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The Migration Industry: Global Presence, Local Arrangements
The Migration Industry: Global Presence, Local Arrangements
Monday, 11 July 2016: 10:45-12:15
Location: Hörsaal 07 (Main Building)
RC31 Sociology of Migration (host committee) Language: English
Most migratory flows, from labor to human capital to refugee streams, involve the participation of profit-seeking actors who foster, facilitate and sustain movement across borders. This heterogeneous ensemble of actors, conceptualized in the literature under the term migration industry, interacts with migrants, employers, states and non-governmental organizations to produce the infrastructures of international mobility.
Contrary to the prevalent and narrow focus on its illegal components, this session seeks to engage a broad definition of the migration industry that includes the brokering of authorized migrations and actors and infrastructures that straddle formal and informal, authorized and unauthorized flows.
This session also addresses the fact that despite its presence across migratory systems, the migration industry follows local arrangements. What sociological lessons can be learned from this variation across countries, systems and types of migratory flows?
This session welcomes comparative studies, papers that analyze how the migration industry is involved in the co-production of mobility and approaches that show the multiple functions of the migration industry: facilitation, control, management.
Session Organizer: