O’Reilly, K. 2023. ‘Chapter 1. Migration Theories: a Critical Overview’, in A.

Triandafyllidou (ed)
Routledge Handbook of Immigration and Refugee Studies. 2nd, Edn. London: Routledge (extended, 5000
word entry)

Migration theories: a critical overview

Karen O’Reilly 0000-0002-5887-9279

Abstract

Social scientists study international migration because it has the potential to change

individuals and societies in diverse and interesting ways, the potential to exploit, to enrich, to

engender competition and positive change. It raises questions about identity, belonging,

resources, social cohesion, and social divisiveness. In recent decades, the topic has become

the focus of a great deal of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary empirical social science and

there is a wealth of empirical knowledge about diverse flows and outcomes, and an eclectic

mix of approaches drawn on in terms of theoretical explanation. The chapter casts a critical

eye over the widely used neoclassical economic theories, new economic and dual/segmented

labour market theories, world systems theory, and migration systems and networks theory. In

a new section, we then consider more intersectional, transnational, and democratising

discourses around integration that theorise a role for power and inequalities. We analyse

theoretically informed policy approaches and their impacts, including the concept of

bordering. Finally, we consider the potential for a unifying macro-theoretical approach to

migration informed by sociological understandings of social life as ongoing practices of

structuration.
Keywords

Bordering; Borders; Intersectionality; Practice; Structuration

Introduction

Social science theories provide analytical frameworks as lenses through which to perceive social

phenomena. To a great extent lay, policy, government, and mass media perceptions of migration

are problem-focussed with a sedentary bias. To a social scientist, alternatively, migration is a

fascinating everyday social phenomenon, the examination of which illuminates our

understandings of human life. Despite the drive to explain migration that is given impetus by

nation-states’ demands for monitoring, control, and limitation, social scientists study

international migration for its potential to exploit, to enrich, to bring about competition, and to

engender transformation for individuals and societies. The study of migration raises questions

about identity, belonging, location, resources, social cohesion, and divisiveness.

Migration has as long a history as human life itself, yet international migration has undoubtedly

increased considerably in recent decades, as evidenced in data from numerous monitoring bodies

and statistical agencies. International migration has also long been in a state of flux in terms of

shape, form, direction, and content (Papastergiadis 2000). International migration is now a

normal feature of contemporary societies: a global phenomenon of flows and counter-flows;

geographical fluidity rather than population shifts; ongoing daily processes, not unique events.

Unsurprisingly, the topic has become the focus of a great deal of disciplinary and inter-

disciplinary empirical social science from scholars in sociology and anthropology, human

geography and demography, politics and international relations, and even cultural studies and the
arts. There is a wealth of empirical knowledge about diverse flows and outcomes and an eclectic

mix of approaches drawn on in terms of theoretical explanation (de Haas 2014).

We review a selection of the diverse theoretical approaches to understanding both migration

movement and settlement processes. We then outline a potential theoretical framework for

migration studies that advocates the framing of migration as narratives of practice (Benson and

O’Reilly 2018; O’Reilly 2012, 2014; Rye and O’Reilly 2021). This sociological approach directs

our investigation towards ongoing processes of migration and the historically shaped contexts

that make them possible. A practice framework pursues migration narratives as initial actions

shape general patterns, arrangements, rules, norms, and other structures in the destination locales

in terms of the outcomes of migration. Practice theory thus locates individual daily actions in the

context of historical and contemporary conditions.

Theories of movement and settlement

Neoclassical ‘push and pull’ economic theories

Theoretical examinations of migration have tended to portray a sedentary bias in their

endeavours to explain processes of movement and settlement. In terms of understanding

movement, economic theories have been predominant, heavily influenced by Ravenstein’s

(1889, 1976) attempt to establish law-like explanations of human behaviour to explain visible

patterns over a century of observations in which, mainly, men tended to move from densely to

less populated areas, poorer to wealthier countries, and from low-wage to higher-wage areas.

Ravenstein concluded that favourable and unfavourable economic conditions serve to push and
pull individuals in predictable directions, and the search for these characteristics of migration has

since become a feature of Migration Studies.

In more contemporary uses of the simple push/pull dichotomy, the emphasis on economic factors

remains but other factors may also be acknowledged. ‘Push’ factors that compel people to leave

a country of origin can include political oppression, poor living standards, and low economic

opportunities. ‘Pull’ factors, attracting migrants to a different place, may include a demand for

(seasonal) labour, the opportunity for higher living standards, but also political freedom.

Neoclassical economic approaches rely on a rational choice model of human behaviour in which

profit-maximising individuals weigh up the costs and benefits of options before making their

decisions (see Chiswick 2008). From a macro perspective, this economic view of migration

locates the universal human being within the global supply and demand for labour in universal

markets, in which countries with more work, higher wages, and fewer workers attract workers

from countries with lower wages and less work. Push/pull theories of migration thus have a

strong hold on the popular conscience, supporting a politically liberal view and conveniently

positing the notion that if left to work naturally (trusting the choices of the rational individual),

then an open migration market will achieve equilibrium: the poorer move to richer countries and

the crowded move to less populated areas. The economic push/pull model of migration fails to

account for other factors, including historical relations, family and community dynamics, the role

of intermediaries encouraging migration by arranging passage, and of course the role of states in

recruiting labour, granting or withholding permits, establishing policies on refugees and asylum-

seekers, and determining citizenship rights. These latter are the focus of a diverse range of

contemporary approaches to migration that do not rely on neoclassical economics.

New economic and dual/segmented labour market theories

New economic and dual/segmented labour market theories are refinements of neoclassical

economic theories. Dual/segmented labour market theories refer to the dualistic or segmented

nature of economies in the developed world. Here it is assumed that the majority of work (the

primary labour market) is secure, regular, and well-paid but, from time to time, there are bouts of

temporary, or seasonal, insecure and less well-paid work, such as seasonal harvest work (see Rye

and O’Reilly 2021). These jobs in the secondary labour market often need filling at short notice,

tend to be avoided by locals due to their insecure nature, and thus attract temporary labour from

abroad. The theoretical explanation for migration in these approaches gives causal primacy to

markets, albeit assumed to act through the rational choice of actors. The approach is uncritical,

simplistic, and politically liberal: industrial economies are portrayed as having an ‘insatiable

thirst for cheap labour’ (Gonzalez and Fernandez 2003, p. 46), while migrants are portrayed as

free to exploit destinations for their own short-term gain. The approach overlooks the fact that

migrant labourers may wish to settle, and where they do tend to ‘segment’ into long-term

insecure and low-paid work. It also overlooks the fact that many migrants move on their own

initiative or create jobs that would not otherwise exist or both.

‘New’ economic theories of migration recognise the many intervening variables that facilitate

and hinder migration, and informs research that draws attention to the role played by the wider

networks of family and friends who help migrants through financial and emotional support, and

the intermediaries, brokers, contractors, and agencies that promote and facilitate migration.

Nevertheless, these are viewed as intervening variables in the context of push and pull.

Individual feelings and emotions, the angst that accompanies difficult decisions about whether or

not to leave one’s home, and the ways in which these attitudes and expectations have been

shaped over time by culture, communities, and discourse are overlooked. For Arango (2004, p.
23), the new economics of migration is little more than ‘a critical, sophisticated version of

neoclassical theory’.

World systems theory

In world systems theory, the world itself is viewed critically as a single capitalist system in

which poorer nations, the periphery, provide a constant supply of cheap labour to support the

powerful and wealthy nations at the core of the system (Wallerstein 1974). It is an approach on

which many contemporary critiques of global capitalism and the spread of neoliberalism are

based, and it explains the poverty of poorer nations in terms of historical relations of power,

dependency, and debt. Drawing from Marxist political economy, it emphasises global

inequalities and views migration as a central feature contributing to the perpetuation of the

system. It is not in opposition to the push/pull approach, but rather takes a critical and global

view to explain the actions of individuals from a structural perspective. Here, migration is just

another element in the domination of the Third World and works hand in hand with military and

economic control (see Portes and Walton 1981; Sassen 1988). The approach was particularly

prominent during the 1960s and 1970s, when the mass migrations that reversed former colonial

routes were the ones causing political consternation and academic interest, with a touch of what

de Haas (2014) has termed ‘receiving country bias’. For Faist (2000), the economic bias in world

systems theory tends to overlook political and cultural processes. The practice theory framework

discussed below, with its emphasis on wider systems as relevant to and made by agents

themselves, enables migration researchers to question how such power is enacted and embodied,

perpetuated and strengthened, challenged and transformed.

Migration systems and networks

The theories outlined above offer somewhat simplistic explanations for movement processes,

with an emphasis on labour migration, of men, and on a one-off move to a new destination. They

also favour either a structural or agency approach, without theorising the intricate relationship

between constraints and choices. They are not useful for complex migration processes that

become consolidated, change in nature and shape, and emerge anew over time. Castles and

Miller (2009) contend that interdisciplinary research should be employed by migration scholars

to examine the role of both social structures and individual actions, as well as the intermediate

level of agents and intermediaries in the decision-making processes and the outcomes of

migration. Migration systems and networks approaches recognise that moves can be circular,

take shape within wider contexts and systems, connected via migrants’ networks, but tend to

cluster. Understanding migration processes involves moving out from the individual to the wider

and interconnected sets of circumstances within which an individual agent is located to account

for geographical, historical, and economic relations between states as well as personal

connections. Castles and Miller (ibid.) illustrate how Mexican migration to the US is part of the

longer history (and, therefore, wider system) of US expansion into the southwest in the early

twentieth century. This system analysis could usefully be expanded to include the retirement

migration of US citizens to Mexico (see Kiy and McEnany 2010). Migration systems and

networks approaches move beyond the individual small-scale decisions of migrants to include

the structural conditions that shape a given migration in context. The practice theory meta

theoretical framework discussed below further offers concepts with which to comprehend the

(re)production of structures through actions and practices within communities and networks.
Assimilation and multiculturalism

A main concern for early migration scholars, policymakers, and government agents, given the

ubiquitous sedentary bias of theoretical approaches, was to examine the extent of assimilation

into the receiving society. Migration was perceived as a threat to the purported cultural

homogeneity and stability of the nation-state. Migrants were expected to assimilate, with no

apparent similar expectation of the previously settled community. Here, indigenous groups might

also be perceived as unassimilated minority groups, and so both migrants and minorities became

seen as outsiders. Assimilation as a term comes with a great deal of baggage and it is difficult to

use it without at least appearing to make value judgements. As Bagby (2009, p. 474) contends,

there remains a general, lay theory that ‘immigrants and their children will inevitably assimilate

into American culture and move away from their “traditional” culture, as they become integrated

into the socio-economic life of America’ and this remains infused into theories of migration

settlement. A group that attempts to defend and retain its differences and specific values can still

now be portrayed as extremist, hostile, or dangerous. As time passed, governments and

policymakers became accustomed to the idea that migrants might settle permanently and that it is

more morally acceptable as well as practically achievable to accept and to tolerate difference and

started to pursue what Cohen (2006, p. 6) refers to as the rather more nebulous goals of

‘multiculturalism’, ‘pluralism’, or ‘rainbow nationhood’. Coincidentally, migration scholars

began to examine processes of settlement with reference to multiculturalism as a theoretical tool

to aid empirical and critical research. Here, theoretical treatises analyse the extent to which

groups can exist side by side, retaining some elements of their distinct cultures, while sharing the

same rights and responsibilities. Studies also critically examine the role of multiculturalism in

identity, social cohesion, and conflict. In the US, for example, Portes and Zhou (1993) have
theorised a segmented form of assimilation that describes the ways in which, over time, Mexican

migrants have been assimilated into marginal segments of society rather than into the

mainstream. Thus, assimilation and multiculturalism are both policies and actions for academics

to theorise (Kymlicka 2012) and theoretical frames for understanding outcomes (see also Meer

and Modood in this volume).

Contemporary theoretical approaches

Mobilities, flows, and globalisation

While early migration theories and approaches often assumed migration was linear and

unidirectional, and studies centred on labour migration, later scholars developed concepts and

frameworks with which to understand non-linear, circular, and temporary flows and to include

diverse types such as affluent migrants, asylum-seeking, and return migration. The concept of

transnationalism, for example, called researchers to avoid ‘methodological nationalism’

(Wimmer and Schiller 2002), and is widely used to theorise processes that travel across borders

and between and beyond nation-states, including processes of settlement. The concept of

mobilities (Urry 2007) introduced the notion of flows and movement to Migration Studies and

thereby raised a further challenge to the hitherto excessive attention paid to North America and

Europe over other parts of the world, as well as the fixation on immigration. Studies examining

the globalisation of migration include analyses of the historical and global developments

affecting and affected by migration (Massey et al. 1998). In the context of world systems theory

and other global critiques, the concept of coloniality of power (Quijano 2000), or the living

legacies of colonialism, is worth special mention here. Theorising a post-colonial relationship in

migration involves drawing attention to established relations of inequality, economic ties based

on prior appropriation, continuing exploitation or cultural links formed by previously unequal

relationships or both. Finally, there has been a tendency to perceive migration in terms of the

male pioneer blazing a trail to new destinations, followed eventually by the female partner and

family (Harzig 2001). But the migration of women has been on the increase and is not

necessarily related to male migration. Feminist-informed migration studies have taken the notion

of gender as their focus and begun to explore the role of migration in shaping geographies of

inequality (Lundström 2014). The concept of coloniality of gender also makes a crucial

contribution to migration theories in the context of a decolonial approach to feminism (Lugones

2008, 2010) (see also Raghuram and Olarinde in this volume).

There are many other approaches that we do not have space to cover but are addressed in the

pages of this book. But the world is still not characterised by movement – it continues to be the

case that the vast majority of people never migrate, even temporarily – and so other theorists are

drawing attention to the existence of counter-flows to globalisation and restrictions to movement

(Faist 2000; Kivisto 2001).

Borders and bordering processes

Overall, the long-standing focus on assimilation and integration tended to assume migrants were

a problem, that the people who moved had fixed cultures that should alter to fit into the fixed

culture of the place they moved to. Contemporary work focusses more on how boundaries and

borders are made and practised, and what effects this has in reproducing inequalities and in

entrenching old ideas of who is deemed to belong, or have a right to be, where. These approaches

draw on theoretical perspectives from outside Migration Studies. There is often a political
economic focus (e.g., locating understandings in the context of the global spread of

neoliberalism). There is often an implicit practice theory orientation (as discussed more below)

in these approaches. They understand categories such as class, gender, and ethnicity as made,

practised, or enacted in the context of the practice of everyday life. They may draw on

intersectionality as a way of understanding how divisions shape each other over time (Anthias

2012). They often include power, structures, discourses, agency, and time in their purview. We

focus on three examples.

The starting point for Anderson (2013) is the way in which modern nation-states, within

neoliberal economies, embrace the individual freedoms and rights of some while excluding

others by portraying themselves as communities of shared values that are in need of protecting or

defending. Here, outsiders of any form (illegal migrants, benefit scroungers) can be employed

politically to remind the insiders of what they should stand for, and migrants (among others) can

be deemed worthy or not of the privileges of membership. Acceptance and exclusion processes

are constantly shifting, especially with regard to immigration controls that can be manipulated to

create the groups of workers and relations to labour markets in specific ways as required by

employers (ibid. 2013, p. 10). The politics of immigration control, for Anderson, is a constant

manoeuvring of the categories of ‘us and them’.

For Yuval-Davis, Wemyss and Cassidy (2019) the management of access to where, under what

conditions, and for whom is a bordering process, informed and shaped by ideas, discourses, and

practices. Rather than borders being only fixed points in time and space, bordering occurs in

different places, at different times, in increasingly diverse ways, especially in the context of the

global spread of neoliberalism. Focussing on bordering as a process when thinking of migrants

means moving away from conceptualising migration as a one-off move from one place to
another, or as a problem, and towards how migration is managed in everyday life in relation to

processes of identity and belonging, inclusions and exclusions, and practices and discourses of

‘us and them’.

For Anthias (2012, p. 10) there is a ‘central contradiction in modern neo-liberal economies’. On

the one hand, we are portrayed as moving towards more fluidity and flexibility in the ways in

which we are perceived and perceive others, in how and where we might live. On the other hand,

fixities and hierarchies are reproduced and entrenched in the form of state categories and

definitions and other daily discourses and practices. Anthias contends that rather than focus on

movement, flows, and settlement processes, as per Urry (2007), we should examine the daily,

intricate processes that make and maintain territorial, social, political, economic, and symbolic

borders. These processes – of inclusion and exclusion that are made and remade on a daily basis

by actors with diverse sets of power and informed by deep-seated assumptions of rights and

belonging – serve to create the social divisions and inequalities that have long been the focus of

her work on migration (Anthias 2012, 2021).

Unifying migration theory

A number of migration scholars have considered the possibility for a single unifying theory or

framework for migration. Douglas Massey (1998) and colleagues argued for a synthesis of

theoretical approaches to provide an integrated approach. But a synthesis provides little beyond

the approaches separately employed, and crucial elements, such as culture and structuration

processes, can be overlooked (Morawska 2001). A synthesis could also incorporate serious

contradictions, such as those between rational choice theory and world system’s theory

(Bakewell 2010). Castles (2007, 2010) bemoaned the fact that Migration Studies and their
theories have drifted from mainstream sociology and from the insights offered by social theory

more broadly. He encouraged migration scholars to embed their analyses within a context of

wider social transformations. Later, de Haas (2014, p. 30) proposed an aspirations-capabilities

framework, to unite migration theories under a ‘meta-conceptual umbrella’.

Several theorists (de Haas 2014; Goss and Lindquist 1995; Morawska 2001) suggest that a

coherent understanding of migration processes needs to fully theorise the interaction between

structure and agency. We witness this in many of the contemporary approaches above. Migrants

make choices but not in circumstances of their own choosing and, having migrated, they change

societies in unintended ways that then create new circumstances for future migrants. Despite

some attempts to draw attention to migration as a structured and structuring process (Morawska

2001, 2009; O’Reilly 2012), the banal interaction between structural conditions and agentic

practices, and the outcomes of these over time, gets lost in the quagmire and the persistent desire

to explain the perceived problem of movement and settlement.

A sociological framework for migration

It is that last challenge, combined with a wish to draw from sociological theory, that O’Reilly

(2012) has taken up in her book, International Migration and Social Theory, and subsequent

work (Benson and O’Reilly 2018; Rye and O’Reilly 2021; Stones et al. 2019). The meta

theoretical framework outlined in this text is informed by strong structuration theory (Stones

2005) with the goal to tell ‘practice stories’ of migration. This aims to describe given migration

processes in such a way as to respect the creative and processual nature of social life and to

highlight how these inner lives are deeply interwoven with relevant structural contexts (Stones et

al. 2019). Structuration theory is a social theory of practice proposed by Giddens (1984).
Giddens insists that social life is neither the outcome of individual actions nor determined by

social structures. Instead, social structures limit what people can and cannot do, what they even

try to or wish to do. Here we invoke very broad-brush changes that shape the world we live in,

such as globalisation, neoliberalism, and post-colonialism. But wider structures also take the

shape of national and supra-national rules and regulations governing movement for diverse

groups at different times (O’Reilly and Rye 2021). But the very social structures that enable or

constrain in some situations are made and remade by (other) individuals in the process of their

acting (or their agency). So, while regulations and policies framing migration constrain

movement, they can be manipulated on the ground, in practice, and therefore require analyses of

power and boundary-making processes (Benson and O’Reilly 2018). For Giddens, agency and

structure are a duality – always interdependent and interrelated. In a similar way, Bourdieu

(1977, 1990) argued that people’s tastes and preferences, choices, desires, and actions cannot be

separated from structural constraints because people internalise what is possible for them.

Bourdieu’s notion of the practice of social life draws on the concept of habitus. Crudely, habitus

refers to the dispositions, habits, ways of doing things, ways of thinking, and ways of seeing the

world that individuals acquire, singly and in groups, as they travel through life. Therefore, there

are structures that have become internalised and embodied and are acted by people. Here we

might think of the ways in which a new set of aspirations arises for lifestyle migrants who have

experienced tourism (O’Reilly 2012) or how the Polish could be argued to have acquired the

habit of migrating for work because their lives are so marked by cross-border mobility

(Stachowski and Fialkowska 2021).

People are always in practical relations with the world and practices are therefore sensitive,

plausible adjustments to the future rather than rational calculations based on identifiable plans.
Stones (2005) has developed a stronger version of structuration theory that especially emphasises

the role of external structures – the networks, relationships, hierarchies, and resource

distributions – and the conjuncturally specific knowledge a given actor has of this terrain (linked,

of course, to the actor’s ability to think and act differently, to plan a different future through

migration, for example). Together, these concepts enable a closer examination of how broader

structures (such as globalisation, neoliberalism, post-colonialism) and more proximate conditions

(such as migration policies, citizenship regulations) and the active agency of individuals work

dynamically through migration, such as in the enforcement or manipulation of policies (O’Reilly

et al. 2014).

O’Reilly’s sociological framework elaborates the above with insights from other authors

specifically in relation to migration processes. The work of Emirbayer and Mische (1998)

teaches that individuals retain the ability to imagine different ways of living and different ways

of doing things, even if these sometimes seem impossible, such as imagining a settled life

somewhere one was invited as a seasonal worker. It is this distinctive aspect of human agency

that gives actors aspirations (de Haas 2014) and the power to (sometimes) change things, such as

a harvest worker opening a Romanian restaurant in Greece (Fratsea and Papadopoulos 2021).

O’Reilly uses insights from Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger’s (1991) description of communities

of practice and Wenger’s (1998) concept of situated learning. Communities of practice are social

groups (family, community, workmates, social club, a partnership) that need to work together. A

community of practice invokes the level between laws and rules, on the one hand, and free

choice, on the other, for example, in migrant workers’ negotiations and in those implementing

policy at a local level (Infantino 2021). In their communities of practice, individuals learn the

rules of ‘the game’ and how much they have to adhere to them, such as realising that it is easier
to find social life on a farm camp than in the local village (Stachowski and Fialkowska 2021).

We also learn from others in communities about how things might be different and who has the

power to change what. Lave and Wenger (1991) call this ‘situated learning’, and it is central to

understanding migration as a process.

Concluding remarks

Of course, migration is intrinsically located in broader processes of social change (de Haas 2014)

and rather than merely rely on substantive theories of migration, it is essential for migration

theorists to draw from wider social science perspectives including, for example, theories of

home, belonging, citizenship, post-colonialism, exclusion, identity, and so on. The employment

of a practice narrative provides a comprehensive social science framework to understand what is,

undeniably, a structured and structuring process.

To conclude, contemporary migration theories and perspectives recognise the existence of

diverse flows and counter-flows, examine immigration and emigration within wider systems and

networks, are able to theorise movements, mobilities, and processes, and are more likely than in

the past to consider transnational phenomena and the role of women in migration. There is more

emphasis than previously on factors at the macro-, micro-, and meso-levels that impinge on an

agent’s experience, including those who do not move but who can still be affected. There is

increasing emphasis on bordering processes, on the quotidian constructions of ‘us’ and ‘them’. In

addition, there have been attempts to construct broad-brush theories or a synthesis of approaches

for a more unified approach to migration.

The most comprehensive theoretical framework is the macro-theoretical framework of practice

theory, which ‘revolves around the insistence that the subjective experiences of migrants are best
understood as being anchored within, infused by, past and present structural contexts’ (Stones et

al. 2019, p. 45). This sociological framework has implications for empirical migration studies: in

order to understand the structuration processes involved in migration, macro and historical

studies need to be theoretically and empirically linked to close, intimate studies of daily life

(O’Reilly 2012).

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