This new volume, published in the Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship series, explores migration movements to Norway, the Netherlands, the UK and Portugal from Brazil, Morocco and Ukraine. The central analytical tool for this undertaking is the concept of feedback. Beyond Networks identifies various feedback mechanisms that initiate, perpetuate and reverse migration movements. It pays attention to the role of personal networks, but it also moves beyond networks by analysing the role of institutions, macro-level factors and forms of broadcast feedback operating through impersonal channels. Based on extensive surveys and in-depth interviews, it changes our understanding of how and why patterns of international migration change over time.
Beyond Networks draws on research undertaken as part of the Theorizing the Evolution of Migration Systems (THEMIS) project, which was led by IMI in partnership with Erasmus University Rotterdam, PRIO and the University of Lisbon between 2010 and 2014. This research took a fresh look at how patterns of migration to Europe develop, focusing on the conditions that encourage initial moves by pioneer migrants to become established migration systems (or not). It sought to bridge the theories on the initiation and continuation of migration, and to integrate the concept of agency in a systems theory approach.
IMI Director Oliver Bakewell's co-editors are Godfried Engbersen, Professor of General Sociology, Erasmus University of Rotterdam; Maria Lucinda Fonseca, Full Professor of Human Geography and Migration Studies, University of Lisbon; and Cindy Horst, Research Professor in Migration and Refugee Studies, PRIO.