Extraordinary Agents and Expensive Adventure

Abstract

The relationship between migration and development has returned to the fore as a major development-policy issue. Although the debate has swung between optimism and pessimism since the 1950s, optimistic views began to dominate in the 1990s and 2000s. However, since the last decade, pessimistic impressions have been mounting. We argue here that migrants take an adventurous journey to get to the destinations by risking their lives. We analyze how aspiring migrants justify taking certain risks to migrate by negotiating risk information in relation to their life circumstances and considering the symbolic value of specific forms of migration. While it has been argued that migrants follow perilous migration routes do so out of mis/disinformation about the risks they might face, often due to the desperate desire to better their economic status, we argue that these migrants are really exceptional people. They endure discrimination, low pays, xenophobia; the pain of paying exorbitant amount of money to finance migration, high rate for remitting, opportunity cost and psychological costs.