‘The End of Migration’: Emerging trends and countervailing forces

This Manifesto calls on migration scholars to confront our transforming world in which the patterns and possibilities of migration on which our theories and assumptions have been based are rapidly ending. It addresses the process of dehumanization that accompanies the elimination of people’s ability to move and settle with the eventual possibility of citizenship. People needing or seeking to leave home are increasingly kept from attaining secure lives in terms of adequate employment, housing and legal protection. Instead, they face migration industries that profit from borders, surveillance, short-term labour contracts without rights to settle or to safety, legalized exploitation, and even the criminalization of migrancy itself. The basic human right to social and economic justice and dignity is at stake. This Manifesto therefore sounds the alarm for migration scholars not only to document the transformations in migration but to say clearly and forcefully: migration is a social good and is part of our struggle for a more just world. In this dramatically altered terrain scholars must conduct migration research with these assumptions, starting with developing a deeper understanding of our changing historical conjuncture that is indeed ending migration as we know it.