This project studies the links between the migration plans of individual subjects and the migration policies of sending and receiving states. Our contention is that migrants and their households are independent social agents that make choices and plans, execute these plans, and/or adapt them in accordance with changing circumstances and to their own needs and expectations. In formulating and executing their plans, migrants interact with state policies and other external factors operating in the sending, receiving or in both countries. Migrants receive and process information about receiving state policies and other issues that affect different aspects of their migration project. Such information may be more or less accurate and complete, and is usually mediated through formal and informal networks in the country of origin and in the receiving country, the media, non-state agents and criminal networks.

In the proposed project, we will study the migration projects and experiences of migrants in different migration systems. We define a migration system as a set of sending and receiving countries that experience similar in- and out-flows and share some common socio-economic and political features. We consider the migration project as ongoing, starting before departure from the country of origin and covering at least the first five years in the country of destination. In this study, we will consider a European East-West migration system encompassing EU countries and Eastern Europe (including Russia and some CIS states); a Mediterranean system including EU countries and North African states; a European-Asian system encompassing EU countries and the Indian subcontinent, Indonesia and China; and a South-North American system including the US, Canada, and countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Within each system, we will select several groups of migrants based on ethnicity, country of origin and/or transnational migration networks. We will explore their initial individual and household plans, the kind of information they had prior to migration, how this influenced their decisions, the situation they faced in the destination country, information received there with regard to policies that were relevant for them, their contacts with state authorities and non-state agents, their revised plans and if and how they executed them. These accounts will then be studied against the background of actual policies, information campaigns, statistical data, and findings from other studies to identify the nodal points where a migrant’s plan was affected (directly but also indirectly) by a specific policy and why. We shall also check for missed nodal points, namely points where a policy existed that could have affected the migrant’s decision but it did not for a variety of reasons. This will enable us to draw conclusions as to the effectiveness of the policies relevant to the migrants’ plans, and the ways in which these affected the latter.

This project follows a comparative ethnographic approach. We shall first engage into a detailed analysis of the migration systems selected above. We shall review the main migration flows within each system, the socio-demographic profiles of the migrating populations, the socio-economic and political profiles of the destination countries, and the existing studies analysing the relationships between immigrants and immigrant-relevant policies (including immigration control, integration and related policies, e.g. citizenship acquisition or trade agreements between sending and receiving countries). We shall then refine our research hypotheses concerning the ways in which different policies affect the plans of various migrant groups and/or transnational migrant networks. Specific ethnic/national groups, networks and destination countries within each system have been selected and our research teams will conduct in-depth life-story interviews with informants from these groups. In this pilot phase of the project, we shall identify specific work hypotheses for the fuller development of the proposal which will include a much larger phase of empirical research with a view to identifying factors and links between migrants and policies that are valid (a) across countries/migrant groups/networks; (b) across migration systems.