Demographic Imaginations and Migration Futures

Across the globe, demographic projections increasingly shape debates about migration, diversity, ageing, fertility decline, and population growth. Governments, international organizations, media actors, and social movements routinely invoke demographic futures to make sense of social change and justify policy interventions. Yet such futures are never neutral forecasts. They are socially produced, politically mobilized, and deeply entangled with questions of race, nationhood, and inequality. In particular, imagined migration futures increasingly serve as powerful lenses through which societies anticipate demographic change and define the boundaries of political communities.

This session explores demographic imaginations and population politics from a comparative and global perspective. We are particularly interested in how demographic projections, expectations, and anxieties are produced, circulated, contested, and transformed into political narratives about more or less inclusive collective futures. Special attention is given to the role of imagined migration futures in shaping public discourse, political mobilization, and policy responses to demographic change.

Contributions may address:

• demographic threat narratives, including replacement theories and population anxieties;
• imagined population and migration futures and their impact on political discourse and mobilization;
• the production and circulation of demographic and migration knowledge by states, experts, media, and international institutions;
• demographic counter-narratives and alternative futures emerging from social movements, minority groups, Indigenous communities, or Global South perspectives;
• the relationship between demographic imaginaries, nationalism, racism, and belonging.

By bringing together perspectives from the sociology of migration, futures research and critical demography, this session aims to advance a global and comparative understanding of how demographic imaginations and migration futures shape contemporary societies.