Theoretical Background

The nccr – on the move is a network of 20 projects from social sciences, law and economics. These projects are connected to each other by a narrative, the so-called Migration-Mobility Nexus, which sketches a continuum between the two poles of migration and mobility analyzed in the different projects. The Migration-Mobility Nexus pursues both empirical and theoretical purposes.

Theoretically, the Migration-Mobility Nexus conceptualizes historical social transformations through the paradigms of migration research and mobility studies. Over the last decades, these two strands of research have developed independently from each other.

Originally, migration research dealt with human movement and diversity under the paradigms of assimilation and, more recently, integration. While migration research has taken the role of the state as central – also in critical terms –, mobility studies have tried to go beyond the limits of methodological nationalism, and therefore critically addressed the centrality of the state, the concept of the nation and sedentariness. Mobility studies have also expanded the object of research from the sole human movements to the movements of bodies, objects, images, and meanings.

These two epistemologies are embedded in different regimes and experiences – and often associated to different normative and discursive foundations. Yet, the models of integration analyzed in migration research can be either repressive or emancipatory. In a similar fashion, the emancipatory models of mobility can be conceptualized in repressive logics subordinating individuals. The Migration-Mobility Nexus structures the ongoing theoretical and normative debate on the various aspects of migration and mobility.

Empirically, the Migration-Mobility Nexus combines migration and mobility as the two logics of regulation, classification, and experience of human movements. Particularly, it looks at the consequences of the immigration policies implemented in post-war Europe. The spatial and political arrangements in Europe have been driven by fluid – and often contradictory – processes of marketization and securitization, but also by the increasing relevance of the international human rights regime.

The research at the nccr – on the move scrutinizes, first, whether and how the differentiation and entanglement of migration and mobility regimes is evolving at the conjuncture of the larger processes of marketization, securitization and human rights regimes. Second, it analyzes how the establishment of a selective regime of migration and mobility influences existent patterns of inclusion and exclusion according to gender, class, ethnicity, “race” and religion.