Fragility of Global Migration: Exploring a Constitutive Aspect of Migratory Forms

This book demonstrates the analytical power of the concept of fragility as a central and defining aspect of global migration processes. To this end, the book brings together authors from the Americas, South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, fostering a global dialogue on the social structuring of migration fragility in and between the Global North and the Global South. The various chapters of the book focus on two aspects. First, it discusses the multiplicity of the migrant as a social figure. There is not just one type of migrant, but a multiplicity of different fragile configurations that lead to the migrantization of people. Secondly, the same applies to the process of migration itself. There is a plethora of different articulations of fragility in crossing borders and organizing a new life somewhere else. Both perspectives show that the fragility of migration is not an aberration from “normality”. Fragility is an intrinsic part of the stabilization of social inequalities of migration between different migrants and different countries and regions of the globe. As such, this book is an important resource for researchers and students interested in the study of migration processes.

Johannes Becker is a research fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin, Germany. His research revolves around the relationship between biographies, history and space, especially in relation to cities, migration and family in the Middle East. He is the principal investigator of the research project “Migrant arrival contexts in transregional comparison” and co-convener of the scientific network “Qualitative social research and transregional theory-building in the context of global sociology(ies)”, both funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). 2023-2027 he is the President of the RC38 “Biography and Society” in the International Sociological Association (ISA).

Mathias Bös is a Professor of Sociological Theory at the Institute of Sociology, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. He received his doctorate from Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, he habilitated at Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg and held a professorship at Philipps-University Marburg. His main research interests are in the sociology of migration, race and ethnic relations, citizenship studies, global conflict dynamics, and cultural heritage in North Atlantic societies, as well as in the history of ideas in social sciences, especially in the USA.

Dr. Sevil Çakır earned her Ph.D. in Middle Eastern studies from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her research interests revolve around forced migration, social and political movements, gender, intersectionality, political violence and the Middle East. She has authored publications that cover diverse topics such as activism in exile, Kurdish migrant women in Germany, feminist methods in social movements, and women’s movements in Iran and Turkey. From 2018 to 2023, she worked as a research associate and lecturer at the Center for Methods of Social Sciences at the University of Göttingen, where she taught graduate seminars and lectures on social movements, intersectionality, research methods, and feminist methodologies. Her postdoctoral research examines the social and political activism, intersectional solidarity, and transnational activities of racialized migrant women in Germany.