ABSTRACT
International migration is an inherently political phenomenon. In leaving home, the migrants vote with their feet, against the home state and for the receiving state, preferring a state with the resources needed to provide public goods and make markets work over one that can’t. In so doing, the migrants also do what neither state wants: their departures/entries illuminate problems of state capacity on both sides of the chain, highlighting the home state’s inability to retain its people while underscoring the receiving state’s inability to control its borders to the extent that the populace wants. Once across the border, migrants simultaneously become foreigners in the country where they live while becoming foreign to the country from which they came. Consequently, international migration always raises the question of the migrants’ attachment to body politics newly encountered as well as left behind. Unfortunately, there is no carefully specified perspective for understanding how these twin
attachments are made, transformed, or cut off. Despite growing interest, politics remains an underdeveloped topic in migration studies, whether the concern has to do with receiving society immigrant politics or sending society emigrant politics. As we will show in the next section, this lacuna derives from prevailing intellectual biases, whether having to do with those that focus on individual action or those that emphasize social processes. We will then identify central issues entailed in the study of migrant politics-whether home or host country orientedreviewing and assessing the ways in which scholars have tackled this problem.
