1 Introduction Interplay between migrant organizations and their environment — conceptual and theoretical framework

Today, “the old dichotomy between migrant-sending and migrant-receiving states is being eroded. Most countries experience both emigration and immigration (although one or the other often predominates) while some countries have taken an important role as transit zones for migrants” (Castles and Miller 2009: 7). Furthermore, the numbers of international migrants are growing in all regions (IOM 2008). ¹ An increasing percentage of migrants commute between their countries of residence and of origin (Faist 2000a; Pries and Goebel 2003). Addi-tionally, most countries do not simply have one type of immigration, such as labor migration, refugees or permanent settlement, but experience the flow of a whole range of immigration types at once (Castles and Davidson 2000; Castles and Miller 2009).