Calendar

Start of the call: July 10th, 2023
Deadline to send abstracts and closure of the call: November 1st, 2023
Selection and decision: December 1st, 2023
Deadline to send articles: May 1st, 2024
Peer-review
Deadline to send articles in their latest version: November 1st, 2024
Publication: March 2025

Submission Modalities

Proposals for articles should be written in French or English, and should include the author’s affiliation, a title and an abstract (1,000 words or 7,000 characters spaces included). They should clearly present the method, the data and the empirical and theoretical contribution of the article to the theme of the topical collection. They can come from different disciplines of the social sciences, and should be sent to lois.bastide[at]irasec.com, laurent.lardeux[at]jeunesse-sports.gouv.fr et jeremy.guedj[at]univ-cotedazur.fr before November 1st, 2023.

Articles can be in French, English or Spanish.

Texts need to conform to house style (https://journals.openedition.org/remi/5849)

Selection Committee/Coordination

Loïs Bastide (Sociologist, Lecturer at the University of French Polynesia, Researcher in CNRS delegation at IRASEC and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore)

Laurent Lardeux (Sociologist, Research Fellow at INJEP, associated with UMR 5206 Triangle, Member of the design group of INED/INSEE Trajectories and origins survey — TeO 2)

Jérémy Guedj (Historian, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary History, CMMC, Côte-d'Azur University)

Date

Deadline to send abstracts 01/11/2023.

Contact

remi@univ-poitiers.fr

Argumentation

In the contemporary context of “migrations from below” risk (or peril) is at the heart of experiences of mobility, as is painfully and recurrently reminded by the news. Yet, social sciences have paid little attention to this aspect or in a very peripheral way.

In political science, since the 1990s, attempts have been made to decipher the security turn (both discursive and practical) of migration policies in European countries (Waever et al., 1993; Bigo, 1998; McSweeney, 1999; Boas, 2015). In this body of work, the issue of risk is not directly addressed; however, migration governance appears clearly as the regulation of a “migration risk”, conceived as a security threat by the countries of the “North”.

More recent approaches explicitly problematise the issue of risk in migration within a more micro-sociological framework, intertwining action theories with the analysis of migration experiences. From these perspectives, the decisions regarding mobility — whether it be leaving, settling abroad, returning, re-settling in the country of origin, or re-migrating — are viewed as the practical outcomes of individuals engaging in risk-calculations by weighing and balancing risks of different natures that are present in various contexts, as part of a broader evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages associated with the places of origin and destinations, under conditions of uncertainty (Hernández-Carretero and Carling, 2012; Williams and Baláž, 2012; Li, 2015; Chang et al., 2017; Huber and Nowotny, 2018).

Other authors move beyond the moment of the initial decision to consider how risk colours the entirety of the “migration cycle” and is subject to long-term micro-management, woven into daily life. Bredeloup (2017) thus works on the specific figure of the migrant as an “adventurer” for whom migration is engaged with as a “trial of character”. Risk-taking is then part of processes of subjectivation, captured on the scale of “migration careers”.

This shift towards a micro-sociology of risk and uncertainty in migration is promising but remains embryonic. It also needs to be inscribed in a systematic reflection, cutting across different types of migration, and benefiting from recent developments in the sociology of risk, risk-taking, and uncertainty (Zinn, 2009 and 2020).

In this context, this topical collection aims to:

• Reflect on the embedding of risk in migration paths and the biographical temporality of migrants.

• Analyse the tensions between the management of risk in migration by migrants and the management of migration risk by institutions.

• Question the notion of risk, as it accounts, more broadly, for the relationship of social actors to the future.

Migration and Biographical Temporality

On Mediterranean routes, the uncertainties associated with migration journeys proliferate as the European Union expands its control measures (Brachet et al., 2011; Hernández-Carretero and Carling, 2012; Brachet, 2016; Carling, 2016; Bredeloup, 2017; Boyer, 2019). In Southeast Asia, engaging with a clandestine or regular migration pathway does not guarantee the final status in destination countries in any way — whether regular, irregular, or criminalised (Bastide, 2015). People thus face radical uncertainty when they chose to leave. In the Mesoamerican corridor and Mexico, migrants from increasingly diverse geographical areas navigate “visually” on migratory routes that are constantly changing (Donato and Sisk, 2015; Aragón, 2014; Paris, 2017; Durand and Massey, 2019; Faret, 2020; Coubès, 2021). Under these conditions, migration paths unfold step by step, without visibility, while migrants face potentially fatal risks — physical death, of course, but also moral or social death. While migration can be considered a means of coping with risks or uncertainties prevailing “back home” (Stark and Bloom, 1985; Halliday, 2006; Balaz and Williams, 2011; Bastide, 2015; Li, 2015), it also generates its own perils.

Furthermore, if migration can be a means of dealing with existing risks, and if it opens up other uncertainties, returns also carry specific risks. This issue is particularly acute for refugees returning to their home countries, as they are compelled to negotiate a new place in areas ravaged by post-conflict instability and the aftermath of war (Lardeux, 2015). Return carries inherent risks, social risks of status degradation, economic risks related to new expectations placed on the players who are often relied upon for material support, physical risks in conflict zones or ecologically fragile areas, moral risks stemming from the realization that returning to one’s place of origin does not equate to resuming the life left behind (Bastide 2015).

The question of risk in migration can thus be approached based on a triple temporality: the decision to leave immediately raises the issue of the relationship to the risks of migration; departure opens up other uncertainties; returns and resettlements also entail risks. From the perspective of migrants, these different temporalities relate to each other within the broader framework of biographical time. Risk thus envelops migratory experiences through and through.

Contributions may focus on these different temporalities. However, care will be taken, even if they focus on a specific moment of the migration cycle, to ensure that they do not lose sight of the extended temporality of risk in migration.

Management of Risks in Migration and the Government of Migration Risks

The question of risk can also be considered at the intersection of “governmentalist” approaches to risks and micro-sociological approaches to the management of personal risks by migrants.

On the major migration routes in Southeast Asia, the collective mobilisation of migrant workers has contributed to the evolution of the law towards better protection of migrants. However, this dynamic is constrained by the economic, political, and social imperatives assigned to labor migration in both countries of origin and destination: protecting these populations would imply renouncing economic and social models based on forms of labor exploitation incompatible with citizen status in semi-authoritarian regimes (Derks, 2010; Maurer, 2010; Bastide, 2020).

In Central and West Africa, the operators of refugee repatriation or persons expelled at borders have recognised the collective organisational capacities of migrants, including in the management of migration risks, by developing reconnaissance trips (called “go and see”) to the country of origin: individuals selected among migrants are sent “back home” to explore the challenges of return, and are then tasked with disseminating first-hand information to their compatriots regarding the risks associated with resettlement (Lardeux, 2015, IOM, 2022). The transition from individual to collective, and from collective to institutional, from biographical order to collective management and governmentality of risks, can thus be facilitated by practices that promote a subtle exercise of power that links freedom and constraint, protection and control.

Inquiries, which are not meant to be exhaustive or preclude other approaches, can focus on at least two scales.

Reflection can focus on the resources and individual or collective mechanisms that populations deploy to cope with the unpredictabilities of migration, often at a distance from institutions, and even in antagonism with administrative practices and migration policies.

Analyses may also be interested in interactions between these practices and the institutional mechanisms for managing migration risk applied to migrating populations, which should be understood in their historical depth. These relationships can take the form of co-optations, diversions, but also attempts to bypass or prevent within the framework of deeply unequal relations between circulating individuals, migrant communities, and public and private players in the governance of migratory flows.

Questioning Risk as a Category of Action in Migration

Fundamentally, it is the concept of risk itself that needs to be questioned. As a shaping of the contingencies of existence, risk is quantifiable, which distinguishes it from uncertainty. By enabling the calculation of an exposure ratio to identified contingencies, it gives rise to informed decisions. Uncertainty, on the other hand, is characterised by the absence of relevant information on the occurrence of undesirable events (nature of contingencies and exposure ratio). It thus “problematises” situations (Goffman, 1974) by preventing anticipation, forcing players to engage in “blind” gambles.

Defined in this way, do these concepts really enable us to grasp the actors’ perceptions and rationale for action? Does the relationship to the future truly entail an estimation of the relative probabilities of success here or there (and therefore, is it marked by a relational assessment of risks)? Isn’t migration often characterised by action repertoires that are more grounded in aspirations, desires (Carling and Collins, 2018), hope (Kleist and Thorsen, 2017), or faith (Bastide, 2015; Mastrangelo, 2018) which do not necessitate the same kind of calculative balancing between the present and the future?

Ultimately, these questions raise another, particularly crucial one: is the influence of the idea of risk on social representations primarily a “Western” reality? If the future is indeed a “cultural fact” (Appadurai, 2013), aren’t there other ways for players to connect to the future, excluding the stochastic rationality of risk? In Java, for example, migrants consider the contingencies of circulation less in terms of risks than in terms of fate (Bastide, 2017). Similar observations have also been made in African contexts (Hernandez-Carretero and Carling, 2017) or Latin American ones (Coubès, 2021).

Under these circumstances, and from the standpoint of the scientific relationship to the collected materials, can the unknown always be conceived in terms of uncertainty if it is not perceived as such by the migrants? Are the uncertainties of migration framed as risks by the individuals involved in the migration process, and if so, under what social and cultural conditions? What diversity of relationships to the future can be discerned from migration experiences?