Social theory and migration research in dialog

Abstract

“Migration” has received less attention in social theory compared to other topics, and at the same time, migration research is often said to have a “theory deficit.” Against this background, we argue that it is mutually beneficial to relate and link social theory and migration research more closely. On the one hand, a stronger reference to social theories is important for migration research to break down prevailing views on migration and to further develop independent analytical perspectives and concepts that allow for a critical-reflexive distance to (national-)state and hegemonic categories. These established categories often go hand in hand with undercomplex, essentialist notions of society, as in dominant integration discourses. In social theory, on the other hand, migration is rarely addressed, with hardly any debates in migration research discussed. When migration is addressed, it is mostly to illustrate theoretical concepts and theses, without sufficiently considering the complexity of migration phenomena. In this introductory article, we outline how we can revise perspectives and categories of migration studies based on a rearticulation of social theories and, conversely, how we can rethink theoretical approaches starting from a perspective of migration (studies).

Conflicts over migration have repeatedly led to polarization in the past: since the end of the “Cold War” at the latest, migration has been constructed as a primary threat; during the events of 2015/2016, which were mostly treated as a “refugee crisis,” migration was turned into a central social antagonism; and in view of existing conditions, further conjunctures of polarization can be expected in the future. A decisive contribution to these polarizations is made by the way knowledge about migration is produced in different sectors of society. In recent years, migration research—which for example, in Germany has long been characterized by an objectifying, state-oriented view of migration (cf. Bommes & Thränhardt, 2012; Mecheril et al., 2013)—has increasingly been called upon in this regard, with many studies reproducing dominant, statist views that objectify and problematize migration. Similar tendencies can be found in other national contexts, where especially commissioned studies tend to reify migration as problematic (see contributions in Scholten et al., 2015 outlining such studies). In contrast, however, strands of reflexive and critical migration research have emerged that break away from hegemonic views and develop alternative perspectives (Amelina, 2021; Bigo & Guild, 2005; Casas-Cortes et al., 2014; De Genova et al., 2022; Gutiérrez Rodriguez, 2010; Heimeshoff et al., 2014; Mezzadra & Neilson, 2013; movements, 2015; Tsianos & Karakayali, 2010; Walters, 2006). In this context, references to social theories are often formative. However, although these references may have great significance on the “backstage” of academic projects and writing processes, they are hardly ever discussed in more detail on the “frontstage” of publications and congresses.

The aim of this special issue is therefore to reflect on how we could open alternative perspectives on migration through a concentrated engagement with social theories; perspectives that go beyond an undercomplex polarization of migration as the “other” and society defined as the norm of nation states. It is guided by the assumption that it is mutually beneficial to relate and link social theory and migration research more closely. On the one hand, drawing more closely on social theories facilitates going beyond national paradigms and the nation-state oriented problem-solving perspective of migration research, the persistence of which has been explained by a lack of theory by Michael Bommes and Dietrich Thränhardt. Since few studies systematically refer to broader social theory debates, migration research has drawn on government-related categories and remained a “hidden reflexive theory of the political system by producing descriptions of migration studies in response to the self-descriptions of this system and its environment” (Bommes & Thränhardt, 2012, p. 223; Castles, 2010). In this vein, Stephan Castles also calls for a closer reference to social theory. He sums up that “the most important way to achieve advancement in migration studies is to link it more closely to wider social theory” (2010, p. 1576; see also Amelina & Faist, 2012; Amelina et al., 2021; O'Reilly, 2012; van Hear, 2010). Drawing on these insights, the stronger reference to social theories is important for migration research to break down prevailing views on migration and to further develop independent analytical perspectives and concepts that allow for a critical-reflexive distance to (national-)state and hegemonic categories. These established categories often go hand in hand with undercomplex, essentialist notions of society, as in dominant integration discourses (Schinkel, 2018). In social theory, on the other hand, migration is rarely addressed, with hardly any debates in migration research discussed (Celikates, 2016). When migration is addressed, it is mostly to illustrate theoretical concepts and theses, without sufficiently considering the complexity of migration phenomena. The diagnosis of a mutual isolation of theoretical and empirical work in sociology (Joas & Knöbl, 2017), therefore also applies to the relationship between migration research and social theory—maybe even to a special degree. The special issue therefore aims at a further development of social theory in order to rethink theoretical approaches starting from a perspective of migration (research) that has the potential to unravel bounded and homogenized notions of society (Bojadžijev & Römhild, 2014).

Advancing migration research through social theory

The scientific study on migration can be dated back at least to Ernst Georg Ravenstein's studies in the 1880s (Greenwood & Hunt, 2003). These early studies present a somewhat linear depiction of migration. It was basically assumed that people moved from one place to another. Over the decades, different explanatory models were developed showing how social, political, and economic structures are decisive for people's decisions to move (Heinsen et al., 2021). Likewise migration studies have been asking fundamental questions, such as who, how many, why these places, and so on. Many of such questions have had an empirical anchoring without seeking to develop migration theory as such. One reason lies in the multidisciplinary nature of migration studies, that so far not has led toward developing a disciplinary status with a distinct knowledge-production. That said, the literature within the migration field shows a development toward a more critical and reflexive approach. Categories previously taken for granted (e.g. integration) are now rarely used (see forthcoming issue of Comparative Migration Studies, 2025 on “Critical developments in migration studies”). Furthermore, over the last two decades we have seen attempts to critique and challenge the nation-state-centered focus of migration studies (e.g., Favell, 2003). This has included attempts to develop “methodological de-nationalism” (Anderson, 2019). Moreover, the field has seen a call for more critical and reflexive approaches (Scholten, 2020). This has perhaps been especially evident in the quantitative driven studies within migration research. Bourdieu, somewhat provocatively, claimed that this type of research has stopped being reflexive due to exaggerating the “systematicity” of the studied phenomena (1990). He used the notion “science without scientists” about statistical research approaches and argued that researchers pursuing such approaches have stopped reflecting on how researchers themselves import biases into the studies. Bourdieu was of course not only referring to migration studies. Neither does he, or we, claim that statistics is without relevance. Statistics are conventions representing legitimate (and normative) divisions of the social world (Jørgensen, 2012). They are used for designing policies, for representing societies and for building “objectivation” of social processes (Rallu et al., 2006). What this points to is again an empiricist dominance of knowledge-production within migration studies. Not only on in quantitative studies but also in qualitative ones. Yet critical and reflexive approaches do not in themselves entail theory-building or thinking through and with social theory. Nevertheless, critical studies in particular would be largely inconceivable without the theories on which they draw.

The importance of thinking migration from a larger social theoretical perspective has therefore become evident over the last decades (O'Reilly, 2012). Going back to publications of the 1990s, the transnational turn within social theory and migration studies, advocated by Nina Glick Schiller and others (Schiller et al., 1995), has challenged state-centric approaches—and especially so questioned the nation-state as the natural unit of analysis for understanding migration—and has theorized migration not as single-directed movement but as an extended and multidirected process (e.g., Righard & Boccagni, 2015). Thomas Faist in his seminal work on transnationalism returned to theorizing the importance of transnationalism in relation to the social question(s) of our time (2019). Marxist perspectives on the question of migration, for instance acknowledges both the agency of migrants, as well as the impact of larger structural forces at play. The most comprehensive, Marxist perspective in critical migration studies today, is perhaps the “autonomy of migration” (AoM) approach, which originated from the tradition of Italian workerism, or operaismo (Tsianos & Karakayali, 2010). While AoM has brought back capitalism, class and social struggles in migration studies, there are also strategic limitations of this approach, which could be located in a certain subjective reductionism (Fischer & Jørgensen, 2022). Going on to another theoretical contribution, approaches that focus on acts of citizenship (Balibar, 2004; Isin, 2008; Squire, 2017) have combined political theory with performative social theories for analyzing how people become political subjects that “constitute themselves as citizens” regardless of status (Isin, 2008, p. 18). While this approach develops a complex understanding of citizenship as an ambivalent concept it overemphasizes visible politics, which is why some argue for broader concepts of political subjectivation (Schwiertz, 2021). Furthermore, feminist perspectives and readings of migration have advanced migration research. As argued by a scholar like Stephanie Nawyn, feminist migration scholars moved the analysis from studying women to studying gender, implicating and theorizing on gender as a system of relations influenced by migration rather than contrasting women to men (2010). Today gender is conceptualized as “a fluid, multi-level set of practices embedded in social relations shaped by race⁄ethnicity, class, sexuality, and nationality” (ibid.). Finally, the analysis of migration phenomena and their social production has been increasingly associated with poststructuralist (Tazzioli, 2019), neo-materialist (Dijstelbloem & Broeders, 2015), reflexive approaches (Dahinden, 2016), and de-/postcolonial (Mayblin & Turner, 2021; Sharma, 2020) approaches in recent years.

(De-)thematization of migration in social theory

A central task of social theory is to develop analytical perspectives and concepts through which empirical phenomena can be grasped in their broader social context. Social theory and theories of society thus make it possible to go intellectually beyond the necessarily focused approach of an empirical study. This theory work is important in order not to adopt the common and thus mostly unquestioned categories of everyday understanding or of social subsystems such as economy, politics, or religion without questioning them in the research process. The same goes for what for long has been considered intrinsic categories of migration. We start from an understanding of theory that sees it as empirically grounded and at the same time as a system of propositions sui generis: social theories condense observations and reflections and are at the same time more than their sum; they are created as emerging entities. Reflecting the complementary but also conflicting relationship of different social theory strands, this special issue aims at reassembling social theories to open a discussion which theory is particularly suitable for which question or special field of analyzing migration but also to discuss different theories against each other to sharpen their analytical instruments and to work out advantages and disadvantages in comparison.

However, references to theory are by no means guaranteed to lead directly to reflexive and critical research strategies. It is not only migration research that operates with unifying and reifying concepts. One-sided figures of migration are also produced in the history of social theory itself, often at the margins of the respective works (see also Schwiertz, 2024a). Therefore, the project of linking migration research and social theory more closely must also critically reflect on the latter and we would argue that reflecting issues of migration research could provide important impetus for a corresponding revision of social theory.

The broader social theoretical contribution of the issue can be pointed out regarding the increasing criticisms of comprehensive social theories and, in particular, of the concept of society. It is criticized that the concept of society leads to a problematic reification of social contexts; it ignores social heterogeneity and conflicts and is accompanied by a fixation of existing social formations (Latour, 2007; Touraine, 2003). This is particularly evident when societies continue to be defined in the conceptual container of the nation-state (Beck & Grande, 2007; Urry, 2012), leaving out global connections (Bhambra & Holmwood, 2021). Moreover, there are criticisms that such limited theories of society often present themselves as universal despite their particular situatedness (Amelina et al., 2021; Go, 2017). These very criticisms can be answered from a migration (research) perspective: it has the potential to open up a perspective on society that focuses on its incompleteness, heterogeneity, and the conflicts associated with it, and that can be fundamental for a corresponding theory of society. It also makes it possible to understand social relations and societies not from a supposed center, but from the margins and border struggles. For this purpose, however, it is necessary to critically reflect on the associated conceptions of society in the analysis of migration phenomena and to question with which discourses and theories the terms used in analysis are implicitly or explicitly linked.

Despite this potential for reflecting and revising theories, migration has often been left out of debates on social theory. Again, this is due to reasons stemming from the history of sociology and related disciplines. Migration does not fit into sociology's traditional models of society. At the very least, it is striking that migration phenomena—along with postcolonial relations (Amelina et al., 2021; Bhambra & Holmwood, 2021)—are usually excluded and dethematized in social theories that are counted as part of the sociological canon (Jonsson, 2020, p. 205). Migration is not seen as a constitutive part of society. In contrast, “migration” often appears in public discourses and correspondingly in academia as a problem for society; as something external to society and as the cause of its crisis. This excessive thematization of a “migration problem” is in turn symptomatic of an epistemic nationalism through which embeddedness in global, postcolonial relations of inequality is obscured (cf. Boatcă, 2016; Jonsson, 2020): “Europe's ‘migration problem’—portrayed as an exceptional ‘challenge’ or ‘crisis’—is a trope for larger contradictions that derive from the unequal character of the world system itself” (Jonsson, 2020, p. 207).

Contributions in this special issue

Taken together, the contributions in this issue help to cast perspectives on the increasingly central social issue of migration that do not comprehend hegemonic, nation-state views of migration and develop new viewpoints. These perspectives make it possible to think about the complexity of social relations and their local entanglements, the diversity but also the interrelation of social positions and subjectivities. Overall, this contributes to questioning sedentarist and integrationist notions of society and subjectivity by placing transnational mobility and the heterogeneity of social contexts at the center of social theory debates. Through this, container-thinking is critiqued by demonstrating the importance of cross-border relations and mobility. At the same time, an examination of the field of migration shows the continuing importance of power and domination.

In various ways, the contributions to the special issue develop a critical view of established notions of the social and society. In the discussion of postcolonial theory, Nandita Sharma's (2025) article highlights the extent to which the nation-state conception of society can be seen less as a liberation than as a continuation of postcolonial governmentality, even in the wake of the abolition of colonial regimes. Sharma argues that postcolonial migration studies offer us a better understanding of how contemporary “near-universal placement” of people into categories of either citizen or migrant not only is a key marker of the world-historic shift between a world of territorial, which did not govern in-migration into imperial territories, to a world a nation-states that does (Sharma, 2025). Postcolonialism's insistence on historical connections, is, as Sharma argues, as important influence on contemporary social theory. The same theoretical approach, however, tends to ignore the connections between colonial mobility controls and national citizenship and immigration control. Migration studies tend to ignore the prenational histories of state governance over human mobility and as mentioned reify categories of migrants and citizens. Sharma addresses these shortcomings and proposes understanding postcolonialism not only as a theoretical approach but through migration studies also as a form of ruling defined by the global political economy of nationalized immigration control. Global inequalities are concealed and cemented by the nation-state and its connection to “postcolonial racisms” that use the “defence of the nation” as an alibi for the exclusion, expulsion, and even extermination of those deemed as “not belonging” because they are members of some other “nation.”

From the perspective of poststructuralist theory, Helge Schwiertz and Heike Delitz explore in their respective articles how societies are constituted in relation to migration. Drawing on Michel Foucault, Schwiertz (2024b) shows how society is fabricated through tensions between the epistemic-political grids of the people, which relate to migration as a figure of threat, and the population, which relates to migration as a figure of enrichment. Schwiertz unpacks this argument through three central aims. Firstly, he offers a Foucauldian reading of the concepts “the people” and “the population,” secondly underlines how these concepts should not be understood individually but through their interrelation, and thirdly discusses how these concepts can help us understand the interrelated constitution of migration and society. Schwiertz shows how a social theory, here drawing on Foucault, offers critical analytics that can reveal the “inherent contingency and conflictuality of social phenomena.” The critical reconstruction of the concepts of “people” and “population” should thereby not only provide theoretical tools to better understand the tense co-construction of migration and society; it should also urge to think beyond this objectification of migration in dominant discourses, beyond epistemological-political grids that operate by constructing migration as either a threat or a resource. It is an analysis that is not only relevant for migration studies, and a critical discussion of current antimigrant conjunctures, but also is an analysis that allows for an understanding of society at large, and thus relevant also for social theory.

Delitz (2025) departs from an old but still relevant scholarly debate on what “society” actually is and what constitutes it. These questions go back to the early days of social theory but none deal systematically with migration. This, Delitz argues, that we see a “lack of a theory of migration in the sense of a theory of society.” There are reasons why this is the case. The social problematization of migration has a much more recent history and much of sociological theory have failed to reflect on coloniality. Delitz in this article seeks to address these shortcomings and develop an argument for a “society of migration” that is a society constituted by the production of migration and migrants, as well as by migrant subjects themselves. She does this through an engagement with three theoretical vocabularies from social theory. She draws on Foucault and brings in notions of problematization, biopolitics, and governmentality to show techniques of exclusion and how migrants serve as the object of exclusion. From Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, she draws on the theory of hegemony to show how the articulation of migrants serves as the constitutive outside in the attempt to hegemonically define the collective identity. Lastly, she engages with postcolonial theory (Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, and Paul Gilroy), to show how collective identities and societies are defined in cultural processes of difference, and of translation and negotiation. However, postcolonial theory also brings voice to migrants. The three vocabularies, Delitz argues, allow us to see modern society as a society of migration, as it being constituted by discourses and practices of migration.

Coretta Ehrenfeld (2025) further challenges sedentary notions of society by developing an approach to mobile social ontologies in the tradition of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Ehrenfeld departs from the transnational turn in migration studies. While this has been a key factor in challenging methodological nationalism, it seen from the perspective of social theory, also has been dominated by empirical knowledge-production. However, Ehrenfeld argues in her contribution to this special issue that we can use the transitional turn to think migration theory as social theory. She argues that with the transnational migration model, migrants and people on the move have come to “occupy a social-theoretical subject position” and furthermore that the lives of migrants and transnational social worlds that they sustain provides “a social and socio-theoretical research perspective where migration itself becomes the perspective of social analysis.” Here Deleuze and Guattari's notion of nomadology opens up for an understanding of social mobilities beyond the dichotomy of “sedentary” and “mobile.” Combining this framework with transitional perspectives help us dissolve this dichotomy. This shift has implications beyond migration theory, argues Ehrenfeld, as it shows how migrants and people on the move constitute social formations and that modern society is not as “natural” as methodological nationalist depictions have claimed.

The contributions by Maribel Casas-Cortés and Sebastian Cobarrubias, as well as Óscar García Agustín and Martin Bak Jørgensen, revolve around struggles of mobility and migration that challenge dominant societies but also their common-sense conceptualization. Casas-Cortés and Cobarrubias (2025) reengage with the AoM approach that has become increasingly popular within critical migration studies over the last years. AoM as a theoretical and analytical lens has gained traction as it devictimizes migrants, focuses on agency and proposes an alternative understanding of the social role of migration. As they argue, this perspective tells us how migration is no longer merely a consequence of other factors, but an instigator of broader social processes of change. Their article departs from a reading of Yann Moulier-Boutang, who is hailed as one of the founders of the AoM approach, but whose work is rarely directly engaged with because it has never been translated into English. That is the aim of Casas-Cortés and Cobarrubias’ article: to show how Moulier-Boutang's recentering of historicity emphasizes the “transformative potential of human mobility in broader social processes.” This reading also brings in precursors from other heterodox historical Marxist approaches, namely through an engagement with William Edward Burghardt Du Bois’ work. They argue that (historical) long-term effects of human mobility presents us with an opportunity firstly to rethink concepts such as agency, social struggles, and control, and secondly to show us how migration and migration politics contributes to social theory, beyond migration studies.

Agustín and Jørgensen (2025) also seek to present a framework that can analyze social and political change. Their article engages with the political writings and social theory of Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci, himself, did not address the issue of migration directly, but Agustín and Jørgensen argue that central concepts in his writing allow us to develop an understanding on how migrants can question the hegemonic order and point to alternative visions of society. They identify four dimensions within Gramsci's political theory on civil society that are relevant for analyzing the field of migration: class, space, common sense, and counter-hegemony. Understanding migration through such a Gramscian framework, that is, through a conceptualization of alliances of subaltern classes, the sociotemporal nature of social relations, terrain of ideas and how to challenge them, and the possibility of social transformation, contributes to rethink migration and how civil society and solidarity relations are driving forces for social and political change. Through short examples they show how reconceptualizing Gramscian notions can develop new understandings of migration and likewise help to advance migration theory.