City, State, Transnational Space

This chapter takes stock of contemporary migration by breaking with a few myths and by distinguishing between interregional and international migration. It shows how new research paradigms have relativized the importance of the state as the preferred framework for analyzing migration. Demography and sociology have long distinguished between different types of migration according to the administrative and political boundaries crossed: those of the neighborhood, the city, the region, or international borders. The chapter is based on works that put urban scale back at the center of their concerns in order to grasp migration phenomena, in a different perspective from the approach developed more than a century ago by the Chicago school of thought. In connection with transnationalism, the concept of migratory “circulation” seeks to capture the displacements that are characterized by the absence of a single, fixed place of residence. The chapter discusses the survey methods used to understand different sociospatial facets of migratory phenomena.