Crisis and migration have a long association, in popular and policy discourse as well as in social scientific analysis. Despite the emergence of more nuanced and even celebratory accounts of mobility in recent years, there remains a persistent emphasis on migration being either a symptom or a cause of crisis. Moreover, in the context of a recent series of headline-hitting and politically controversial situations, terms like ‘migration crisis’ and ‘crisis migration’ are acquiring increasing currency among policy-makers and academics.
Crisis and Migration provides fresh perspectives on this routine association, critically examining a series of politically controversial situations around the world. Drawing on first-hand research into the Arab uprisings, conflict and famine in the Horn of Africa, cartel violence in Latin America, the global economic crisis, and immigration ‘crises’ from East Asia to Southern Africa to Europe, the book’s contributors situate a set of contemporary crises within longer histories of social change and human mobility, showing the importance of treating crisis and migration as contextualised processes, rather than isolated events.
By exploring how migration and crisis articulate as lived experiences and political constructs, the book brings migration from the margins to the centre of discussions of social transformation and crisis; illuminates the acute politicisation and diverse spatialisations of crisis–migration relationships; and urges a nuanced, cautious and critical approach to associations of crisis and migration.
1. Crisis and migration: concepts and issues, Anna Lindley 2. Migration and ‘crisis’ in the Middle East and North Africa region, Philip Marfleet and Adam Hanieh 3. Histories and contemporary challenges of crisis and mobility in Somalia, Anna Lindley and Laura Hammond 4. Criminal violence and displacement in Mexico: evidence, perceptions and politics, Laura Rubio Díaz-Leal and Sebastián Albuja 5. The global economic crisis and East Asian labour migration: A crisis of migration or struggles of labour?, Dae-oup Chang 6. Crisis, enforcement and control at the EU borders, Julien Jeandesboz and Polly Pallister-Wilkins 7. The social construction of (non) crises and its effects: Government discourse on xenophobia, immigration and social cohesion in South Africa, Iriann Freemantle with Jean Pierre Misago 8. Imagined threats, manufactured crises and "real" emergencies: the politics of border closure in the face of mass refugee influx, Katy Long 9. Crisis? Which crisis? Families and forced migration, Tania Kaiser
Biography
Dr. Anna Lindley is Lecturer at the Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK.
"Welding together the discussion of crisis and migration turns out to be an inspired intervention, taking us fittingly far from the prosaic categories of policy analysis." –Robin Cohen, University of Oxford, UK
"This book deftly probes the links between migration and crisis, destabilizing the normative assumptions that migration is crisis. The authors conceptualise crisis and migration not as isolated events but rather as co-constituted processes understood in relation to colonialism, nation-state formation, industrialisation, and urbanization. And crisis migration, they argue, precipitates crisis management. A compelling read." –Jennifer Hyndman, Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, Canada
