Migration Crises: Definitions, Critiques, and Global Contexts
Résumé
This chapter introduces the two interrelated aspects of migration crises that animate this volume. It summarizes the range of historical, economic, social, political, and environmental conditions that generate migration crises around the globe which the contributions in the book address. The chapter challenges the term “crisis” as overused and normalized today, offers conceptual explanations of migration perceived as crisis, and questions the influence of nation-state ideologies as well as the reasons why some migrant groups are framed as crises and others are not, mainly based on ethnicity and economic arguments. Finally, the chapter introduces the wide variety of case studies from historical contexts, conflicts, climate change, transit countries, policy responses, the media, gender issues, as well as integration and multiculturalism to account for the global construction of migration crises.