1st Edition
Contested Concepts in Migration Studies
This volume demonstrates that migration- and diversity-related concepts are always contested, and provides a reflexive critical awareness and better comprehension of the complex questions driving migration studies. The main purpose of this volume is to enhance conceptual thinking on migration studies.
Examining interaction between concepts in the public domain, the academic disciplines, and the policy field, this book helps to avoid simplification or even trivialization of complex issues. Recent political events question established ways of looking at issues of migration and diversity and require a clarification or reinvention of political concepts to match the changing world. Applying five basic dimensions, each expert chapter contribution reflects on the role concepts play and demonstrates that concepts are ideology dependent, policy/politics dependent, context dependent, discipline dependent, and language dependent, and are influenced by how research is done, how policies are formulated, and how political debates extend and distort them.
This book will be essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners in migration studies/politics, migrant integration, citizenship studies, racism studies, and more broadly of key interest to sociology, political science, and political theory.
Introduction: Conceptual Thinking in Migration Studies
Ricard Zapata-Barrero, Dirk Jacobs, and Riva Kastoryano
1. Border: Meanings, practices and fields in academia, politics, and public domains
Bastian Vollmer
2. Citizenship: From liberal right to neoliberally earned
Christian Joppke
3. Cohesion: Beyond the diversity threatening hypothesis
Ricard Zapata-Barrero
4. Cosmopolitanism: Moral Universalism and the Politics of Migration
John Erik Fossum and Espen D.H. Olsen
5. Discrimination: Studying the racialized structure of disadvantage
Patrick Simon
6. Diversity: Polyphony of the concept
Dirk Jacobs
7. Identity and immigration: Core concepts
Edward Telles
8. Integration: A critical view
Adrian Favell
9. Interculturalism: Re-imagining dialogue and connectedness in super-diverse realities
Fethi Mansouri
10. Mobility and Migration: Physical, Contextual and Perspectival Interpretations
Rainer Baubock
11. Multiculturalism: Maximum Misunderstanding
Keith G. Banting
12. Nationalism: The concept and its varieties
Anna Triandafyllidou
13. Secularism: Political Secularism and Post-immigration Ethno-Religious Communities
Tariq Modood
14. Tolerance: Recognition, reasonable accommodation, and minority rights
Patrick Loobuyck
15. Transnationalism: Theory and experience
Riva Kastoryano
Biography
Ricard Zapata-Barrero is Full Professor in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
Dirk Jacobs is Full Professor at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, and Chairperson of the Brussels Studies Institute, Belgium.
Riva Kastoryano is Emerite Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), affiliated at Sciences Po - Center for International Studies (CERI-Sciences Po, Paris).
‘Written by leading scholars and researchers the various chapters in this bold and challenging book are full of insights into key issues that are at the heart of ongoing conversations in many societies. It is a must-read for all those working on this important social and political issue.’
John Solomos, University of Warwick, UK
‘From citizenship and diversity to identity and multiculturalism, the essays in this innovative and important volume by leading migration scholars provide fresh perspectives and revealing insights into contested concepts in migration studies.’
Nancy Foner, City University of New York, USA
‘Migration is a hotly debated, contested topic in many countries. These disagreements are mirrored in the many contested concepts in migration studies. This book, however, shows that clarification of these contested concepts may be a first step in making migration less contested.’
Jan Willem Duyvendak, University of Amsterdam and NIAS-KNAW, The Netherlands
"...a significant contribution to the field and an essential book that students, scholars, and policy-makers interested in migration and diversity would like to keep it on their desks to consult."
Erdem Dikici (2022): Book Review of "Contested concepts in migration studies" in Ethnic and Racial Studies, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2022.2063153
"...the book invites us to rethink and expand fifteen key concepts... due to its broad overview, this compendium can be a useful source of information not only to scholars within the field, but also to journalists and policymakers interested in expanding their knowledge and accuracy in the understanding of such concepts."
Luana Franco Rocha (2022): Book Review of "Contested Concepts in Migration Studies" in Immigrants & Minorities, DOI: 10.1080/02619288.2022.2069218
