Migration as Crisis

Abstract

Over the past decades, and across different contexts worldwide, migration has become inseparable from a narrative of crisis. This article analyses the connection between migration and crisis. It proposes a migration as crisis framework, designed to understand and analyze the emergence of this specific perception of migration, on the basis of an interplay between social “subjective” constructions of reality and “objective” migration dynamics. Migration as crisis rests upon a fragmented, changing, and contested assemblage of events, representations, and practices, which in turn call for specific ways of governing migration. The link between migration and crisis can be activated or not, and may or may not be correlated with empirical realities. By engaging with migration as crisis (rather than migration crisis), the article denaturalizes and historicizes the relationship between migration and crisis, and unpacks the processes through which key actors (including media, policymakers, civil society, and academics) frame migration as such.