Migraciones. Publicación del Instituto Universitario de Estudios sobre Migraciones
Migraciones is an interdisciplinary academic journal published by the University Institute for Migration Studies (IUEM) at Comillas Pontifical University. It aims to publish quality research that delves into the study of human mobility in open access, both in Spanish and English, prioritising articles that address critical and current issues by applying the most advanced methodologies. It is published twice a year (January and June). Issue 0 was published in December 1996. The journal Migraciones follows an open-access publication system, whereby both the publication and reading of works are exempt from fees. All published content is fully available for free and immediate consultation and download on the journal's website. Migraciones is indexed Scopus , Latindex, InDICEs CSIC, Emerging Sources Citation Index, and others. First decision in 5 days Acceptance rate of 20,5% Scopus 2024: Q1 in Cultural Studies (201/1371) and Q2 en Demography (56/140)
The authors of articles published in Migraciones retain the intellectual property rights over their works and grant the journal their distribution and public communication rights, consenting to their publication under a Creative Commons NonCommercial-NoDerivatives-Attribution 4.0 International License. Authors are encouraged to publish their work on the Internet (for example, on institutional or personal pages, repositories, etc.) respecting the conditions of this license and quoting appropriately the original source.
Copyright (c) 2026 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Survey Research as a Tool for Studying Migration in Latin America
Migration, Extractivism, and Necropolitics in the Peruvian Amazon: The Trafficking of Women in Neo-extractive Enclaves
This article examines migration flows to neoextractivist enclaves within the framework of necropolitics and the political ecology of migration. It explores how degraded territories, shaped by illegal mining, human trafficking, and the sex trade, function as both forces of expulsion and attraction. The theoretical framework integrates concepts of accumulation by dispossession and extractive biopolitics to understand how state control, labor precarization, and violence create differentiated mobility regimes, particularly affecting migrant women. The study focuses on Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon, a region characterized by environmental degradation and territorial control through illicit economies, despite the state's claims of biodiversity protection. Using qualitative methods, including document analysis and interviews with local actors, the research reveals that historical configurations of territorial exploitation influence migration patterns in these enclaves. The article contributes to the political ecology of migration by demonstrating how extractive economies and structural inequalities shape migration flows in necropolitical contexts.
Health and Migration: Intersectional and Gender Barriers in Healthcare Access for African Women in The Basque Country
This article examines the barriers migrant women from Central and East Africa face in accessing the Basque healthcare system. Using a qualitative methodology based on interviews with women, healthcare professionals, and social organizations, it identifies structural, administrative, and symbolic obstacles that limit the exercise of the right to health. These include irregular legal status, lack of accessible information, job insecurity, institutional racism and sexism, and medical ignorance about common diseases in this population. In addition, there is little sensitivity to the psychosocial suffering associated with the migration process. From an intersectional and feminist perspective, the analysis shows how these barriers generate inequality and mistrust of the system. The article concludes with proposals for moving towards more intercultural, empathetic healthcare that is adapted to the realities of migrants, as a necessary condition for ensuring a more equitable public health system that respects diversity.
Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Rural Tourism in a Left-Behind Region, Sayago (Zamora, Spain)
Rural Sayago (Zamora, Spain), on the Portuguese border, exemplifies long-term depopulation and ageing processes in Southern Europe. This study examines the tourism-migration nexus, asking how tourism development influences the arrival, settlement and economic incorporation of internal and international immigrants. We combine qualitative fieldwork from two projects—semi-structured interviews with migrant entrepreneurs in accommodation, hospitality and agritourism—with analysis of official demographic data. Results show that tourism-related activities enable livelihood diversification and self-employment that support newcomer settlement, especially internal in-migrants with inherited property and lifestyle international immigrants. Newcomers act as innovators, expanding rural accommodation and experience-based offers. However, seasonality, thin markets and limited services constrain broader demographic recovery. We conclude that rural tourism can stabilise population locally by enabling immigrant settlement, but it requires place-based policies that strengthen everyday infrastructures and trans-border coordination.
Islandness, Human Mobility and Left-Behindness: Insights from El Hierro, Canary Islands, Spain
The relationship between left-behindness and islandness is intricate and multifaceted. Small and peripheral islands are particularly susceptible to environmental challenges and economic downturns due to their limited resources for survival, which have historically shaped them as left-behind areas. However, while islands have long been viewed as places of departure, they also function as hubs for migrants, asylum seekers, tourists, and returnees, i.e., as spaces collectively modelled by human mobility. Therefore, islands are both peripheral and interconnected spaces, with relationality forming the core of islandness. The “relational isolation” is exemplified by the case of El Hierro in the Canary Islands, where human mobility may contribute to the mitigation of left-behindness. This analytical perspective is explored using statistical data that elucidates trends in human mobility, complemented by interviews with both migrants and stayers. These qualitative accounts offer critical insights into the migratory experience and its complex relationship with islandness.
On Women’s Shoulders: Care-Based Immobility and Climate Adaptation in Rural Ghana
This article examines the gendered dynamics of climate-related migration and immobility in rural Ghana, focusing on the Bono and Bono East regions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2022 and 2023, it explores how male out-migration, often framed as an adaptive response to environmental stress, reshapes the gendered distribution of labor, women’s responsibilities, and their opportunities for mobility. The study introduces the concept of care-based immobility as a central analytical contribution. It conceptualizes women’s staying as a socially produced condition rooted in three interrelated domains—economic management, food security, and caregiving. These responsibilities simultaneously anchor women geographically while enabling household and community survival, demonstrating that immobility operates as both a structural constraint and an active strategy of climate adaptation. By integrating feminist political ecology with critical mobility and immobility frameworks, the analysis moves beyond environmentally deterministic narratives of climate migration and situates women’s (im)mobility within relational socio-ecological hierarchies. The article thus underscores the importance of gender-sensitive and locally grounded approaches to climate resilience.
Towards a Politicization and Historicization of “Climate Migration”: A Political Ecology Perspective on Global Mobility under Capitalism
The climate change discourse that emerged in the 1990s has foregrounded climate-induced migration; yet, terms such as environmental refugee or climate migrant, frequently invoked in public debate, remain undefined within international refugee law, generating legal ambiguities and gaps in protection. This absence is not merely terminological but reflects historical frameworks that excluded ecological considerations from migration governance. Drawing on political ecology, Marxist scholarship, and Moore’s world-ecology approach, this paper critically examines the limitations of climate migration debates when disconnected from the structural dynamics of global capitalism. It situates mobility within the long-term transformation of socio-ecological relations, emphasizing that displacement is both a product and a driver of capitalist expansion, ecological change, and uneven power relations. By framing climate-induced migration within historical and structural processes, the paper highlights the necessity of critically reassessing mobility classifications in light of alarmist and securitarian frameworks and the war regime emerging from the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s military action in Gaza since 2023.
Alessandra Galimberti Prince (2025). Arte y diáspora
Shifting the Perspective: A Political Ecology of Migration attentive to gendered and racialised inequalities
This article argues that in a world where the ecological and material consequences of climate changes are becoming increasingly tangible, mobilisation and reproduction of the dominant categories of economic migration and political asylum become problematic. While the “reflexive turn” in migration studies called for a critical assessment of the use of state-determined migration categories in migration research, the ways in which political ecology could achieve that and related implications for migration studies have been little discussed. This article seeks to uncover the epistemological and political stakes that underpin the study of climate-related migration by foregrounding the venues opened up by political ecology perspectives. The article equally outlines how discussions around climate-related migrations can serve to bridge political ecology perspectives with more established venues within migration studies, notably intersectional approaches to migration, drawing in particular on gender studies as well as analytical engagement with racialised inequalities.
Racialisation, Discrimination, and Ethnic Identity among Spanish Gitanos: The Test of Mixedness
In Spain, and in Europe in general, research on racism and racialisation has mostly focused on foreign-born immigrants. Much less attention has been given to national ethnic minorities, in particular to Gitanos (Spanish Roma), the longest-established and largest ethnic minority group in the country, and also one of the most discriminated-against minority groups throughout Spanish history. This article presents research that has applied the study of mixedness (i.e., mixed couples and their descendants), a sociocultural phenomenon that is thought to “dilute” differences and destabilise social boundaries, to investigate the persistence of the social stigmatisation and racialisation of Spanish Roma. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and 81 in-depth interviews with Roma/non-Roma couples, their descendants, and community representatives, this study, shows that even intermarried Gitanos and Spanish-born descendants of Gitano/non-Gitano mixed couples are stigmatised as being outsiders and experience everyday racism, as well as intragroup prejudices, all of which affect their identity choices, social interactions, and everyday lives. The study also concludes that individuals have different strategies for coping with racism and discrimination and that Gitano identity (romanipen) remains dynamic and resilient—strengthened, not weakened—through mixing, a finding that challenges essentialist understandings of ethnic identities and ethnic minority groups.
Copyright (c) 2025 Migraciones. Publicación del Instituto Universitario de Estudios sobre Migraciones
Introduction: Towards a Racial Turn in Spanish Scholarship on Migration and Diversity
This special issue aims to contribute to the debate on race, racialisation and racism in Spain from a perspective that combines theoretical analysis and empirical studies. We take a systemic understanding of racial relations as our point of departure and focus on the Spanish context. Our objective is twofold: First, we want to challenge a persistent “colour-blindness” and a widely spread silence about race in European societies (Lentin, 2018; Song, 2018; El Tayed, 2021), as well as in Spain (Rodríguez-García, 2022; Rodríguez-García et al., 2021), which has permeated research on migration, diversity, interculturalism and ethnic relations. As Omi and Winant (1994, p. 159) pointed out “opposing racism requires that we notice race [… and] that we afford it the recognition it deserves and the subtlety it embodies.” This will contribute to a deeper understanding of the processes that shape and reconfigure racial categories. Furthermore, it will advance knowledge on the concept of “race” and its intersections with other social categories, such as class, gender, and migration status, highlighting how these intersections fundamentally shape social interactions, power structures, and various forms of inequality. Second, with this special issue we intend to provide a collection of empirically based research about racialisation processes, racial categories and racial relations in the case of Spain. The contributors to this special issue are Spanish and international scholars based in Spain who conduct their research at the forefront of the ongoing “racial turn” in Spanish academia (see, e.g. Hellgren, 2025; Suárez-Navaz & Suárez, 2024; Rodríguez-Reche & Cerchiaro, 2023; Hellgren & Bereményi, 2022; Rodríguez-García, 2022; Hellgren & Gabrielli, 2021). All of the contributors place race, racialisation and racism at the core of migration and minority studies, both in the Spanish context and internationally. This endeavour is necessary to look transversally to the processes of othering, racialisation and hierarchical categorisation that involve at the same time newcomers (migrants and refugees particularly from the global South) and national minorities. What for some scholars and policy actors is an issue related to the lack of residence permits and recent arrivals from different (and by some framed as culturally irreconcilable) contexts, is in our view part of larger dynamics of systemic racism in Spanish and European societies that affect also minoritised national citizens as the Roma (Hellgren & Gabrielli, 2021). We dare say that through the publication of this special issue, the racial turn in Spanish scholarship on migration and diversity is further consolidated.
Deconstructing Existing Narratives: A Critical Reassessment of Climate-Driven Migration Dynamics in Africa and Namibia
This paper critically examines dominant narratives of climate and environmental migration in Africa, focusing on Namibia. It highlights the limitations of international definitions, which often frame mobility through crisis and displacement, obscuring local agency and adaptive practices. Drawing on mixed-methods fieldwork (2017-2023) in northern and central Namibia, through interviews, observations, and policy analysis, the study reveals that migration is shaped by the intersection of environmental stressors with socio-economic inequality, gender dynamics, and cultural traditions. In Namibia, seasonal and adaptive mobility patterns challenge deterministic crisis models, instead reflecting community resilience and strategic planning. Literature and policy reviews further show that rigid terms like climate refugee risk oversimplifyng complex drivers of movement. The study calls for a reframing of climate migration as a context-specific, adaptive strategy, and urges inclusive policies that integrate local knowledge and address underlying structural vulnerabilities. Migration should be seen as part of resilience-building, not just emergency response.
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
For a Latin American Political Ecology of Climate (Im)mobilities
Research on the climate change-human mobility nexus remains largely dominated by agendas shaped by the Global North, leading to power inequalities in practices, policies, and knowledge. Critical scholarship has identified political ecology as a valuable framework for addressing these problems. In this paper, we argue that Latin American Political Ecology (LAPE) provides unique insights for addressing this challenge. Drawing on four case studies from the Andes and the Amazon, we explore how LAPE can inform a research agenda on climate (im)mobilities. We identify three areas in which this convergence could be particularly fruitful: the implications of climate (im)mobilities for food sovereignty; the more-than-human character of the communities affected by climate-related hazards; and the role of extractivism in shaping climate (im)mobility in rural areas. We also highlight the prevalence of coloniality of knowledge in climate (im)mobilities governance, reflecting on the positionality of the climate (im)mobilities researchers.
Manufacturing Crisis, Governing Instability: The Political Ecology of Migration, Power, and Ecocide
Human mobility is not an anomaly but a historical constant that has been systematically governed, stratified and racialised. This article reconceptualises the “migration crisis” not as an exceptional event but as a political-ecological crisis regime that manufactures crisis, organises instability and legitimises violence at and beyond borders. Bringing together political ecology, world-ecology, governmentality and debates on racial capitalism, it develops a framework for analysing how war, extractivism, ecocide and climate apartheid produce unliveable environments and stratified regimes of (im)mobility. The argument is operationalised through paradigmatic cases from the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Niger Delta, Gaza, the Kafue basin and architectures of climate apartheid, showing how legal, economic and humanitarian infrastructures manufacture dispossession, immobilisation and selective mobility. By treating crisis as a durable regime rather than an episode, the article links border spectacles to slower forms of environmental and colonial violence and clarifies how migrants’ lives are governed as a managed instability.
From Adaptive Resilience to the Production of the Common. An Analytical Framework for Rethinking Immobility in the Context of Climate Crisis
Within risk studies, resilience has become established as a dominant concept linked to adaptation and defined as the capacity to anticipate, absorb, and recover. However, this framework tends to obscure the structural conditions that produce vulnerability, normalizing precariousness through technocratic discourse. This article critically examines how the notion of resilience is employed in climate mobility studies, advancing toward alternative readings that move beyond the dichotomy presenting migration as agency and immobility as a lack of adaptive capacity. The analysis draws on the case of the Pozo de Flores Association in the Upper Valley of Cochabamba, Bolivia—a community water management initiative led by peasant women. The study adopts a qualitative and situated approach, based on in-depth interviews and participatory mapping. Results demonstrate that voluntary immobility can no longer be understood merely as adaptation or community resilience. Rather, it constitutes a conscious political practice of resistance against the capitalist necrotization of life, rooted in collective strategies for territorial defense and the sustenance of life.
Framing Climate Mobility: A Discourse Analysis of Spanish Newspapers
In a world increasingly affected by climatic changes, climate mobility has become a topic of growing relevance in the geopolitical context. Spain, as an external border of the European Union with historical ties to regions highly exposed to climate impacts, such as North Africa, offers a critical case study for examining these dynamics. This article applies framing theory to qualitatively analyse how Spanish media construct climate mobility and how both people and spaces are represented. Drawing on 52 articles published between 2021 and 2023 in the six most-read newspapers in Spain, four predominant frames are identified: quantitative-alarmism, securitization, humanitarianism, and vulnerability. Media discourses depict migrants as passive victims or abstract figures, while spaces are portrayed as “in crisis” or “under threat.” Only the vulnerability frame provides a more nuanced perspective by linking exposure to climate change with socio-demographic risks. Yet even here, responsibilities of the Global North remain underdeveloped.
Climate Finance and the Political Ecology of (Im)Mobility: Displacement Risks in the Low-Carbon Transition
Climate finance is indispensable to global decarbonisation, yet its distributive effects on human mobility remain under-analysed. Using a qualitative, multi-scalar design, this article links macro patterns of climate-finance flows, meso institutional frameworks, and micro evidence from two emblematic arenas—the Atacama lithium frontier in Chile and the Noor-Ouarzazate solar complex in Morocco. It demonstrates that displacement and immobility risks arise less from technical shortfalls than from financial logics that privilege capital-intensive, debt-based assets and procedural safeguards, which restructure access to water, land and labour and compress local capability sets. The central contribution is to specify the causal mechanisms connecting the financialisation of climate governance to climate-related (im)mobility, integrating political economy, political ecology, and the economics of migration. The article concludes by proposing a shift toward more grant-equivalent adaptation finance, binding benefit-sharing and livelihood-restoration schemes, and performance metrics that incorporate mobility outcomes and hydrosocial costs alongside conventional indicators.
Landscapes of Dispossession: Extractivism and Forced Displacement Triggered by Tailings Dams
Historically dependent on mining extractivism, Chile faces escalating socio-environmental conflicts driven by large-scale mining. In this context, tailings dams not only concentrate toxic waste but also generate dynamics of forced displacement that affect human and extrahuman communities. From an ecopolitical perspective and drawing on Actor–Network Theory, this study analyzes the expansion of Minera Los Pelambres’ El Mauro tailings dam—the largest in South America—showing how it reconfigures life landscapes in the Norte Chico. Through critical cartographies, the research participatively reconstructs socio-ecological memories of displacement and latent migration, mapping resistances and reterritorializations in Villa El Mauro, Caimanes, and Pupío. The tailings dam is introduced as an agent of extractive expansion that produces processes of accumulation by dispossession and new forms of displacement and uncertainty associated with reterritorialization in the Capitalocene.
Interconnected Mobilities and Mining Extractivism in Napo Province (Ecuador). A Contribution of the New Mobility Paradigm to Political Ecology
Various studies show that territories dominated by extractive economies have a particular relationship with population movements. However, this is often seen as a side effect, whether in terms of the expulsion of inhabitants or the attraction of workers. Drawing on the dialogue between political ecology and the New Mobility Paradigm, I propose a new perspective in which mobility is not presented as a simple consequence of extractivism. Through ethnographic research conducted in the province of Napo (Ecuadorian Amazon), based on observations in four mining areas, 13 semi-structured interviews, and 11 informal interviews with workers, environmental activists, local authorities, and community leaders, I argue that mobility constitutes and shapes extractivism. Analysing this phenomenon allows for a better understanding of the complex interconnections that are taking place between Napo, other Ecuadorian provinces, and countries in the region, as well as the profound transformation that their territories are undergoing in both physical and social terms.
Sustainable Housing in Climate and Disaster Vulnerable Contexts: A Comparative Legal and Policy Analysis of Turkey and Germany’s Adaptation and Disaster Response Frameworks
This article examines how Germany and Turkey address sustainable refugee and disaster-displaced housing in the context of natural hazards. Using a functional comparative legal methodology, it compares the governance allocation and coordination; housing standards and resilience plans; and the integration of refugee shelters into welfare and disaster framework. The analysis combines doctrinal review with empirical data such as official statistics, surveys, policy reports, and testimonies examining housing stability, resilience and legal protection. The study is anchored in post-disaster housing response for the 2023 Kahramanmaraş Earthquake and the 2021 Ahr Valley Floods. Turkey’s centralized governance has reactive approach results in endemic loopholes, subjecting refugees to secondary displacement and insecure housing. Germany’s precautionary and decentralised framework integrates housing within broader welfare regimes. The analysis directs policy suggestions for both countries that emphasize the relevance of joined-up governance and resilient, inclusive shelter systems as a way to properly address compound displacement risks.
The Political Ecology of Water Governance and Migration in Chile
Rural communities in north-central Chile have faced decades-long conflicts over water resources. Although local socio-environmental dynamics have received considerable attention, the related mobility patterns remain underexplored. This study examines the relationship between drought conditions, water governance arrangements, and internal migration flows to and from the province of Petorca. A mixed-methods approach is employed, integrating long-term precipitation anomalies based on Standardised Precipitation Indices (1983-2019), census-based net migration data (1982-2017), and eight semi-structured interviews with local activists, policymakers, and water management experts. Quantitative findings indicate that intensified drought does not lead to increased out-migration; rather, a negative correlation exists between drought and net migration in the province. Interview data highlight the roles of systemic constraints and place attachment in shaping (im)mobility among rural communities, as well as the influx of external actors associated with agribusiness expansion. The study demonstrates how socio-environmental changes, power inequalities, and resource governance influence mobility outcomes in water-stressed regions.
Humanitarianism From Below: Values, Practices and Boundaries of an Aid Model. The Case of the Catholic Albergues in Puebla, Mexico
This article proposes an ethnographic analysis of the humanitarian model practiced by Catholic albergues (shelters) in Puebla, central Mexico, to aid international migrants in transit as a form of humanitarianism from below. This model of aid, which brings together faith and social commitment, takes shape and consolidates itself in a specific historical and political trajectory of humanitarianism committed to aiding migrants in Mexico. This shapes the values, practices and the framework of political relations that the shelters establish with other actors. Building on this analysis, I examine the process through which the boundaries of this model are constructed—boundaries that are essential both for safeguarding its integrity against external pressure and for asserting claims regarding the state’s responsibility toward migrants. To this end, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork between 2019 and 2022 with different humanitarian actors dedicated to aiding migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in Puebla.
Tackling, encouraging or ignoring? The outmigration of transnational domestic care workers on the political agenda in Poland
Although the topic of attracting EU mobile workers to transnational care sectors has received considerable attention, the perspective of sending countries, particularly with regard to policies concerning the departure of care workers, has not yet been analysed empirically or theoretically. This article aims to address this gap by tracing the agenda-setting process regarding the temporary outmigration of workers from Poland to the care sector abroad between 2004 and 2019. Drawing on qualitative empirical material in the form of 60 expert interviews, the article is framed by Kingdon's (1995) multiple streams model. The analysis confirmed that the mobility of Polish workers in the home care sector was not on the political agenda prior to the pandemic. Key stakeholders in addressing this phenomenon as both an opportunity and a challenge, and in proposing administrative solutions, are care agencies that send workers, and associations representing the interests of the care industry in Poland.
The Impact of Citizen (In)Security and Immigration on Support for Democracy: Observational Evidence from Ecuador (2020-2024)
In Latin America, although the impact of contextual determinants on democratic disaffection has been investigated, the nexus between anti-immigrant attitudes, perceptions of citizen (in)security, and support for democracy has not been systematically examined. The goal of this article, therefore, is to contribute to filling this gap through an analysis of the Ecuadorian case—a country marked by institutional crises and a massive inflow of immigrants. The study relies on data from the Latinobarómetro (2020 and 2023, N=1200 each) and post-stratified online surveys (2021 and 2024, N=1289 and N=597). The methodological approach combines Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regressions and Structural Equation Models (SEM) in order to identify both direct effects and relationships among latent variables. The findings indicate that perceived victimization has a limited impact, whereas punitive attitudes and pluralism are positively associated with support for democracy. By contrast, immigration does not exert significant direct effects, although it is linked to perceptions of security and institutional trust.
Can We Apply Current Theories on Attitudes to Immigration Developed in the Global North to the Latin American Context?
Migration within the Global South is as significant as that to the North, yet most studies on immigration attitudes remain Northern-centered. This limits our understanding of how receiving contexts shape public perceptions. While the Global North receives culturally distinct migrants, Latin America experiences intra-regional flows characterized by cultural similarity, inequality, and limited state capacity. This article tests ethe conditional applicability of realistic competition theories to the Latin American context by analyzing attitudes toward Venezuelan immigrants in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru using OLS regression models based on Latinobarómetro2020 data. Results show that perceptions of fiscal and distributive competition are the strongest predictors of immigration attitudes, followed by perceptions of job competition, whereas individual characteristics have weaker effects. In contexts of inequality and institutional scarcity, competition is understood primarily as a struggle over public resources rather than a cultural threat, underscoring the need to contextualize Northern theories in Global South settings.
Environmental Crisis and Mobility in Oases Societies of Morocco: The Cases of Imilchil and Merzouga
The oases of Morocco have undergone profound socio-environmental transformations in recent decades that have affected their ways of life and their economies, impacting especially the culture of nomadism and increasing the weight of other forms of mobility such as tourism and migration. To address these changes, this article adopts an ethnographic approach, employing fieldwork and using observation and interviews as its primary techniques. The towns of Imilchil (a mountain oasis in the Eastern High Atlas) and Merzouga (a desert oasis in the Ziz Valley) were selected for study based on their shared nomadic past and the increasing presence of tourism and migration. The research findings demonstrate how the combination of new and old forms of mobility and immobility forms part of attempts to adapt to changing environmental and climatic conditions, as well as part of the essential role of the state and its policies.
Using international surveys to measure political transnationalism: the civic competencies of the Swiss population residing in Latin America
This article quantitatively analyses political transnationalism among Swiss citizens in Latin America through civic competence indicators. Using multivariate techniques (OVERALS and HJ-Biplot), it explores the links between sociodemographic and migratory variables and political behavior. The findings of a sample of 539 valid responses reveal a strong civic predisposition but limited electoral engagement, partially supporting the political exposure theory. We proposed a political transnationalism index as a metric to assess diasporic engagement from Global North expatriates in Southern contexts.
Return to Migrate Again: Reintegration to Uruguay and Re-Emigration of the Uruguayan Population to Spain
This article examines the relationship between the processes of reintegration of migrants in their country of origin and the decision to return to emigrate after their return, taking Spain and Uruguay as contexts of (re)emigration and return respectively. Through 27 multisite semi-structured qualitative interviews with people who experienced return migration from Spain to Uruguay, it concludes that remigrations to Spain after the return migration are associated with a combination of difficulties of economic and social reintegration with a more favorable structural assessment of living conditions in the Iberian country. The analysis shows how citizen insecurity, absent in initial migration, is incorporated as a decisive factor in recent remigrations. It is argued that reintegration processes are dynamic, reversible and mediated by unfavorable return contexts, which questions the effectiveness of current policies.
Transforming Destinations: The Impact of Integration Interventions on the Mobility Decisions of Displaced LGBTIQ+ Persons in Mexico
This article explores the lived experiences of LGBTIQ+ forcibly displaced persons in (transit through) Mexico, examining how they decide whether to stay or move on, and how civil society organizations (CSOs) shape those decisions. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico, this article analyzes three intertwined dimensions: the specific vulnerabilities shaping LGBTIQ+ migration; the role of CSOs in reshaping agency and future planning; and Mexico’s evolving role in the regional migration landscape. The article critiques deterrence-based migration governance and highlights the emotional and bureaucratic complexities LGBTIQ+ migrants face, caught between transnational border regimes and local systemic violence. Conceptually, it challenges traditional ideas of destination, intention, and agency in migration trajectories, framing Mexico as a site of “forced immobility,” where decisions emerge from structural coercion, not choice. The article challenges linear migration models and calls for inclusive, person-centered integration efforts rooted in resilience and belonging rather than deterrence.
Copyright (c) 2025 Migraciones. Publicación del Instituto Universitario de Estudios sobre Migraciones https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0