The internal dynamics of migration processes

The migration literature has identified the various mechanisms explaining why migration processes tend to gain their own momentum and become self-perpetuating partly independent of their original causes and migration policies. In particular the migration-facilitating role of migrant networks has been extensively studied. The current theoretical literature ascribes a pivotal role to networks in explaining the diffusion of migration access within communities and the relatively autonomous continuation of migration. However, current theories on the internal dynamics of migration processes are haunted by three fundamental weaknesses. First, by focusing on the role of social capital in the form of migrant networks in endogenously perpetuating migration processes, they tend to underexpose other internal dynamics of migration processes, and in particular contextual feedback mechanisms at the sending and receiving side. Second, they are unable to explain why these network effects do not always occur, as testified by the much-ignored fact that many initial migration moves do not unleash processes of chain migration. Third, the central argument of conventional migration network theories is largely circular, according to which migration goes on ad infinitum, assuming a naïve linearity of causality between the growth of migrant communities and (positive) network externalities. They give surprisingly little, if any, systematic insight in the internal mechanisms that counteract the tendencies that lead to increasing migration through networks and which may lead to the weakening of migrant systems over time. This paper aims to outline the contours of a theoretical framework on the internal social, cultural and economic dynamics of migration processes. While systematically distinguishing endogenous (network) and contextual (sending and receiving communities) dynamics, the paper syntheses disparate insights and concepts derived from the sociological, anthropological, economic and geographical migration literature, and applies insights drawn from the critical social capital literature to migration theory. This synthesis enables an improved understanding of the heterogeneous nature of migration diffusion processes across different social, cultural and economic settings; and inevitably leads to a critical discussion of the fundamentally mixed blessings of social capital in migration processes. The paper concludes by outlining the internal endogenous and contextual internal migration dynamics that tend to create exclusionary mechanisms, increasing selection, negative network externalities and, eventually, the disintegration of migration networks and migration systems.