ABSTRACT
Social scientists study international migration because it has the potential to change individuals and societies in diverse and interesting ways, the potential to exploit, to enrich, to engender competition and positive change. It raises questions about identity, belonging, resources, social cohesion, and social divisiveness. In recent decades, the topic has become the focus of a great deal of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary empirical social science and there is a wealth of empirical knowledge about diverse flows and outcomes, and an eclectic mix of approaches drawn on in terms of theoretical explanation. The chapter casts a critical eye over the widely used neoclassical economic theories, new economic and dual/segmented labour market theories, world systems theory, and migration systems and networks theory. In a new section, we then consider more intersectional, transnational, and democratising discourses around integration that theorise a role for power and inequalities. We analyse theoretically informed policy approaches and their impacts, including the concept of bordering. Finally, we consider the potential for a unifying macro-theoretical approach to migration informed by sociological understandings of social life as ongoing practices of structuration.
