Out now: Politicising Immigration in Times of Crisis

I have the pleasure to announce that the joint article with Marco Bitschnau, Leslie Ader, and Gianni D’Amato is now properly published in JEMS. In a previous post I have detailed how we measured the impact of a crisis when we don’t know when the crisis was. Let me stress that we’re looking at economic crises, not the so-called ‘migration crisis’ or ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 — it’s the kind of crises we’re living through at the moment, I guess.

We find evidence that claims-making on migration differs during periods of crisis, but the kind of difference probably varies from crisis to crisis. In retrospective, this feels right, as discourses and narratives on migration are embedded in a specific context. In this sense, our conclusion is that (economic) crises do not automatically increase the politicization of migration. Instead, we should probably understand crises as opportunity structures that can foster change in politicization and change in policies.

Bitschnau, Marco, Leslie Ader, Didier Ruedin, and Gianni D’Amato. 2021. “Politicising Immigration in Times of Crisis: Empirical Evidence from Switzerland.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Online First. doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2021.1936471. [ Open Access]