Rethinking the Migration State

Moving beyond the conventional binary logic of state and society, this book reveals how borderlands emerge as both contested and negotiated terrains shaped by historical legacies and contemporary practices co-produced by the state and people.

This book advances a new research agenda in migration studies by rethinking the ‘migration state’ as a core feature of modern governance. Since Hollifield introduced the concept in 2004, the migration state framework has offered a powerful lens for understanding how states reconcile competing objectives of economic openness, political control, and sovereignty in an era of global mobility. This volume widens that lens, moving beyond Western Europe and the United States to situate migration governance within longer imperial, postcolonial, and international political-economic trajectories. The book proposes new typologies including imperial migration states, developmental migration states, and immigration rentier states, demonstrating how different configurations of state institutions, political regimes, and development strategies shape migration governance across liberal democracies and autocracies. Bringing together leading scholars working across Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and North America, the book examines countries of origin, destination, and transit through archival and ethnographic research, in-depth case studies, and comparative analyses. It will be of great interest for researchers, policymakers, and students in migration studies, political science, international relations, sociology, and development studies. The essays in this volume were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.