5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

The Economic Sociology of Immigration edited by Alexandro Portes in 1995 characteristically focussed on the integration of migrants in their destinations countries, and the impact of migrant labor on destination labor markets. Thirty years later, research has turned to understanding migration infrastructures, migration markets, and migration industries that traverse territorial jurisdictions, and develop through patterns of circular and return migration. The authority imposed by sending states on outmigration, the role of bilateral treaties between sending and receiving states, power asymmetries that determine whether and how these balance the interests of both, the predominant role of brokers and other intermediaries in facilitating the recruitment, movement, placement and control of migrant labor, the financialization of migration through money-lending and money-sending, the interaction of immigration control and de-regulated employment on the job and social mobility that can be attained through migration are possible components of a new economic sociology of migration explored in this panel. Papers consider, but clearly move beyond the experiences of migrants to focus on the actors (migrants, states, intermediaries) embedding labor mobilities into emerging transnational social structures and social institutions. An important question concerns movements for de-commodifying migrant labor and the social organization of protections to ensure the reproduction of migrant labor across territorial jurisdictions.