Migration

MigrationIn contemporary political science, migration refers to the movement of people across state borders; yet, the term is also used more broadly to encompass internal mobility and forced displacement, including internally displaced persons (IDPs).It captures both patterns of movement and the political, social, and institutional practices that regulate them.Migration is an essentially contested concept: scholars dispute its boundaries (international vs. internal, voluntary vs. forced), its normative content (threat vs. opportunity, labor vs. rights), and even its analytic validity, with some arguing that "migration" is itself a category produced by governance practices.Terms like "irregular" or "unauthorized" migration are shown to emerge through governance practices that render mobility illegal or precarious (Squire, 2017).Migration is therefore best understood not simply as population movement but as a site where sovereignty, security, markets, solidarity, and diplomacy converge (Andersson, 2016;Adamson & Tsourapas, 2019).