World on the Move – Reframing Perspectives on Migration and Displacement

Abstract (English)

The presentations included in this panel will demonstrate how anthropologists are helping reframe the public conversation about migration and displacement. The panel will characterize the ways in which research on migration and displacement have been used (and misused) to support public policy, and the lived experiences of individuals, families, and communities on the move. Contrary to politicians’ assertion, migration is not new (people have been on the move throughout human history); migration is a common element of the human condition, and since practically everyone, everywhere has a migration story somewhere in the family history, this is something that should unite us, not divide us. Reasons for moving are often misrepresented. What appears to be “voluntary” on the part of migrants is much more frequently due to the need for a choice from among equally bad alternatives. Stay and you face economic hardships, a shortage of affordable housing, religious persecution, the threat of disease, and the effects of climate change. Go and you may sometimes be received with a hearty embrace. But the reception is not always with open arms. All too often, there is concern that “too many” immigrants will take away jobs, or change “the character” of a place beyond recognition. Drawing on case studies from a wide range of settings, the panel discussion will complicate the orderly sense of place and time packed into a linear narrative that begins with a privileged “we,” most typically corresponding to the imagined community of a nation-state, and the challenges presented by the arrival of a foreign “they.” The cases also call into question the tensions between structure and agency, pointing out the problems of relying too heavily on a rational choice-making model of individual decision-making to account for when, where, and why people move. A narrative that involves the origin/destination binary, when coupled with the push-pull rational choice model, reinforces inequities that must be dismantled. It reinforces the structure of hierarchies—people from some places of origin and for selected reasons are more worthy than others of a welcome reception at their intended destination. In a world where practically everyone has a story of migration or displacement somewhere in their family history, it is time to change the narrative, and the public conversation, to better understand our own stories and the stories of others. This is urgently so in light of the ‘we’/’they’ mentality that has, in the past five years, become the order of the day. Case studies examining the rights of migrants, their inclusiveness of social protection systems, and how the conditions they face shape their life conditions are welcomed.