According to the latest World Migration Report, 12 of the 20 top destinations for international migrants in 2020 were countries not belonging to what are considered traditional (western) migrant-receiving countries in North America, Western Europe, and Australia. International organisations currently estimate that the international stock of migrants amounts to about 282 million people. Nearly half of these international migrants work and reside in non-Western migration locales. Yet, despite these ever-growing migratory processes towards non-Western migration locales, the mainstream literature remains largely focused on the study of migrants’ experiences and immigration policies in the context of the traditional Western liberal democracies in North America, Western Europe, and Australia. This means that major non-Western migration destinations elsewhere in the world remain underrepresented by existing theories and comparative research within migration studies—including those top migrant-receiving countries such as Argentina, China, Colombia, the Gulf states, Malaysia, Russia and Turkey. As the editors of the leading migration journal International Migration Review admit, 80% of its articles published in the journal since 2016 focus geographically on North America or Western Europe. This uneven geographic coverage illustrates the limited attention granted to non-Western migration dynamics and also “highlights the challenges that scholars writing about the wider geography of international migration face in attempts to situate their work in relation to hegemonic perspectives about two global regions”.
MARS is a research and staff exchange programme intended to enhance our knowledge and scientific understanding about global, regional and national governance of migration and mobilities and thereby contribute to the global and national efforts to facilitate safe, regular and orderly migration. This aim will be accomplished by conducting interdisciplinary research and training programme on non-Western migration regimes. More specifically, MARS is constructed around three interlinked goals which are to:
1) produce original empirical material data and comparative perspective on migration governance and migrants’ experiences in non-Western migration locales;
2) engage with and situate our research in relevant theoretical debates in (comparative) migration studies and thereby contribute to theory-building efforts in migration studies by developing new conceptual and methodological insights on migrants’ experiences and migration governance practices in non-Western migration locales;
3) provide strategic intelligence and policy insights for international organisations, development agencies and decision makers and practitioners inside and outside the EU on possible ways to better understand and improve migration governance practices, and thereby support the implementation of the Global Compact on Migration and Global Compact on Refugees.
This will be made possible thanks to a multi-sited, interdisciplinary and multisectoral research and staff exchange programme involving 11 leading European universities and organisations:
Lund University, Leiden University, University of Helsinki, University of Zurich, University of Salzburg, Istanbul Medipol University, Marmara University, University of Eastern Finland, Vilnius University, Society for the Protection of Uzbek Women’s Rights in Turkey and University of Bristol and 13 associated partners operating in Central Asia, Middle East, North and West Africa, Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Gulf States and Latin America, namely the General Prosecutor’s Office of Uzbekistan, Nazarbayev University, Kurultai Research and Consulting, Migrant INFO, American University in Cairo, Vatandoshlar Public Foundation, University of Ghana, University of Gadjah Mada, University of Tsukuba, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Tufts College, Tashkent State University of Law and Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
If anyone at Bristol works on non western migration regimes and would like to do a one month secondment at any of the universities listed above, please contact Diego Acosta d.acosta@bristol.ac.uk
Researcher
Diego Acosta Arcarazo Professor of European and Migration Law, University of Bristol Law School