RT Journal Article
T1 The Mediterranean Sea as a border: difficulties surrounding the concept of migration.
T2 El Mediterráneo como frontera: dificultades que envuelven al concepto de migración.
A1 Fajardo Fernández, Rocío
A1 Soriano Miras, Rosa María
K1 Emigración e inmigración - Mediterráneo
AB The main purpose of the present article is to face some difficulties that arise fromresearching the so called “irregular migration”. Focusing on the southern border ofEurope and the Mediterranean Sea, we capture some troubles and reflections based onother research projects carried out by ourselves and by others. We previously did someconceptual work based on the ideas of migration and border and how these are related toother categories, such as citizenship. Here, we make an exercise of reflection into thesociological field. To this end, we utilise some theoretical tools such as deconstruction,bibliographic review and conceptual analysis. We show and compare several conceptsand definitions of the theoretical subject, taking into account its empirical counterpart.We analyse different ways of understanding migration and its dimensions, delvingdeeper into their weaknesses and strengths. Due to the importance of borders in thestudy of migration, their dimensions are analysed too. We point out some structuralcontradictions in borders, both empirical and discursive. We conclude that the best wayto refer to our object of study is talking about candidates to migration because there is aselection made through a process of bordering. As social researchers, we are presentedwith the challenge to build the right analytical categories in order to control theirperformativity, and this category is the one that we think better fits our object amongthose we have analysed. Also, it has some inertia beyond our work. Contradictions alsoarise when trying to define the different situations that people who (try to) migrate comeacross, but we do so with the aim of highlighting the extreme situations that arereproduced systematically, as part of a wider structure
PB Centro de Estudios de las Migraciones y las Relaciones Interculturales
YR 2017
FD 2017
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10630/32947
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10630/32947
LA eng
DS RIUMA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga
RD 20 ene 2026