One of the advantages of the global attention on migration is that we have the opportunity to breathe new life into realities long known to scholars and activists. Among these is the crucial importance of migration within and among African nations. As the editors of this volume note, only a quarter of the migrants in sub-Saharan Africa migrate out of the Continent (p. 4); Forging African Communities: Mobility, Integration and Belonging focuses on empirical and theoretical understandings of these migrations and the communities and citizenship spaces that result. Its contributors provide case studies which suggest that in some places the integration processes of migration cohere with Western theories but in others, ‘varied forms of mobility and socio-political allegiances, and frail or fragmented formal institutions mean that the individual and collective relations people forge are unlikely to follow these familiar scripts’ (p. 2). The editors brought together a diverse set of researchers through a North–South partnership of scholars previously not well-known to each other and put together the volume through a series of research workshops. The introduction by Landau and Bakewell helps the text overcome the challenge that the many edited volumes face of having a large number of somewhat disparate cases. While the case studies are diverse in method and theoretical focus, by the end they converge in the richness of an Africa-focused migration narrative. The editors compellingly note that Africa-based scholars are generally under-funded and dependent on policy-actors and external partners. Thus they are less able to ‘translate their rich empirical insights into rich, theoretically provocative case studies’ (p. 13). Landau and Bakewell argue that ‘for scholars to offer critical reflection on the societies of which they are part, simple description and policy recommendations are inadequate; they must also reserve distinct space for non-policy oriented research, theorization and provocation’ (p. 13). The book workshops and final volume are meant to do that, and the case studies, as I discuss below, are indeed fascinating and rich Africa-focused theorizations of empirical observations which demonstrate the advantage of this approach.

The relevance of ascriptive characteristics in defining national identity—i.e. attributes that categorically exclude certain groups from national identity—depends on an individual’s perception of immigration-related diversity. Increasing diversity can stand for both a growing threat as well as growing familiarity. In contrast to many other studies, we conceptualize increasing diversity as a factor of growing familiarity, reducing the relevance of ascriptive attributes. We tested this familiarization thesis using multilevel models based on ISSP data of 21 countries and 28 West German districts surveyed in 2003/4 and 2013/14. We exploit cross-sectional and longitudinal effects. Our findings reveal that increasing diversity reduces the relevance of ascriptive characteristics in defining national identity. At the country level, this relationship relies on longitudinal effects and at the district level, on an interaction of cross-sectional and longitudinal effects. We discuss the results and make suggestions for future research.

The number of North Korean secondary migrants from South Korea has grown markedly in the last 10 years. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and participatory observation conducted between 2012 and 2017, this article explores the motivations for North Korean secondary migration and the role of transnational networks in the migration and settlement trajectory. Our findings suggest that many North Koreans in South Korea feel discriminated against due to their origins, and are unable to engage in upward social mobility. We argue that North Korean secondary migration to the United Kingdom (UK) is not a linear process of push and pull factors but a highly reactive and unpredictable one that depends on information fed by brokers. The UK hosts one of the largest communities of North Koreans outside Northeast Asia. Most North Koreans in the UK are secondary asylum seekers from South Korea. Their life in the UK, however, comes with its own set of challenges, some of which mirror co-ethnic or ideological frictions among North Koreans themselves, with the Korean-Chinese, or with South Koreans. This paper contributes to debates on multiple migration, providing a migrant-centric perspective to answer why people who are offered material benefits in the country they arrive in choose to on-migrate to a place where life can be often more challenging.

The world is a train and every wagon has its people. At least that is what Immigrants performed by K’naan, Snow tha Product, Riz MC, and Residente video clip from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton shows us. The video starts with a fade in. A train engineer walks between wagons. His face is covered in dark smoke as he has just finished shovelling the coal into the train furnace. He switches his radio on. We then cut to a family listening to the same radio station then another family, and another one. These families’ features suggest their belonging to different ethnicities and specific places. The speech from the radio is used as a transition and introduction that connects these peoples each in their wagon. They all listen to the same prophecy that sets the piece: ‘It’s really astonishing that in a country founded by immigrants, “immigrant” has somehow become a bad word.’ The 6 minute video song Immigrants (We Get the Job Done) was written during the 2016 American presidential campaign, precisely when Donald Trump promised to build a wall between the USA and Mexico. The song could not have been timelier.

Forced Out and Fenced In is a collection of almost two dozen accounts by sociologists, anthropologists, historians, geographers, and other scholars, drawn from their research on the US immigration system. It is full of captivating stories of immigrants, their families and communities, and occasionally the scholars themselves. Most chapters are focused on undocumented immigrants in the USA. The contributors have done a wonderful job of making the connections between individual lives, processes, laws, and systems. Some of the stories represent the experience of many immigrants; others highlight the extreme or the unique. For a novice, these stories provide an engaging way to learn about immigration history and present in the USA. Yet they also hold much interest for those who are well-versed in immigration scholarship. The book opens with a cogent discussion of immigration enforcement, racialization, deportability, as well as an explanation of continuities and ruptures in immigration policy in the USA. The short chapters are organized into seven parts, each introduced by the editor, who provides an orientation for the set of immigration tales to come. Part I is ‘Migration Histories’, and the first chapter of the book is a fascinating account—complete with photos!—of the life of Wong Foon Chuck, who led a long and complicated transnational existence between China, the USA, and Mexico. Elliott Young uses Chuck’s story to show that migrants can be successful citizens in their new countries even as their identities and practices continue to span national borders. Mae Ngai’s chapter is also about Chinese immigrants. It is a nuanced account of Chinese interpreters, undercover government informants, and co-ethnic immigration brokers in the early 20th century, whose mode of incorporation raises thorny moral and theoretical questions. The other two historical chapters are about Mexican migration. Kelly Lytle Hernandez uses the life of Mexican insurgent Antonio I. Villarreal to show how the Mexican government employed US deportation laws to repress rebellion in the early 20th century, and the way deportees resisted. Adam Goodman’s chapter tells the story of people from one Mexican town, starting with bracero migrations in the mid-20th century. His chapter illuminates an earlier version of today’s deportation nation, as well as the effects of family separations.

The aim of this special issue is to critically assess the potential of regime theory for migration research. Against the background of contemporary political dynamics, regime terminology has become rather popular in migration studies. There has, however, been little debate on the foundations and implications of the very notion of 'regime'. Although regime is anything but a unified concept, in this article we argue that there are commonalities in analytical perspectives useful for migration research. Current usages in migration research are informed by at least four different strands of theory building that differ in their epistemological, ontological, and methodological foundations: (i) international relations-notions of regimes as international regulatory frameworks, (ii) conceptualizations informed by welfare regime theories, (iii) regime notions that stem from the French regulation school, and (iv) regime theories inspired by governmentality studies. The collection of articles in this special issue mirrors this constellation. The contributions come from different disciplinary and methodological backgrounds, employ different regime notions, and focus on a wide range of aspects of contemporary European migration politics. While it seems crucial to acknowledge this conceptual variety, we argue that there are also important points of convergence between these strands of theory building: attention to the complexities and contradictions of regulatory practices, a focus on normative and discursive orders, and consideration of relations of power and inequality. This specific simultaneity of variety and convergence may open spaces for academic debates that move beyond established conceptual and methodological boundaries.

The last decade has witnessed the rise of North–South migration, often motivated by the increase in unemployment and financial insecurity in developed countries in the Global North. This article compares two such migrant populations in relation to one another: the lifestyle or retirement migration of North Americans, and the labour migration of skilled workers from Spain—both to destinations in Ecuador. These North–South migrations illustrate new logics of privileged transnationalism and illustrate the coloniality of contemporary regimes of mobility. The article draws on research results from two separate studies using similar forms of semi-structured qualitative interviews. North–South migrations at different phases of the life cycle demonstrate a systemic edge between late capitalist inclusion and expulsion, marked by asymmetries that reflect global inequalities. The decline of the institutions that favoured social inclusion, helped produce North–South migrations that unevenly affects the lives of people living in developing countries.

Journal Article 'Doing' capital: examining the relationship between immigrants' occupational engagement and symbolic capital Get access Suzanne Huot Suzanne Huot *School of Occupational Therapy, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, N6G 1H1, Canada. Email: shuot2@uwo.ca Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Migration Studies, Volume 5, Issue 1, March 2017, Pages 29–48, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnw023 Published: 24 October 2016