‘In‐betweeners’ in turbulent times: Migrants in the epicentre of diverse ‘crises’ in the Americas and Europe

This Special Issue (SI) brings together a selection of articles connected by the interplay of two main concepts or ideas. The first one refers to the fact that we are living through increasingly unstable and challenging times, defined by a succession of ‘turbulences’ that are often characterized as overlapping and interconnected ‘crises’ – a so-called era of ‘polycrisis’ with implications in multiple domains (Henig & Knight, 2023). In this global context, diverse phenomena interpreted as crises can bring about or impede migration, trigger the implementation of certain policies, and have an impact on migrant experiences and strategies. Existing work has focused on the links between migration and global crises, for instance, in response to the impact of the 2008 Great Recession (see Tilly, 2011, for an international perspective; Lafleur & Stanek, 2017, for the European context; Sassone & Yépez del Castillo, 2014, regarding migration between Latin America and Europe). However, the situation has evolved since as other turbulences occurred, including the 2015 ‘refugee crisis,’ the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Venezuelan humanitarian and migration ‘crisis.’ Aware that turbulences are not a new phenomenon at the international level but a key concept in assessing major transformations (Rosenau, 1990), our SI highlights the speed and broad repercussions of recent changes in which people on the move appear in a central position. The second concept relates to the figurative notion of migrants as ‘in-betweeners’ – i.e. occupying intermediate or diffuse positions not just in space and time (Crawley & Jones, 2021; Gius, 2021) but also in terms of migration categories, political practices, mobility strategies, and family relations. The articles in this SI explore how migrants as in-betweeners often find themselves at the epicentre of turbulent scenarios, portrayed alternatively as threats, victims, scapegoats, or agents. In this respect, our main goal is to investigate the (re)definition of migrants' positions and roles in such scenarios and how their strategies intersect with policy frameworks. To do so, we focus on the intersections between policy and agency at local, national, regional, and transnational realms, thus bringing in a diversity of relevant units and levels of analysis in the understanding of the global context (Panizzon & van Riemsdijk, 2019). Moreover, the articles encompass case studies from two world regions that are rarely analysed together in the migration literature: Europe and the Americas − including North and South America (exceptions include Aysa-Lastra & Cachón, 2015; Margheritis, 2018; Sassone & Yépez del Castillo, 2014). Although this SI per se is not comparative, we attempt to generate a cross-regional dialogue and invite comparisons between the two regions, and further afield. Our SI is indeed the result of a muti-year interdisciplinary collaboration guided by such goal.i The following sections explain in depth the theoretical and conceptual rationale of the SI, setting it in connection to the existent literature and highlighting the main contributions of the individual articles. The articles here investigate the diverse ways in which lived experiences, public discourses, social practices, and policies define the image and roles of people on the move during diverse crises. Scholars in the Global North and South have addressed the emergence of migration and crises from various angles. Whitin the former, for instance, some studies highlight the impact of crises on the framing of policy alternatives that are proposed as responses, providing a helpful baseline for conceptualization (McAdam, 2013; Scholten & Van Nispen, 2015). Others alert us about the disjuncture between analytical and policy categories and the lived experiences of people on the move (Crawley & Skleparis, 2018). Analyses of international migration in the context of crises also tend to build on case studies and state-level variables (Lindley, 2014) or focus on global governance approaches (Martín Díaz & Aris Escarcena, 2019). These works, largely revolving around immigration and refugee concerns, do not always account for the new open-ended mobilities connecting unstable contexts or the growing precarization of migrant statuses and lives, especially in connection to migration between (and within) Europe and the Americas (exceptions include Aysa-Lastra & Cachón, 2015; Bermudez & Oso, 2020; Lafleur & Stanek, 2017; Padilla et al., 2016). Regarding perspectives from the Global South, Latin American scholarship on migration and crises has addressed this largely at the national level in response to several economic, political, or social crises (e.g. Jokish & Pribilsky, 2002; Pellegrino, 2002). Some of the latest studies reflect that the entire region currently struggles with long-standing and recent interconnected challenges, including refugee flows, mass emigration, intra-regional mobilities and return migration (Bengochea & Pellegrino, 2023; Herrera & Gómez Martínez, 2022). Yet, most empirical studies revolve around the national and local levels of analysis. Works on the challenges posed by the recent massive displacement of Venezuelans in the region are a case in point (e.g. Gandini et al., 2020). Except for a few works (e.g. Geddes et al., 2019; Margheritis, 2018; McIlwaine, 2011; Sassone & Yépez del Castillo, 2014), studies integrating cross-regional analyses between the Americas and Europe are very scarce. The articles in the SI seek to go beyond some of these limitations. They all assume that migration today is generally taking place in the context of high instability or unsettling turbulences, leading to fluid (im)mobilities and representing a major challenge regionally and globally. This might affect especially those mobilities that are more prone to vulnerability, such as ‘irregular migration’ or refugee flows, which are the focus of several articles in the SI, but also flows that are regarded as more privileged, as the texts by Bermudez and Roca, and Escrivá, Bermúdez Figueroa and Minguela show in the case of intra-European Union (EU) mobilities. We also problematize the taken-for-granted notion of crisis by focusing, at the empirical level, on diverse turbulences shaping migration flows, policies, and migrant experiences in the two continents. These include the so-called Great Recession, the political-economic-humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, the volatile migration and refugee contexts in Europe and the USA, as well as other social impacts of neoliberalism and the COVID-19 pandemic. Our articles seek to go beyond the idea of crisis as a sudden, external shock that alters a “stable and functioning system” to acknowledge “the diverse forces and agencies that produce what comes to be understood as crisis over long spans of time” (Dowler, 2020). Moreover, we argue that global instability and increasing uncertainty are very much context-dependent, with geography − or space, at various scales (Glick Schiller & Çağlar, 2011) − playing a key role. Accordingly, bringing together insights from two world regions is a starting point in the quest for plausible and empirically grounded explanations. In this respect, the article by Margheritis on migration governance evolution in South America serves as a conceptual anchor for the rest of the SI. She uses the concept of ‘nested crisis’ to underline that the Venezuelan ‘migration crisis’ in South America is better understood as “embedded in a larger context characterised by diverse, interrelated critical conditions/junctures.” The proposed concept highlights the relevance of not only analysing the policy choices and constraints that mark migration governance transformation in crisis-prone contexts, but also fostering cross-regional discussions. From a European perspective, the text by Bermudez and Roca applies the notion of ‘intersecting crises’ to elaborate on how events ranging from the Great Recession to the recent pandemic have impacted the (im)mobility strategies of intra-EU Spanish migrants, generating both new vulnerabilities and opportunities. The articles by Aris Escarcena, Filippi, and Anderlini contextualize different types of irregular migration in Southern Europe within wider displacement trends caused by recent conflicts. They show that these developments have triggered constant policy reformulations and contestation about the ways in which migration should be managed. Other contributions to the SI frame specific events and experiences at the local level within wider processes. These discuss, for instance, the housing crisis affecting Peruvian migrants in Buenos Aires as part of historic gentrification pressures (Cuberos-Gallardo); mutual aid responses to COVID-19 from migrant groups in New York as potential stepping stones towards structural transformations (Délano Alonso and Daria Samway), and the production of ‘fitful circulations’ in Sicily as the result of experiments in border control that are the consequence of the interaction between (g)local markets and migrant agency (Anderlini). In addition, the text by Herrera, Carrillo Espinosa and Lara Reyes on Ecuadorian migrants in Europe during the pandemic, provides a broader approach to understanding the different meanings of crises for transnational migrants. The notion of migrants as ‘in-betweeners’ in turbulent times works here also as a central image that all the contributions in the SI evoke, albeit in different ways. Overall, this notion highlights that migration has an intrinsic element of transition between a place of origin and one or more destinations and between moments in time in a migration trajectory, as movement situates people in intermediate positions or in-between spaces and points in time. For authors like as Crawley and Jones (2021), the idea of in-betweeners helps understand better migrants' material and symbolic journeys, rather than focusing on linear narratives between ‘origin’ and ‘final destination.’ For others, like Gius (2021), being in-between may refer to different time-based migration flows within the same community (e.g., Italian migrants in Toronto). However, our SI goes beyond these meanings to consider more broadly the many ways in which migrants are sometimes positioned or feel as in-between, especially in turbulent contexts. Growing and increasingly diverse flows, the politicization and securitization of migration, and the rise of nationalist ideologies, among other global trends, are recasting the figure of the migrant amidst diverse crises increasingly in dichotomist terms either as victims or villains (e.g., Herrera & Sørensen, 2017; Hintjens, 2019; Padilla & Goldberg, 2017). We argue that by being in-between ‘here’ and ‘there’ in turbulent contexts, migrants occupy not simply a physical but also a symbolic intermediate position, thereby becoming a pivotal (and often instrumental) element within multiple crises. While their role has been traditionally defined in reference to formal arrangements or legal frameworks, as in national citizenship regimes and international refugee norms, our SI zooms instead on the fluid and malleable category of in-betweeners to expose context-specific redefinitions of migrants' position and roles. Analysing migrant experiences and migration policies as embedded in critical junctures and protracted crises allows us to better capture the nuances, complexity, and tensions in the interplay of migrant agency and institutional processes. The articles in the SI thus revisit and explore empirically agent-structure dynamics by focusing on the various ways in which migrants find themselves in-between at the epicentre of diverse crises. In relation to this, we critically examine how migration discourses are politically constructed and migrant statuses and roles are (re)negotiated in the public and private spheres, offering empirical evidence and novel insights into debates about the politicization and securitization of migration under conditions of high volatility. In this respect, the articles by Martín-Díaz and Castellani, and Délano Alonso and Samway examine case studies in Spain and the USA, respectively, showing how the political strategies of the ‘subaltern’ evolved during the pandemic and its aftermath. The former analyses how the pandemic led vulnerable migrant women in Spain, many of them from Latin America, to develop digital political responses based on ‘creative bricolage’ that represented new responses to longer-standing struggles for full legal, labour, and social rights. The latter places collective strategies from migrant grassroot groups in New York amid government responses to ‘temporary’ turbulences and long-term policy frameworks. Aris Escarcena's contribution on the so-called campization of migrants and refugees in Europe also argues that the pandemic exposed not only the limitations and controls imposed by camps, but also their potential as sites of resistance and new political projects. Also, Cuberos-Gallardo's situates Peruvian families' strategies against residential expulsion from Abasto (Buenos Aires) in an ambivalent position as insiders (part of the local community)/outsiders (not nationals). By focusing on Spanish migrant families in other EU countries and the childcare decisions of dual-career couples, Escriva, Bermúdez Figueroa and Minguela's piece reveals the fragility of European care and welfare regimes and illustrates the persistence of gender norms that place women in a more vulnerable situation. As such, our SI goes beyond macro policy analyses, problematizing the intersection of public and private domains. By doing so we also interrogate processes of labelling and defining people on the move as migrants, mobile citizens, refugees, diasporas, etc., as well as current discussions of so-called ‘mixed flows’ (see Ghosh, 2018, among others). Filippi's contribution, for example, argues that the city of Rome has become a transit crossroads for “lifelong in-betweeners” or orbiters, a term that illustrates different mobility and policy situations since the 2015 ‘migrant and refugee crisis’ and the situation of those without a definite migration or citizen status. A final contribution of the SI relates to the geographic and analytical scope of investigation. While trade, finance, cultural, and population flows have historically linked Europe and the Americas, human mobility across the Atlantic received less attention than the circulation of other factors. The type, direction, and magnitude of cross-regional flows have changed over the centuries, prompting new approaches to rapidly changing demographic and migration trends. Both regions have transitioned from emigration to immigration, and vice versa, and many countries currently experience incoming and outgoing flows that include a growing diversity of migrant profiles (Margheritis, 2018). Furthermore, in these two geographical spaces, migration flows have proven to be rapid changing phenomena that call for timely interventions in sync with responses to unexpected instability. Yet, these regions are rarely apprehended as interconnected; compartmentalized perspectives preclude cross-regional fertilization. Hence, our SI looks at both continents under a common framework to shed light not only on the empirics of migrants being at the epicentre of crises but also on the lenses we use to understand this. Our goal is to encourage a cross-regional dialogue based on both migrant-based and policy/institutionally driven issues. We aim to illustrate how top-down and bottom-up dynamics intersect and influence each other. However, a caveat is in order: we do neither attempt to cover both regions equally, nor address all relevant intra- and inter-regional issues in a comprehensive fashion. The unintended unbalanced distribution reflects the bias in existing literatures within migration studies, within which an overwhelming number of academic works focus on Europe. It is indeed in the European experience that the notion of migration crisis has been ingrained in most studies for decades, thus paving the way to arguments about the emergence of a ‘crisis mode of governance’ (Sahin-Mencutek et al., 2022). In contrast, in the Americas, the migration crisis is either rarely mentioned in the North American-dominant debate on immigration policy, or relatively new in the South American context (Margheritis & Pedroza, 2022). By including case studies from Europe and both North and South America, we also open up an opportunity to identify lessons across regions/sub-regions and avoid the traditional bias of focusing only on North-to-South learning. Thus, what we offer here is various entry points to the main themes of the SI that help elaborate the proposed concepts and arguments at different levels of analysis. We aim at broadening the analytical focus beyond the nation-state and a single region. Eight out of 10 articles apply levels of analysis above or below the nation-state and/or dynamics between them. Thus, some of the contributions offer a more macro or inter-regional perspective, like Margheritis' on South America's response to the Venezuelan migration crisis and policy lessons beyond. Others, focus on the European or Southern-European context to analyse the interconnections between specific crises and transformations in intra-EU mobilities (Bermudez & Roca; Escriva, Bermúdez Figueroa & Minguela), or changes in migration and asylum policy (Aris Escarcena). While the text by Herrera, Carrillo Espinosa and Lara-Reyes uses a transnational approach to understand care and emotional responses to the pandemic based on migrants' in-between (origin and destination) understandings of crises and their own positions. Except for Martín-Díaz and Castellani, which focuses on the national level (albeit from a broader, virtual social media perspective), the rest of the articles link the local level of analysis with broader national, regional and global processes, looking at migrants and their strategies vis-à-vis capitalist pressures (Cuberos-Gallardo) and policy transformations (or lack of them) in increasingly hostile environments both in Europe (Anderlini; Filippi) and the Americas (Délano Alonso & it is around the level of analysis that we have the of the articles. In this SI a timely contribution to current debates in and among on transformations in migration flows, migrant experiences, and migration and refugee policy within and across Europe and the geographical and analytical between these two regions, the different articles us to move between the macro and the levels of analysis diverse crises, and the interplay between governance and agency in local, national, or intra-regional contexts. 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