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In the last quarter of a century, migration theory has undergone fundamental change, moving from the classic “individual relocation” genre initiated by Ravenstein a century ago, to a variety of new approaches which nevertheless share important elements: they tend to be historical, structural, globalist and critical. Historicization implies a constant modification of theoretical concerns and emphases in the light of changing social realities, and commitment to a critical approach entails a view of research as one element in a broader project concerned with the elucidation of social and political conditions. The article uses elements from two major theoretical traditions — a modified world-systems approach and state theory — to project current trends. Global inequality is considered as a structural given. The article then reviews major topics, including the persistence of restrictive immigration policies as barriers to movement, changing patterns of exploitation of foreign labor, liberalization of exit from the socialist world and the refugee crisis in the developing world. It concludes with a brief consideration of the normative implications of these trends.

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Considered as a social phenomenon, refugees can be thought of as the migratory segment of a larger group of victims, singled out for the willful exercise of extraordinary malevolence on the part of their state of residence, acting directly or by indirection. As part of the same process, others in the target group may be immobilized or destroyed. As acknowledged by the current U.N. definition, refugees fall into two main categories. Some are persecuted on grounds of political opinion or activity; since such persecution is the normal counterpart of illiberal regimes, the process does not require elaborate explanation. Hence the analysis focuses on the conditions under which persecution is directed against categoric groups—racial, religious, national, or social—to which individuals belong not by choice but by virtue of accidents of birth. It is suggested that the process under consideration arises most prominently as a by-product of the secular transformation of empires into nation-states. A brief historical review demonstrates how it originated in Western Europe half a millennium ago and recurred further east in the wake of the dissolution of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires in the twentieth century. The last part sketches out how within this general framework specific conditions account for a particularly high incidence of massive refugee flows in the contemporary third world.