Migration risk and uncertainty: Theoretical perspectives
Allan Williams, Working Lives Research Institute, and Institute for the Study of European Transformations London Metropolitan University
Wednesday June 3rd, 12.45 - 2.00pm
The Function Room (JS1-41)
London Metropolitan University
31 Jewry Street
London EC3N 2EY
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Risk and uncertainty are prevalent in academic, policy and popular discourses relating to migration. Migration is seen as informed by risk and uncertainty, and to generate or ameliorate risks and uncertainty, whether for migrants, non-migrants in the sending communities, or populations in destination countries. Risk and uncertainty are pervasive, although to different degrees, in all forms of migration - whether as refugees, asylum seeking, regular or irregular migration - and at different stages of the migration cycle. Yet, there is little explicit theorisation of risk in migration studies, a research gap that is addressed in this seminar.
First, there is a need to note the distinction between uncertainty and risk. Secondly, the paper emphasises that risk has been theorised from diverse disciplinary viewpoints - including economics, psychology and sociology - which ask very different questions about the nature of risk. These theories are differentiated in several ways, but especially in terms of the extent to which they understand risks and uncertainty to be real or socially constructed, whether they stress individualism or collectivism, and whether they emphasise migration as risk generating or individuals and societies as being at risk. The paper concludes that a deeper theoretical understanding of risk will enhance both our attempts to understand the causes, nature and consequences of migration, and the formation of migration policies.
Allan Williams is Professor of European Integration and Globalization, Working Lives Research Institute, and Institute for the Study of European Transformations, London Metropolitan University. Allan’s central research interests are the relationships between economic development and mobility. He is particularly interested in international labour migration and return migration, cross-border mobility, and tourism. The substantive focus of this research includes economic transactions, employment, skills and knowledge transfers. He has undertaken research in a number of European countries, but especially in Central Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and the UK.
