This project sets forth a new research agenda in the interdisciplinary field of migration studies by critically engaging with the concept of the migration state and expanding its application to a range of historical and comparative cases beyond classical cases in Western Europe and the United States. The migration state concept points to the centrality of migration as a core state function and provides a framework for understanding competing interests that states face in managing migration, with a focus on the trade-offs between economic openness and political closure - what Hollifield calls the liberal paradox. In the almost thirty years since he introduced the concept, international migration has become even more central to how states regulate the labor market, respond to demographic trends, craft national security strategy, and shape public debates on citizenship and national identity.
Bringing together work across a range of cases, the book will theorize varieties of migration states, proposing typologies and applications of the migration state concept to develop a truly global approach to understanding migration. The book covers major sending countries, recent countries of immigration, and countries that are simultaneously countries of origin, destination, and transit, including liberal democracies and autocracies, former imperial powers and post-colonial states, as well as the richest to the poorest countries in the world. Based on thirty years of research in different regions of the globe, the research for this book combines insights from comparative and international politics, economics, demography, and sociology, as well as historical and post-colonial approaches.
