Project description
Controlling, classifying, and selecting mobile populations in the era of neoliberalism
In a world of massive inequalities between nations, and where citizenship at birth is the biggest determining factor of anyone's life chances, migration and international mobility are often seen as dramatic mechanisms of change. Yet strict borders and hierarchies between nations persist. Funded by the European Research Council, the MIGMOBS project will investigate how and why global inequalities are reproduced through the shifting classification of mobile populations. Building a database of studies across 21 sending and receiving countries, the project will chart how nations have preserved power through the era of neoliberalism by selectively opening and closing channels of mobility; making immigration and asylum the obsessive targets of sovereign control while rendering invisible and fluid the mass mobilities of tourism, students, business, and commuter travel.
Objective
MIGMOBS investigates how borders and hierarchies are maintained between “the West and the Rest”, even as those who are internationally mobile sometimes succeed in challenging the “birthright lottery” - i.e. that citizenship at birth most determines someone’s chances in life. It asks: How does changing categorisation of subordinate populations worldwide in terms of “migration”, “free movement”, and “minorities” relate to these in- and between- country inequalities? It echoes critical migration, mobilities and borders scholars who argue that late capitalism in liberal democracies continues to advance through an ever more sophisticated differentiation and management of population – at the border as well as internal to states. Such work, though, has not adequately examined variation regionally, or across historical shifts in political economy: from post-war liberalism, through neoliberalism, to the era of COVID and beyond. MIGMOBS thus explores in unprecedented empirical breadth and detail how states reproduce sovereign power in an otherwise porous world: selecting and extracting wanted or recognised movers as “immigrants”, brutally excluding many other “migrants”, while simultaneously rendering fluid and untroubling a vast range of banal “mobilities” such as tourism and business travel. Mapping physical, virtual and non-human mobilities, the project details demographic and social connections over time between 21 states. This quantitative comparative historical work underpins co-productive ethnographic case studies rethinking a range of archetypal “migration systems” in and from Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. These investigate how subordinate populations resist the categories, statuses and borders imposed upon them. With the pandemic’s impact on border crossings and transactions, new modes of classification and accreditation suggest an increasingly precise biometric control of movement and behaviour: a new phase of late capitalism I call “viral liberalism”.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2022-ADG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
T12 YN60 Cork
Ireland
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