Disciplining migration aspirations through migration‐information campaigns: A systematic review of the literature

Abstract

In the past few years, governmental agencies have developed a diverse repertoire of migration-management measures to steer migration flows and discipline unwanted migration. Migration-information campaigns have become a prominent tool aimed at communicating directly to migration aspirations of the targeted population in transit and sending countries. Through these information campaigns the geographical locus of control is shifted toward where the receiving state seeks to steer migration flows. This review paper is a research synthesis on literature engaging with migration-information campaigns. The study is based on 17 peer-reviewed journal articles from the years 2010-2020. Articles were coded based on discipline, type of research, research perspective, geographic origin and focus of the campaigns, objectives and rationale of the campaigns, tools and methods used in those campaigns, campaign funding, actor constellations, and a general assessment of each article.Findings from this study identify prominent trends as well as blind spots in the current research and indicate that there is still little research available on information campaigns concerning irregular migration, and even fewer studies report on their effectiveness. By implication future research is ad-

Analyzing the Main Determinants for Being an Immigrant in Cuenca (Ecuador) Based on a Fuzzy Clustering Approach

“…There exists an ample consensus in the existing literature about the main causes for both flows immigrants and refugees [14]. Thus, the list of thirty items correspond to the categories of factors that include economic variables, globalization, political variables, social variables, cultural variables and access variables [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Other items were obtained from the items included in the studies of secondary houses as these are also related to the objective of the study [31][32][33][34][35].…”

“…The administration of the questionnaire was carried out face-to-face with the help of well-trained students, taking about 13 min to complete. A number of hot spots (19) were selected in the city to administer the questionnaires; these places were frequently used by the immigrants for entertainment, or for having coffee or a drink.…”

Risky journeys – Risk and decision‐making among potential irregular migrants in Senegal and Guinea

“…Nieuwenhuys & Pécoud, 2007; Oeppen, 2016; Pécoud, 2010; Watkins, 2017) or relating to doubts regarding effectiveness (e.g. Brekke & Thorbjørnsrud, 2020; Fleay et al, 2016; Pagogna & Sakdapolrak, 2021; Tjaden et al, 2019) because campaigns violate key assumptions about decision‐making among (irregular) migrants (e.g. Fiedler, 2020; Hernández‐Carretero & Carling, 2012; Schans & Optekamp, 2016; van Bemmel, 2020).…”

“…Recent reviews have highlighted the glaring absence of any empirical, large‐N investigation of campaigns and the absence of direct tests of underlying assumptions (Browne, 2015; Pagogna & Sakdapolrak, 2021; Tjaden et al, 2018). The evidence gap is surprising relative to the salience of ‘irregular migration’ in the media and intensity of debates on awareness raising campaigns, yet maybe unsurprising given the difficulty of data collection inherent in the ‘irregular’ nature of the phenomenon (Koser, 2010).…”

The aesthetic turn in border studies: Visual geographies of power, contestation and subversion

“…But the concept has also enabled sharper explorations of the shifting temporalities and spatialities of borders – on the one hand, by channeling attention into how migrants experience and navigate E.U. borders (Pagogna & Sakdapolrak, 2021; Pellander & Horsti, 2018) and transit zones (Ferrer‐Gallardo & Albet‐Mas, 2016; Godin & Donà, 2020), and, on the other, through genealogical inquiries of how the past informs contemporary borderwork in Europe (Pfoser, 2020) and post‐colonial contexts (Brambilla, 2014). Finally, borderscapes have inspired scholars to examine with greater nuance a vast array of cultural productions, with the overarching goal of critically linking “border experiences with border representations by rethinking borders through the relationship between politics and aesthetics” (Brambilla, 2015a, p. 27; see also; Dell’Agnese & Amilhat Szary, 2015).…”