For this year's annual IMISCOE Conference, members of the ForMOVe team – Prof. Dr. Ludger Pries, Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze, Dr. Susanne Willers, Dr. Berna Şafak Zülfikar Savci, Prof. Dr. Oscar Calderón Morillón - as well as Dr. Nicola Montagna, and Marlene Aleny Rodríguez – submitted a total of four papers. On July 2^nd, the insights and findings from these papers were discussed as part of the digital panel “Understanding forced migrants' biographical projects and agency in transit: reconsidering the theoretical approaches in forced migration studies”, moderated by Dr. Benjamin Etzold.

Topic of the panel

Forced migration is growing in scale, nature and context around the world. By 2024, the world's displaced population will have doubled from a decade ago, reaching nearly 120 million people, more than the world's thirteenth most populous country. While transit and receiving countries face difficulties in providing the necessary assistance for these populations, the forced migrants themselves struggle to make their living under often precarious circumstances and to develop biographical projects for the future between returning, staying and moving forward. Current empirical studies on the topic are positioned between two poles. On one hand, studies follow an inductive qualitative approach such as biographical case reconstruction and on the other, they seek to give space to reconstruct the agency of forced migrants in the decision-making process through an aspiration – (cap)ability model, while longitudinal and mixed methods have been used less to understand migrants' agency. This panel focuses on theoretical and methodological approaches to better understand and explain forced migrants’ agency in a life course perspective in the given institutional and political contexts. The panel combines the analysis of trajectories (as an “objective” temporal sequence of social positions and events) with biographies (as a “subjectively” experienced and remembered flow of social practices and divides). By doing so, the panel aims to address theoretical and methodological gaps in forced migration studies by highlighting the longitudinal and mixed method approach, by integrating the local, national and transnational levels and by focusing on transit countries to decentre from the Global North.

Paper abstracts

Paper 1 by Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze (Free University of Berlin) – Life Course Trajectories of Forced Migrants in the Americas: Rethinking Choices and Life Projections

In recent years, forced migration patterns in the Americas have been very dynamic. Colombia and Mexico are two countries in the South and North American migration corridor that are experiencing increasing numbers of forced migrants in transit and temporary settlement. In 2023, the number of transit migrants crossing the Colombian border northbound was unprecedented, with over a quarter of a million in the first six months (RV4 2024), while Mexico also saw unprecedent numbers of refugee claims (COMAR 2024). While countries' responses to migrant populations have varied, the conditions for transit migration and/or temporary settlement of forced migrants are extremely complex. And current political circumstances have led to constraints in budgeting for humanitarian response infrastructure at local and regional levels. In our paper we will highlight the biographical longitudinal approach to understand the decision making of forced migrants in both countries. While forced migrants’ life trajectories are not uni linear, they involve complex routes and choices for the future, often influenced by both the context of admission and life course events but also past events and plans. Based on empirical fieldwork and life-course interviews from our research project in Mexico and Colombia, the paper examines current dynamics regarding the transit and immobility of migrants. We aim to compare how migration policies and transit contexts influence migrants' decision-making regarding mobility and family life trajectories. Our analysis includes rethinking family and group dynamics from a perspective that considers gendered patterns of mobility and migration decisions in the context of forced migration.

Paper 2 by Prof. Dr. Ludger Pries and Dr. Berna Safak Zülfikar Savcı (Ruhr-University Bochum) – Making Lives and Reconstruction of Future: Biographical Projects of Forced Migrants under Uncertainties

Escalating conflicts, violence and wars around the world, coupled with economic crises and political instability in many countries, have led many people to leave their homes in search of a better future or simply to survive. In most cases, they begin their first migratory journey in neighboring countries close to their place of origin or in countries within their region. Migration flows do not follow a bipolar trajectory between the country of origin and the country of destination. Forced migrants leave their countries, even for short periods, to neighboring countries and migration hubs. During their stay in transit, forced migrants undergo a transformation in their capital, experiences, coping mechanisms for risks encountered during their journey, capacity to establish a life in the new society, values and norms, and the process of understanding and interpreting their lives, which are different from their previous lives. All of these differences are related to the fact that migration is not just a decision made at one moment in time that later loses its effect, but a social process whose effects differentiate migrants. In this study, we aim to analyze and compare the biographical projects of forced migrants in two different regions: Latin America and the Middle East. We argue that these biographical projects are shaped by migrants' social networks - vernacularization, experiences, socialization, preferences, expectations and resources, including their skills - and their interaction with the institutional political conditions of the host countries.

Paper 3 by Prof. Dr. Oscar Calderón Morillón (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla) and Marlene Aleny Rodríguez Pérez (Population Studies El Colegio de México) – Migration in transit in Mexico: strategies for fieldwork in contexts of violence

In Mexico, it is increasingly difficult to carry out work, both qualitative and quantitative. It is important to mention that the practical management of field work is crucial and strategic, crucial because without this acquired knowledge to solve what to do in the field and to carry out interviews with migrants in transit in the face of possible risks and contingencies, it would not have been possible to advance in this research; and strategic to face a difficult field given the conditions of extreme vulnerability for these migrants, the surveillance of Mexican militias along the migratory route, the insecurity and violence where the involvement of criminal organizations in the management of irregular migration along the migratory routes in Mexico is more than evident. This work describes the strategies that were implemented to be able to carry out, in two different periods, 2021 and 2024, the application of questionnaires in various regions of Mexico.

Paper 4 by Dr. Nicola Montagna (University of Salerno) – Border as a ‘field of forces’: An analysis of Asylum Seekers Responses to Policy Restrictions between the Balkan Route and Italy-France Border

This contribution aims to link the concepts of ‘field’ as defined by Pierre Bourdieu and that of border. Bourdieu's concept of ‘field’ refers to “the sum of objective relations between different forces [in] who enters must make a transformation, a conversion, and even if the latter does not appear to him as such, even if he is not aware of it, it is tacitly imposed on him”. However, within a field, forces possess habitus different amounts of capital - economic, cultural, social or symbolic - which they use to navigate and gain influence. Fields are dynamic place, in which they impose on forces and forces respond to them according their resources. Relying on Bourdieu’s concept of field of forces this article investigates how asylum seekers respond to the constraints of border regimes, depending on their dispositions (habitus) and resources (capital), including resorting to smugglers, relying on humanitarian support and informal networks, or changing family and household figurations. Through interviews with asylum seekers on the move, activists and humanitarian workers and an analysis of asylum seekers' agency between the Balkan route and the north-western border between Italy and France, this paper aims to show how different actors respond and adapt to the constraints imposed by the border according to their own habitus and resources. We will see how habitus and capital, as well as means of social differentiation, are configured as instruments of action and social positioning within the border as a field of struggle.