Axis 1. Migrations and migrants in the contemporary era: patterns of mobility and the place of migrants in the globalised economy

The research conducted within this axis examines the social rationale governing the forms of mobility that characterise the contemporary period. This research endeavours to account for, in each case, the historical, economic, social or political conditions that generate the displacement of people. It also aims to describe: the social characteristics of the emigrants- those that “leave”; the formal and informal networks that guide their mobility; the evolution of the migratory plans; the representations and social ties (of solidarity, exploitation, dependence) which accompany this mobility; along with the forms of socialisation that stem from the displacements, including the production and transmission of migratory know-how, the creation of social ties specific to the international networks, the development of new associative forms and the transformation of familial and gender relations. Although public immigration debates focus on these new migrants in the framework of border control problems, they are in fact economic actors whose role in the globalised economic context is subject for examination. The enlarged European Union is a fertile site for investigation into the ongoing transformations. Comparative studies, in a comparative European framework, relate these new forms of international labour movements with the substantial transformations in the organisation of labour in the European societies crossed. These studies aim to understand how the social dynamics of international mobility and the new forms of labour, generated by the deregulation of salaried work, interact to modulate the positions and the statuses of the migrants in the European labour markets and to generate new migratory categories (such as “clandestine”).