International migrants’ cross-border political activities challenge singular notions of national citizenship and political belonging. Yet most sociological studies of migrants’ transnational political engagement are based on single national groups in the USA, and limit themselves to examining how assimilation and contexts of reception determine migrants’ propensity to engage with homeland politics—thereby under theorizing the influence of origin countries. This study moves beyond this approach by recognizing the multi-directionality of migration, and testing the applicability of existing theoretical approaches across two different origins and receiving contexts. We compare a sample of Colombian and Dominican migrants in Spain and Italy, analyzing how contexts in countries of origin, as well as migrants’ social networks across borders, interact with assimilation and contexts of reception to determine migrants’ political transnational engagement. Findings reveal migrants’ transnational political engagement in Spain and Italy appears to be a highly selective process dominated by a small minority of well-educated males from high social status in origin. Findings also suggest immigrant incorporation and transnational political engagement form a dialectical relationship operating at different scales that is simultaneously complementary and contradictory. Contextual conditions in origin countries explain observed much of variation in Colombian and Dominican migrants’ transnational political engagement.

In this paper, I explore the nexus between migration, development and security in South–North migration through an analysis of certain discursive constructions in current migration policy debates; in particular, the migration–development nexus that attempts to make migration work for development in the global South, and the migration–security nexus that legitimizes stricter border controls and migration management in the global North. Shifting geopolitical concerns have changed the balance between the two nexuses over time, but by and large policy debates have been driven by the interests of Northern governments, whereby “development” has been reduced to an instrument of migration policy and “security” to an issue of keeping unwanted and potentially dangerous migratory flows out. The security situation of journeying migrants may make it to the policy debating tables of international organizations and forums, but has thus far not radically changed migration policy. I suggest analysing the nexus constructions through an analytical lens capable of encompassing both migrants and their border‐spanning social networks, on the one hand, and migration policies and state responses aimed at controlling human mobility, on the other. The starting point for this analytical endeavour is the intersection between the migration industry, understood as the broad array of both legal and clandestine actors linked to the facilitation of international migration, and the growing markets for migration management both at the inter‐state level and in the increased use of private and commercial agents for control purposes.

Este texto presenta una reflexión sobre las lógicas epistemológicas y políticas que atraviesan los estudios sobre las migraciones en América Latina desde tres dimensiones: 1) la creciente heterogeneidad de flujos y la necesidad de repensar las categorías conceptuales con las que se aborda las migraciones; 2) el diálogo y apropiación de marcos analíticos producidos en otras regiones en los estudios latinoamericanos; y 3) las agendas políticas de los Estados de la región y del norte, y su influencia selectiva en la producción de conocimientos. El objetivo es ofrecer una reflexión general sobre la producción del campo de estudios sobre las migraciones en América Latina que sirva de contexto para el análisis de los cinco artículos que ofrece este dossier de Íconos. Revista de Ciencias Sociales.

This article analyses the possible effects of the introduction of the category of internally displaced people' Ð IDP Ð in the context of violent conflict in central Peru. It gives an account of the ways in which the IDP category has been introduced and appropriated by local NGOs, people affected by violent conflict and displacement, and by the governmental organization, PAR, set up to facilitate return and repopulation after the declared end of the armed conflict. The category has facilitated and given leverage to a national organization of IDPs. However, the agencies and programmes that work in support of IDPs tend to regard existing mobile livelihood practices as an impediment for advocacy and longer-term development strategies. This article suggests that, instead of considering displacement (and return) as an absolute break with the past, a focus on networks and mobile livelihoods may be a better way to help people affected by violent conflict to move beyond emergency relief.

Mexican development policy is guided by the country’s dual function as both a recipient and a provider of international cooperation. Over the past 17 years, the country has taken several initiatives to promote gender equality nationally, and today gender equality norms cut across Mexican priorities in foreign policy and South-South cooperation activities. Paradoxically, the gains achieved at policy formulating tables have been accompanied by a rise in gender-based violence. To approach this paradox, this article engages with gender equality norms to show how they have been introduced, developed and transformed in the context of a national security crisis and extreme violence directed at women. The analysis points to the important role of Mexican feminists and anti-feminicide activists in the promotion of gender equality norms, as well as to the existence of a political landscape in which structural inequality persists and such norms remain highly contested.