Hein de Haas - How does migration start and stop?

Описание: About this event:
http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/projects/them...

Dr Hein de Haas presents his paper 'How does migration start and stop? Revisiting migration systems and cumulative causation theory' at the Examining Migration Dynamics: Networks and Beyond conference, held at the University of Oxford from 24-26 September 2013.

This paper evaluates Hein's earlier critique (cf. de Haas 2010) of the assumption that migration processes become self-perpetuating in migration systems and migratory cumulative causation theories. He critiqued their inability to explain why most initial migration moves do not lead to network migration and migration system formation; their relative ignorance of endogenous and contextual migration-undermining feedback mechanisms that may explain the endogenous decline of established migration systems; and their lack of critical analysis of the (mixed) role of social capital in migration processes, emphasising the migration-facilitating ('bridgehead') role of migrant networks but largely ignoring the 'downsides' (cf. Portes 1999) of social capital, which can explain selection, exclusion ('gatekeeping') and the non-occurrence or decline of network dynamics. Recently, a number of individual and collaborative research projects (e.g. MMP, MAFE, THEMIS, DEMIG, EUMAGINE) investigating migration system dynamics have generated valuable insights that shed a more empirical light on these issues and test theory-derived hypotheses. Drawing on these emerging empirical insights, this paper will revisit migration systems and cumulative causation theories with regard to the migration-facilitating and migration-undermining feedback mechanisms at play in the various trajectories and stages of migration system formation and decline. This paper will particularly focus on the fundamentally ambiguous role of networks in sustaining or undermining migration by providing selective access to or exclusion from 'migration assistance' as well as conveying positive or negative information about opportunities in origin and potential destination countries; and how these meso-level migration system dynamics interact with state policies in sending and receiving countries.