ABSTRACT
The prologue develops the thesis that migration research has to concentrate even more on the mobility processes of migrants, either during part of their lives or throughout their entire lifetime, with a special emphasis on the migrant as an actor. These mobile actors, as the findings in the empirical chapters show, are connected to global developments. Depending on age, occupation, gender and income, migrants are able to rely on resources that they obtain from transnational configurations while embedded in a fragile and limited network of co-migrants. The three sections of the book are structured as follows: first, on the way spatial trajectories are constructed within the migration process; second, on the ‘frictions in space’ that become evident through the many misconceptions and subsequent problems that migrants have with the national legal frameworks at various levels; and third, on the role of imaginaries in transnational migration pointing to the mindsets of migrants, their preconceptions and the expectations that influence their migratory action.
Paying attention to the narratives, norms, emotions and mental predispositions influencing the migratory process implies leaving the (academic) comfort zone of (what we think is) ‘common ground’ or how things (should) work. Migration – according to the authors – is a game played out on many levels and with constantly shifting (inter)personal combinations, alliances and institutions, which cannot be limited to one single rationale.
