Abstract
Since the 1990s, the notion of “migration regime” has enjoyed a growing popularity in social sciences. The popularity of a term has not been matched, however, by the development of a precise definition. Through a hermeneutical interpretation of the literature on migration regimes, we show how, despite its current imperfections and ambiguities, the concept provides a much-needed middle path in the analysis of the regulation of international migration. One that enables, for instance, an adequately complex, and yet realistic, understanding of the current role of nation-states: neither almighty, undisputed actors, nor marginal, powerless ones.
The paper was written while Giuseppe Sciortino was a Guest Professor in Memory of Willy Brandt at the Institute for Migration, Diversity and Welfare of the University of Malmö.
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Notes
- 1.
Interestingly, however, their cahiers de doléance does not provide even the basics of such a new definition. Their paper does not conceptually differentiate the term adequately. In fact, if the words “country” or “state” were substituted for the word “regime” in their paper, the text would remain more or less the same.
- 2.
In any social interaction, the intentionality of actors necessarily has a strategic dimension: actors must act based in anticipation of how other participants could react to that initial action. Social interaction is always defined by double contingency (Parsons 1968; Luhmann 1976). Therefore, any minimal stability of interaction (with the rare exception of sheer naked force) requires above all intelligibility, i.e. the capacity to make an educated guess about the motivations and interests of other actors.
- 3.
See the classic definition of “regime” by Krasner (1983).
- 4.
The main exception to this rule has been legal scholarship. However, even in that case, the specialized study of migration law was until recently a rather narrow academic niche (see Plender 1972).
- 5.
These frequent clashes do not necessarily imply that the importance of the international refugee regime indicates a loss of sovereignty by states. On the contrary, the development (and increasing complexity) of the international refugee regime in the last decades has been shaped by the interests of key, usually Northern, states (see Betts 2009).
- 6.
This statement applies only partially to Soysal’s analysis, as she has always stressed that post national memberships remain organized at the national level (see Soysal 1994).
- 7.
The early usage of “regime” in this context was primarily descriptive, denoting the broad overall features of a country’s legal complex. Thomas Faist, for example, defined the “immigration policy regime” as the whole set of rules and norms that govern immigrants’ possibilities of becoming citizens, acquiring residence and work permits and participating in economic, cultural, and political life (see Faist 1995).
- 8.
- 9.
This is precisely the meaning emphasized by Sciortino in 2004, who defines a “migration regime” as a “set of rules and practices historically developed by a country in order to deal with the consequences of international mobility through the production of a hierarchy, usually messy, of roles and statuses” (Sciortino 2004b, p. 32; see also Cvajner and Sciortino 2010).
- 10.
The example is somewhat ironic: Esping Andersen’s original framework is characterized by its strong insularity and lack of any interest in international mobility and ethnic heterogeneity (see Sciortino 2004a; Sainsbury 2006). It also pays little attention to the cultural bases of social solidarity, an issue that is obviously of central concern in the debate on national models of integration.
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Cvajner, M., Echeverría, G., Sciortino, G. (2018). What Do We Talk when We Talk about Migration Regimes? The Diverse Theoretical Roots of an Increasingly Popular Concept. In: Pott, A., Rass, C., Wolff, F. (eds) Was ist ein Migrationsregime? What Is a Migration Regime?. Migrationsgesellschaften. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-20532-4_3
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