Research Cluster 'Global Mobility and Migration'
Global mobility and migration have emerged as key themes in the research agenda of CRESC scholars. By exploring the interaction between migration policies and the aspirations of immobilised populations and others on the move, we explore how the current global regime of mobility stratifies life chances (e.g. opportunities for access to work, education, safety) and how this depends on nationality, legal status, gender and place of residence. We also study who is considered a ‘migrant’ (and who isn’t), how migrants are symbolically and culturally categorized (e.g. as a particular type of citizen or human) and how this affects social inequality.
Some of the questions guiding our research in Europe and the Global South are: What are the causes and consequences of (im)mobility? How do visa systems, migration policies and welfare regimes construct external and internal borders in our societies? How do migration-related inequalities affect livelihood strategies, feelings of inclusion and opportunities to be included in a new country of settlement?
Our key topics include: the interplay between migration policies and people’s aspirations and strategies to cross borders; labour and asylum migration and how they are represented in policies and public discourses; migrants and refugees’ inclusion pathways in Europe and in the Global South; the impact of migration on families and their ways of “doing family”; the production of cultural, legal and administrative categories of migration; environmental mobility.