The governance of international migration in Europe and North America : do migration policies meet the migrants?

Abstract

This special issue questions the assumption that migrant populations have near complete information about the policies of their country of destination/settlement and that they take these policy measures into account, be they policies on control or on integration. Our pilot case studies ask first of all what kind of information migrants have with regard to the migration control and integration policies of their receiving country. Second, we check where or from whom migrants get this information. Third, and most importantly, we investigate whether and in what ways do migrants take these policy measures into account in designing and executing their migration plans. In other words, we ask whether migrants meet the migration policies at specific points of their migration journey and what the impact of this ‘meeting’ is on the migrants' plans. In this chapter we put the case studies into their theoretical and empirical context: we discuss the notion of migrant today, the new forms of international migration and the notion of migration system. We also explain the research design adopted in the study and the structure of the case chapters that follow.