Beyond the Apocalypse: Reframing Migration History

Abstract

As the editors of this volume have explained in their introduction, current public debates on migration and integration in Western Europe are fraught with misunderstandings, selective perceptions, and deliberate misrepresentations. Whether it regards the Brexit discussion 1 or the so-called 'refugee crisis', the tone is often outright apocalyptical. Not only among politicians and journalists, but in some cases also among serious commentators and scholars, like David Goodhart, Paul Collier and David Miller. 2 But mainstream migration scholars, often unintentionally, contribute to this alarmist atmosphere as well, by too uncritically reproducing the frame that migrants constitute a problem that should be solved. Or that we should look at the 'root causes' of migration and prevent people from leaving the global South in the first place. This perspective treats migration not only as a predicament, but also