TY - JOUR
T1 - When Borders Migrate
T2 - Reconstructing the Category of ‘International Migrant’
AU - Gorodzeisky, Anastasia
AU - Leykin, Inna
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/2/1
Y1 - 2020/2/1
N2 - Using the Baltic states as an empirical example of a wider social problem of categorization and naming, this article explores the statistical categories of ‘international migrant/foreign-born’ population used in three major cross-national data sources (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Eurostat and The World Bank Indicators (WBI)). We argue that these seemingly politically neutral categories ignore historical processes of state formation and migration, and privilege the current ethnonational definition of the state. We demonstrate how, in regions with recent geopolitical changes, the international migrant category’s spatial and temporal constraints produce distorted population parameters, by marking those who have never crossed sovereign states’ borders as international migrants. In certain social contexts, applying the international migrant category to those who have never crossed international borders shapes and legitimizes restrictive citizenship policies and new forms of social exclusion. We further argue that, when uncritically adopting this category, transnational institutions assert territorial imaginaries embedded in ethnonational political discourses and legitimize exclusionary citizenship policies.
AB - Using the Baltic states as an empirical example of a wider social problem of categorization and naming, this article explores the statistical categories of ‘international migrant/foreign-born’ population used in three major cross-national data sources (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Eurostat and The World Bank Indicators (WBI)). We argue that these seemingly politically neutral categories ignore historical processes of state formation and migration, and privilege the current ethnonational definition of the state. We demonstrate how, in regions with recent geopolitical changes, the international migrant category’s spatial and temporal constraints produce distorted population parameters, by marking those who have never crossed sovereign states’ borders as international migrants. In certain social contexts, applying the international migrant category to those who have never crossed international borders shapes and legitimizes restrictive citizenship policies and new forms of social exclusion. We further argue that, when uncritically adopting this category, transnational institutions assert territorial imaginaries embedded in ethnonational political discourses and legitimize exclusionary citizenship policies.
KW - Baltic states
KW - European Union
KW - categorization
KW - citizenship
KW - international migrants
KW - methodological nationalism
KW - migration
KW - political change
KW - politics of naming
KW - social exclusion
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85070365727&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0038038519860403
DO - 10.1177/0038038519860403
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AN - SCOPUS:85070365727
SN - 0038-0385
VL - 54
SP - 142
EP - 158
JO - Sociology
JF - Sociology
IS - 1
ER -