Class 10:

who counts as a migrant?

The term is not static—it depends on context, definitions, and classifications that can shift over time and across institutions. Statistically, a migrant is often defined as someone who moves from one country to another for at least one year, but this overlooks short-term, circular, or undocumented migrations. Labels such as expat, refugee, asylum seeker, or economic migrant reflect hierarchies of value and legitimacy, often tied to race, class, and geopolitical context.

what affects migration statistics

Migration statistics often underrepresent irregular migrants or people in transit. The direction of migration (e.g., from Global South to Global North) and generational status (first vs. second generation) also affect how migrants are categorized and perceived. Media attention can amplify certain migration issues while obscuring the broader reality that only around 3.5% of the world’s population are international migrants—a figure that has remained relatively stable.

Children of migrants often exist in a grey zone: they may be legally native-born but socially still labeled as 'migrants', especially if they are racialized or culturally marked as 'other'.

migration theories: functional paradigm

The functionalist paradigm, especially prominent in the 1920s, views migration as a balancing mechanism that responds to inequalities between regions. It is grounded in the idea of push and pull factors: people are pushed from areas due to problems like poverty or conflict and pulled toward others due to opportunities like jobs or safety. Migration continues until an equilibrium is reached.

This model is linked to neoclassical microeconomic theory, where individuals make migration decisions based on wage differences and a cost-benefit analysis. However, it assumes that everyone has equal access to information and mobility, which is often not the case. With the rise of the internet, this assumption may shift—but structural barriers still shape who can act on that information.

migration theories: historical structural paradigm

The historical-structural paradigm explains migration through economic and political structures that reproduce global inequality, drawing on Marxist theory. It argues that migration is shaped by systems like colonialism, capitalism, and neocolonial global relations, as seen in world-systems theory, which divides the world into a core and periphery.

One key explanation is the dual labour market theory, which suggests that migrants are drawn to countries not because of personal choice but because certain jobs—especially low-paid or insecure ones—are refused by native workers. This framework critiques simplistic models like push-pull theory, but it also faces criticism for treating migrants as passive victims, and for failing to explain diverse and complex migration patterns today.

migration theories: mesh level/ internal dynamics theories

Meso-level theories shift the focus from large structures to individuals, households, and social networks. Drawing on symbolic interactionism, they emphasize how people make meaning of migration within their social environments.

One example is the new economics of labour migration, which sees migration not just as an individual's decision, but as a household strategy to manage risks and income.

Migrant network theory explains how existing ties—family, friends, or community members—shape where people choose to migrate. It raises questions like: which social ties matter most in migration?

Another approach is connected migration, which highlights how migrants remain linked to their families and communities even after moving. These theories recognize agency and social context, but also involve assumptions—like the stability of networks or the reliability of household cooperation.

new migration paradigm

Most classic migration theories—from functionalist to historical-structural—were developed between the 1920s and 2000s. While useful, they don’t fully explain today’s realities like globalisation, internal displacement, and climate-driven migration.

Older theories often focus on single aspects—like wages or colonial history—creating fragmented views. Scholars now call for new, more holistic frameworks that consider how economics, politics, race, and environment intersect in shaping migration.

The key question: Whose perspective are we using to define migration today?

integration/assimilation theory

Migration is often followed by integration, but how we understand that process has shifted over time:

• 1920s – Classical assimilation: Migrants were expected to "melt" into the dominant culture. This placed the burden of change solely on them.

• 1980s–90s – Differentialist turn: Focus shifted to recognizing and celebrating diversity, not just erasing it.

• 1990s–2000s – Segmented and new assimilation theories: Added race and class into the analysis, showing that integration paths differ based on these factors.

• 2007 onward – Cultural integration and superdiversity: Emphasises complex and diverse migration patterns shaped by globalisation—e.g., migrants commuting between countries or settling permanently in new forms. Introduces critical multiculturalism, which questions whose culture is dominant and how structural inequalities affect integration (e.g., in education).

drivers of inequality

Several overlapping forces shape and reinforce global and local inequalities:

• Patriarchy: Unequal gender norms and power structures.

• Colonial history: Long-term impacts of exploitation, domination, and the shaping of global hierarchies.

• Racialised identities: Social categories tied to race still structure access to resources and status.

• Globalisation: Expands inequality by benefiting some regions, groups, or classes more than others.

• Neoliberalism / Racial capitalism: Market-driven systems that deepen class and racial inequalities.

• Language: Can create barriers to participation and inclusion (e.g. in education, work, law).

• Global politics: Power imbalances between countries, often reflected in the Global North/South divide.

These drivers are interconnected, shaping how inequality is produced and maintained today.

early childhood care and education of migrant and refugee families

Childhood is marked by deep inequalities, and these disparities often begin well before formal schooling. For migrant and refugee families, early childhood education and care (ECEC)—covering the years from birth to age 7—is a key space where inequality is both produced and potentially challenged. ECEC, a term often shaped by neoliberal discourse, typically focuses on delivering care and educational preparation prior to primary school. However, access to such services for migrant and refugee children remains uneven and shaped by broader social, political, and economic exclusions.

Access and question of school readiness

Access to ECEC is often treated as a sufficient condition for inclusion, but this framing raises critical questions. Who defines what counts as ‘success’? Dominant research and policy approaches often set narrow criteria, such as language acquisition or developmental benchmarks, which reduce children’s experiences to transactional outputs. School readiness becomes a tool to prepare children for productivity within a system that was not built for their realities. Migrant children are frequently portrayed as struggling or lacking, without sufficient interrogation of the systems themselves.

Moreover, most of the world's children have their experiences interpreted through Northern academic frameworks, which flatten diversity and create competitive comparisons. This not only reinforces inequality among migrant children but also applies a reductive lens to all children, privileging Eurocentric developmental models over other forms of knowledge and experience.

Southern and anti- colonial childhoods

Challenging the dominance of Eurocentric childhood models requires a turn toward Southern and anti-colonial perspectives. These approaches center alternative epistemologies and lived experiences, making space for other narratives of childhood that go beyond developmental checklists. They ask: what kinds of knowledge are valued, and whose voices are heard in shaping ECEC systems? Reclaiming these narratives means recognizing and legitimizing diverse ways of being and learning from early on.

who gets to teach?

Representation within ECEC staff also matters. The workforce remains deeply shaped by gendered, racialised, and classed hierarchies, and these dynamics are mirrored in the classroom. A lack of diversity among educators affects how children experience care and education, and reinforces singular views of childhood. Acknowledging this multiplicity of realities means rethinking not only who teaches but also how care and knowledge are recognized and distributed.

access- but for whose benefit?

Even when access is expanded, critical questions remain: What are children being accessed into? Efforts to balance gender among staff, for example, can become performative gestures rather than signs of systemic change. Moreover, binary categorizations in research and policy often overlook those who don’t fit neatly into existing categories. Access, in this sense, must be interrogated not only in terms of availability, but in terms of intent, outcome, and relational impact.

what does research miss?

Current research tends to focus on individual mothers rather than institutional responsibilities, creating a skewed narrative. It often highlights what families "lack" rather than what they bring. Forms of refusal, resistance, and repairare overlooked, as is the possibility that some families choose not to engage with formal ECEC structures. Community-based models of care are frequently undervalued or ignored, even though they may offer more culturally grounded and effective support.

Can we decolonise ECEC?

A decolonial vision of ECEC would centre futures without assimilation. This means viewing equality not as uniformity but as mutual respect for different ways of caring, learning, and growing. Decolonization here involves building community-rooted care models and integrating families and diverse knowledges into the design of curricula and daily practices. It's not just about access, but about reimagining what ECEC could look like from the ground up.

building a vision together

While critique is necessary, we must also move beyond criticism to collectively imagine new futures. This involves co-creating systems with families, educators, and children that celebrate pluralism, value different epistemologies, and support a truly inclusive vision of early childhood education and care.