ABSTRACT
Migration is usually considered to be an archetypal example of border-crossing. However, borders have come to mean different things depending on who you are. Highly-skilled migrants who cross international borders are seen as placing different cultural and economic knowledge in contact, spurring economic growth (Beaverstock 2002). For them, it appears that borders have been transcended and mobility enabled as they are encouraged to move in an increasingly borderless world. Lesser-skilled migrants and refugees have, on the other hand, been largely regarded as threats to borders, seen as crossing borders without appropriate papers and thus spurring a host of technologies for monitoring and controlling border crossings (Bigo 2002; Huysmans 1995). For these migrants, borders have therefore gained in strength and significance in a securitized world (Ibrahim 2005). These two experiences of border also posit migrant destinations in different ways – one in which receiving state and society are seen as victims (‘illegal’ migration, typically involving the lesser skilled), the other where they are beneficiaries of ‘foreign talent’. The same border thus acts differently for different kinds of migrants.
