Introduction

In their influential overview of the field of migration Stephen Castles and Mark Miller make the bold claim that: ‘International migration is part of a transnational revolution that is reshaping societies and politics around the globe’ (Castles and Miller, 2009). This statement may have seemed somewhat overblown when first made but the relevance of understanding the impact of changing patterns of international migration has become ever more important over the past decade. The movements of economic migrants, refugees and asylum seekers across the globe have become an important theme in political and policy debates, in media coverage and in popular culture. More generally new patterns of migration have done much to influence how societies perceive the position of racial and ethnic minorities and the role of transnational social and cultural identities (Bloemraad et al., 2008; Castles, 2010; De Genova, 2010).