith, Associate Professor of Refugee Studies and Forced Migration, University of Oxford “This insightful collection departs from the simple yet significant question of roles: What happens when the researcher/participant relationship, becomes guest/host instead? By seeing and interpreting domestic spaces as ethnographic field sites, the contributions shed light on refugees' and other migrants' lived experiences of home and housing. Drawing on empirical evidence from diverse types of homes, across geographic locations, Migration and domestic space: Ethnographies of home in the making offers valuable and fresh perspective, encouraging new connections between material and emotional, public and private, in migration research.” Marta Bivand Erdal, Research Professor in Migration studies, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).

Building upon the concept of migration regime, this open access book brings together the works of scholars who have investigated logics and routines of action in the field of immigration control within a single and innovative theoretical framework. The chapters cover a wide range of policy domains, from visa policy to the externalisation of controls, labour migration to asylum, internal controls towards irregular migration to restrictions for intra-EU mobility. By unravelling organisational strategies and practices across Europe, the book does not only contribute to dismantling the very idea of the European North-South divide in migration but also shows how Europe really works in the field of migration in times of deep economic, asylum and health crises. In this perspective, the book questions the widespread understanding of migration control outcomes as simply the result of more or less effective state policies without considering the embeddedness of the national policy goals and strategies in the dynamic interplay of different economies, institutional cultures and geopolitical positions.

Examines the paradoxes of kinship in the lives of unauthorized African migrants as they struggle for mobility, employment, and citizenship in Europe. In rapidly changing and highly precarious contexts, unauthorized African migrants turn to kinship in search of security, stability, and predictability. Through the exchange of identity documents between “siblings,” assistance in obtaining such documentation through kinship networks, and marriages that provide access to citizenship, new assemblages of kinship are continually made and remade to navigate the shifting demands of European states. These new kinship relations, however, often prove unreliable, taking on new, unexpected dynamics in the face of codependency; they become more difficult to control than those who enter into such relations can imagine. Through unusually close ethnographic work in West African migrant communities in Amsterdam, Apostolos Andrikopoulos reveals the unseen dynamics of kinship through shared papers, the tensions of race and gender that develop in mutually beneficial marriages, and the vast, informal networks of people, information, and documentation on which migrants rely. Throughout Argonauts of West Africa, Andrikopoulos demonstrates how inequality, exclusionary practices, and the changing policies of an often-violent state demand innovative ways of doing kinship to successfully navigate complex migration routes.