Linkages of Migration and Risk

The intersection of migration and risk is the focus of this panel which will expand discussions to approaches linking migration studies with theories of risk and uncertainty, including framing, mitigation, amplification, and other conceptual and control frameworks.

Recent work has focused on political configurations and their co-production with migration policies while noting a bias towards Western-centric studies (Natter and Thiolett, 2022), while others call for more attention to the scalar analysis combining local, regional/national and supranational approaches to generate insights (Capiono et al., 2025). Further work focuses on ethnoracial hierarchies, e.g. borders and historical traces of empire and colonization (Bautista-Chavez et al., 2024).

While risk is inherent in these discussions, it is also occasionally posited as a driving factor in securitization, as in cases of terrorism, post-Covid pandemic and biometric controls, including AI and digitalization (Koinova et al., 2023), as tools of migration control agencies. Asik et al. (2022) compare risk governance models of migration, contrasting traditional risk governance (TRG), securitization, governmentality etc., to a proposal for inclusive risk governance (IRG).

This panel seeks paper proposals that link migration and risk focusing on macro levels of both political and theoretical conceptualization. Additionally, meso level actors (NGOs, IGOs) as risk mediators are useful for understanding current intersections of migration and instantiations of risk as causes, effects, and explanatory schema. Research that focuses on regions in the Global South are of interest as are those that link political regimes in the expanding populist politics of the Global North and beyond.