MoHu Guest Lecture | Migration and citizenship regimes in comparative perspective: the four worlds of contemporary migration governance

Online seminar

05.05.2021

May 5th, 5 pm CET

Prof. Joaquín Arango (Complutense University of Madrid, Visiting Professor at DiSSGeA), Migration and citizenship regimes in comparative perspective: the four worlds of contemporary migration governance

The concept of migration regimes has attracted increasing interest in recent years, as part of current efforts to reconceptualize migration research. It is an increasingly used notion that may be useful to deepen the understanding of the structural determinants of immigration and incorporation policies and politics. Migration and citizenship policies do not happen in a vacuum, and they do not result from the unfettered will of governments. Rather, they take place in a matrix determined by a series of structural factors that set limits to the discretion of the government. As these determinants are structural in nature, migration policies take place in a relatively stable context, and this confers a degree of continuity to their defining elements over time. Such matrices can evolve and change, but they tend to do so slowly, with the result that migration regimes tend to be relatively stable. Building on these premises, the aim of the paper is four-fold: a) to contribute to clarify the notion of migration regimes; b) to identify its major determinants; c) to identify and describe the major ideal-types of migration regimes that are found in our times; and d) to assess whether any sort of significant evolution might be taking place in some of them in our days, in connection with the hyper-politicized climate that prevails in a number of countries. 

Joaquín Arango is Professor of Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid and Director of the Center for the Study of Migration and Citizenship at the Ortega y Gasset Research Institute.

The seminar will be delivered online. Registration link: https://unipd.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYucuCtqjoqGdUB-6LGGvvntU__8ptkFhcR