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# Editorial

Éditorial

Editorial

## Véronique Petit

Translator: Katherine Booth and Alexandra Poméon O'Neill

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OpenEdition
Journals

**Electronic version**

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/remi/14262

DOI: 10.4000/remi.14262

ISSN: 1777-5418

**This article is a translation of:**

Éditorial - URL : https://journals.openedition.org/remi/8168 [fr]

**Publisher**

Université de Poitiers

**Printed version**

Date of publication: December 1, 2016

ISBN: 979-10-90426-29-0

ISSN: 0765-0752

**Electronic reference**

Véronique Petit, "Editorial", *Revue européenne des migrations internationales* [Online], vol. 32 - n°3 et 4 | 2016, Online since 17 September 2020, connection on 03 July 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/remi/14262; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/remi.14262

This text was automatically generated on July 3, 2024.

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are
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# Editorial

Éditorial

Editorial

Véronique Petit

Translation : Katherine Booth and Alexandra Poméon O'Neill

1 It is already thirty years since the *Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales* [European Journal of International Migration - REMI] was first launched. The missions and objectives set by the founding members of the journal have not fundamentally changed: the *REMI*'s vocation remains as a "specialised multidisciplinary publication, regularly disseminating in French the results of research on international migration", in order to address "the dispersion of French-speaking scientific production across social science journals, which makes it particularly difficult to keep track of work in progress and hinders the development of basic research on the topic. This situation is all the more regrettable given that, as the public and socio-political debate developing in France and in several European countries becomes tougher [...] there is a greater demand for more extensive information, a more comparative approach, and more sustained theoretical reflection on the part of researchers¹". As a result of the intensification and increasing complexity of migratory flows and their consequences, the hardening of migration policies and crisis situations, the French and European socio-political contexts call for researchers from all disciplines to continually deepen and compare their research, to open up new fields, to disseminate the results in ever-wider circles in order to deconstruct prejudices, fears and fantasies about migration and migrants.

2 In parallel to the international socio-political context, the *REMI* evolves in an institutional and economic environment to which it must adapt while remaining faithful to its editorial line and the humanist values it cherishes. The *REMI*'s members, like those of other social and human science journals, sometimes question the meaning of their investment: for whom are they ultimately carrying out this editorial work? What is the real utility of their journal? How does it contribute to fundamental debates in society? While these questions are of central importance, it must be recognised that the time devoted to them on editorial boards is shrinking, because of the need to
"manage", "produce", and "publish" the next issue, respond to authors who are ever more eager to have their work published in order to satisfy evaluation procedures that determine the progress of their careers, adapt the journal to the constraints of the new digital order, secure its funding, and allow it to evolve. While there is no lack of ideas, projects and determination to improve the quality of the REMI, achieving these objectives depends on our ability to mobilise the human and financial resources at our disposal and to acquire new ones.

3

While a journal is above all an editorial project linked to a collective of individuals, it is also a production unit with technical, material, institutional and financial constraints. It is a story of legacies and transfers, a guiding thread around which friendships and discussions are forged. It is an operating model that each journal shapes according to its history, its values, its purpose and the way it represents itself. At its most recent meeting, the REMI's editorial board decided to dissolve its steering committee in order to increase genuine democratic operation. Thirty years also means that the generation that created and sustained the life of the journal are gradually turning a page, each at their own pace according to their professional and personal lives (Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux, Yves Charbit, Hervé Domenach, Michèle Guillon, Marie-Antoinette Hily, André Lebon, Ralph Schor, Gildas Simon). Some of them were responsible for leadership of the journal as well as overseeing difficult technological developments. With the transition to a fully digital environment on the horizon, their experience is an asset. We hope that they find in these pages the expression of the recognition of the younger generations to whom they pass on a beautiful object.

4

The University of Poitiers is the publisher of the journal. It should also be underlined that the REMI's full-time staff is made up of one individual, our editor, Audrey Brosset, who is a staff member of the University of Poitiers. This position and its funding are essential to the economy and operation of the journal, as is the contribution of the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société de Poitiers, which provides offices, storage space, computer and accounting assistance to our journal. The journal maintains its financial equilibrium through sales proceeds and a grant from the CNRS [Centre national de la recherche scientifique - French National Centre for Scientific Research], but the search for additional funding is becoming crucial. We would like to thank these institutions. Since its twentieth anniversary, from a formal point of view, the REMI has changed its cover, modified its layout with the introduction of colour, photographs and improved presentation of maps, tables and graphs. The REMI went from three issues to four in the form of a double issue. It has also initiated a procedure for indexing the journal in order to respond to the increasingly frequent requests from authors subject to the requirements of their institutions and their disciplines, particularly those outside the social sciences or working in the English-speaking world, and to the increasingly competitive context of international research. At the same time, we have also chosen to open our pages more extensively to the publication of articles in English and Spanish, and to revive the legal and statistical columns that had been abandoned over time. They refer to two essential areas of research on migration that should be part of our publication.

5

The members of the editorial board, the journal's management, correspondents, external reviewers, give their time as researchers or lecturers. This involvement is summed up in a single line on their curriculum vitae and the journal's masthead. This is a reductive summary of their activity, given the extent to which the cost, the duration
and the importance of the editorial work remain underestimated and insufficiently
recognized by the institutions in charge of evaluating these scientists. Publishing
implies fully committing oneself to the promotion of the scientific work of others, to
giving back to civil society that which it has helped to finance, to the dissemination of
knowledge and to enriching debates. These questions are taken up in the interviews
conducted by Marie-Antoinette Hily with Sylvain Bourmeau, André Chabin, Vincent
Citot and Olivier Mongin, and grouped together under the title "The journals and their
times". As a counterpoint to these exchanges, the reader will find at the end of this
anniversary issue, the friendly, Quebecois viewpoint of Deirdre Meintel, one of our
oldest correspondents, on the role of the REMI in the career of a French-speaking
researcher.

The legal column in this issue, by Marie-Françoise Valette, provides an analysis of the “Protection and promotion of the social rights of migrants by the European Committee of Social Rights”. The issue of migrants’ rights is crucially, often tragically, raised in an international context deeply marked by the hardening of migration policies and conflict-related crises. Throughout their migratory journey, migrants are confronted with legislation defining their family, social, educational, health and professional living space. Their rights are also discussed and defined with regard to the rights of nationals and the weight they represent in the general population. The production of figures and measurement - the construction of categories and populations, the development of indicators - is therefore of prime importance, as it is directly linked to political considerations.

In their article, Franck Temporal and Chantal Brutel present “The measurement of migratory flows between France and abroad”, setting out the method for estimating migratory flows recently adopted by INSEE [*Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques* - French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Research], aimed at producing emigration statistics which can be used as the basis for international comparisons and which therefore increase the complexity of an examination of France’s migratory situation. These new estimates also make it possible to measure with greater precision the demographic contribution of migration to population growth in France. From now on, and in accordance with the international definition and Eurostat’s recommendations, “outflows include all persons who have left French territory in the course of a year, whether they are French nationals choosing to live abroad or persons of foreign origin returning to their country of origin, for example after a period of study or professional mobility. It can also involve departures of foreigners to another country of emigration²”. Here again, it is clear that while methodological difficulties (plurality of demographic and administrative sources: what exactly are we measuring?) and conceptual difficulties (definitions of migrants, for example) have partly explained the lack of measurement of migratory flows between France and abroad, this lack of knowledge is also linked to the way in which France, a country of immigration before also becoming a country of emigration, perceives itself. Emigration, often perceived in a reductive way through the issue of return or deportations, is thus conceived as one of the consequences of immigration. Emigration is not considered in its full diversity by either political actors or researchers, and therefore constitutes a field of research requiring investment. The analysis of recent figures on migratory flows and balance shows the way in which they enable deconstruction of political simplifications and prejudices. It is a reminder to politicians
and citizens alike that our (e)migrants are (im)migrants elsewhere and that the issue of reception and respect for human rights is universal.

8 While migratory flows pose measurement problems for demographers seeking to quantify them, their graphical representations also raise formal and epistemological difficulties - how to immobilise mobility - for geographers seeking to represent them. A collective of researchers - Lucie Bacon, Olivier Clochard, Thomas Honoré, Nicolas Lambert, Sarah Mekdjian and Philippe Rekacewicz - addresses an issue - the representation of migratory flows and itineraries - which is both long-standing and constantly revisited due to technical developments, epistemological debates, crossovers between scientific and artistic approaches, activist involvement and the toughening of the international migratory context. Mapping migratory flows means taking the risk of freezing a spatial, demographic, political and social dynamic, which is more chaotic than linear, one that is more subject to redirections and bifurcations than to a straightforward path. Using specific examples, the authors deconstruct the risks and dangers inherent in the practice of mapping in a context where the epistemological and methodological choices made by researchers are also ethical acts, since the mapping of migratory flows presents - represents - in a seemingly simple or obvious way complex situations with high political stakes (detention, border control, camps, migrant mortality, etc.). Not all readers and users of migration mapping, and these go beyond the sphere of researchers including geographers, have the same familiarity with cartographic semiology; consequently, drawing an arrow or a line symbolising a border can take on a very political meaning. This article shows the extent to which drawing a map is a creative process in which plural point(s) of view and skills intersect. In this area too, the growing porosity between the worlds of science, arts and activism can contribute to the critique of an ancient but irrevocably topical practice, cartography as a sensitive practice.

9 James F. Hollifield, writing in the tradition of history and political science, offers us a thought-provoking exploration of U.S. migratory policy in a compelling article in view of the current context, “American Immigration Politics: An Unending Controversy”. While statistical data inform the observations, the main interest of this review paper is to place the actors and terms of the debate in a historical and sociological perspective, by examining immigration as a topic of internal political debate, with varying conceptions of the function of immigration coexisting within the American political space. From the outset, the issue of migration has been the subject of political confrontation linked to the process of construction of national identity (tension between the importance of cultural and ideological cohesion and the reality of ethnic diversity), the economic objectives assigned to immigration in an open economic model, the issue of civil rights and the control of illegal immigration. The functions of immigration and the rights granted to immigrants are profoundly revealing of the societal project of this nation since they are linked to questions about identity and race. Looking back over the last few decades, James F. Hollifield examines in detail how immigration has shaped and continues to shape American society. How migrants themselves and their descendants have become actors on the political scene, contributing to changing the nature of debates by entering electoral processes, as witnessed in the recent presidential election. While James F. Hollifield adopts a perspective centred on immigration, Roger Waldinger offers, as a counterpoint, a shift in viewpoint with a reflection on the dynamics of countries of departure and countries of arrival on the one hand and the rationales of the State and those of the migrants on
the other, emphasizing the dualities at the heart of the migratory phenomenon. This article entitled “Politics beyond borders: the political sociology of emigration” provides a general theoretical reflection illustrated by examples bringing a concrete and empirical dimension to this sociological essay.

10

Julien Thorez, through “The rebirth of the ‘Silk Road’”, uses a geopolitical analysis, questioning how (migratory) flows can contribute to structuring a space by linking territories, states, economies and by playing with borders. Deconstructing the emergence and deployment of discourse around the mythical ‘Silk Road’, Julien Thorez questions the representations associated with Central Asia and invites us to reflect on the - neglected - role of international migration in the understanding of Central Asian and Eurasian territories. While the notion of the ‘Silk Road’ would seem antiquated and established, Julien Thorez shows that, while it is vigorously debated and contested by historians, different national and international actors are revisiting in line with the political upheavals in the region and the territorial (re)divisions that they imply. The analysis of this rhetoric highlights the positive vision that it promotes, which values economic and cultural exchanges, conveying the idea of positive globalisation and that of a unified geographical space. The confrontation between these discourses - themselves interwoven in the national narratives of the States involved - and the reality of economic and migratory flows allows us to question the geographic reconfigurations underway in this region. This article also has the merit of calling for an analysis of mobilities and movements in Central Asia, a region that is all too absent from the articles published in the REMI.

11

This anniversary issue is notable for its new cover and, for the last few issues the REMI has been giving more space to photography. Anne Raulin, Sylvaine Conord and William Berthomière propose a dossier bringing together a series of contributions around the topic of “Migration and Metropolises: Photographic Perspectives”. The authors - Anne Raulin, Sylvaine Conord, William Berthomière and Ines Ebilitigué, Alexa Färber, Guillaume Ma Mung, Hélène Veiga Gomes - have experimented with the intersection between photography and ethnographic writings. The introduction reminds us that the use of photography in the field of social sciences is a practice that dates back more than a century, even though technical innovations are modifying its uses and practices. From the very beginning, the aim has been to show, understand, and denounce the living conditions (housing, work) of newcomers, particularly in American society. The sociological viewpoint intersects with the political viewpoint and epistemological and ethical questions rapidly arise: what heuristic value should be attributed to photography? How to freeze a figure or a population through a snapshot without leading to a form of stigmatisation? The contributions presented here focus on five metropolises - Paris, London, Berlin, Lisbon and Tel Aviv - exploring streets, facades, walls and urban landscapes, they offer a reading of urban contexts shaped by migratory and diaspora flows. Photography becomes a powerful tool to reveal these minority presences that catch the researcher-photographer's attention.

12

Houda Kassatly, Nicolas Puig and Michel Tabet extend the reflection on visual anthropology by linking it with sound anthropology. They situate their contribution, entitled “The Sabra market in Beirut, through image and sound. Review of an intensive survey”, in the field of research into interactions in situations of co-presence within contexts marked by cosmopolitanism, the presence of migrant communities and groups in minority situations. They use visual and sound anthropology to “identify the visual
and sound properties of the place and relate the minor social events whose sequences establish a social order which is specific to it³". The authors describe in turn their approach, their pathway, the negotiation of this intense and disjointed terrain and what is revealed by these interactions between researchers and actors on the market, a key place for multiple transactions, about the modes of contact and social relations between African and Asian migrants - Bangladeshi in particular - and Lebanese society. This experimental approach is presented in the process of production, following the classical tradition of anthropology while renewing it by bringing an approach based on sound, offering a new perception and interpretation of this social space.

13

This special anniversary issue is also noteworthy for contributions of a type never
before seen for the *REMI*, in the form of interviews bringing together researchers in
social science and civil society actors. Two interviews raise the question of the
relationship between arts and the migratory experience: how artists present migratory
journeys, the violence of exile, the creation of a new life in a world that contracts and
opens up between rising nationalisms and multicultural demands. Constance De Gourcy
chose to meet Italian director and sociologist Andrea Segre, in view of the significance
of film production on migration issues in immigration countries in Europe, as in North
America. The first black and white films in the United States retraced migrants'
journeys and their initiation into their new life (the Atlantic crossing by boat, arrival at
Ellis Island, passport, settlement, Americanisation), but also the relations between
migrants, between new arrivals and those already settled. The whole migratory
trajectory was taken up by Elia Kazan in his famous film *America, America* in 1963. The
exchanges between Constance De Gourcy and Andrea Segre entitled "Cinema needs the
individual, migrants need cinema to become individuals again" around sociology and
cinema in the field of international migration lead them to question the power of
cinematographic narration and its role in the production of images and accounts
informing representations of our changing societies, particularly under the impulse of
migratory dynamics. What are the political commitments, the ethical choices, the
aesthetic preferences, in short, the intellectual and cinematographic pathway between
films and documentaries by Andrea Segre that enables us to see and think about our
world in the same gesture, with the avowed aim of making it better? For his part,
Marco Martiniello chose to meet Belgian urban artists (singers, musicians, rappers and
slammers) living in Antwerp, Liège and Brussels. Together with Kaer, Gioia Kayaga,
Giacomo Lariccia, David Mendez Yepez, Tutu Puoane and Rival, he discusses the
"migratory crisis" and terrorism. As a sociologist, Marco Martiniello explains his
decision to question artists with specific migration histories and involved in very
different artistic worlds, because of the role they can play in processes of social
mobilisation within our multicultural societies - of which they are an embodiment -
when confronted with crises that call into question their founding values. How do these
artists view their position in Belgium and in Europe? What messages or cries do they
wish to make heard? These interviews pave the way for the *REMI*'s next issue, which
will be on the theme of "Writing, living, thinking in exile", edited by Ralph Schor.

14

These subjective experiences are part of a world in perpetual motion. Monika Salzbrunn and Ludger Pries, in their exchanges on the theoretical, methodological and thematic changes that have taken place in thirty years of social sciences on migration, highlight more specifically the transnational shift, underlining the pluri-local nature of societal relations, networks and practices. Transnationalisation is considered as one of the ideal types of internationalisation and migration processes, extending over and
between spaces, and within which concentric circles of local, micro-regional, national, macro-regional and global phenomena are played out. The current situation of refugees is approached taking into account these different levels of analysis. International migration produces situations of co-presence and multi-culturalism through the inter-ethnic relations that it involves. The sociologists Élodie Grossi and Christian Poiret, for their part, with Magali Bessone (philosopher) and Claude-Olivier Doron (philosopher and historian), revisit the history and use of “race” theories in natural and social sciences in France, the United States and Brazil. They highlight the tensions between a naturalistic definition essentialising race, and social constructivism based on narrative, history and the imagined, but also the way in which the question of epigenetics complicates and invites us to rethink this dual contradiction. They also point out that social sciences have always had to integrate developments in biology and genetics and therefore had to think about their relationship to these sciences. The question underlying these debates for individuals and societies is that of determinism and freedom. They therefore invite social science researchers in France to work further on deconstructing and analysing the contemporary modes of racial categorisation at work, for example, in the political, social and medical spheres.

15

To conclude this itinerary on the representation of immigration, Yann Scioldo-Zürcher, in his paper “Migration in the museum! Are social sciences and museography complementary?”, offers a stroll through some internationally renowned museums in Paris, Hamburg, Berlin and Moscow dedicated to the history of migration and Jewish societies in diaspora. As a historian, he addresses the contribution of social sciences and of his discipline to the presentation of the permanent itineraries of these museums, which are didactic to varying degrees, bearing in mind that those in charge of them have the delicate task of constructing a narrative which takes account of the need to be accessible to a broad audience and the instructions of their trustees under the scrutiny of researchers. Yann Scioldo-Zürcher demonstrates that these presentations erase the complexity of the migratory phenomenon by favouring maps which show flows between points of departure and arrival to the detriment of historical dynamics, accentuating the weight of macro-sociological determinisms in relation to more individualised migratory projects, and presenting the conditions of integration and return rather than the practices linked to circulation.

16

Each issue of the *REMI* is concluded with reading notes and the section on “books received”. Gilles Dubus has been in charge of this section with consistency and conscientiousness since 1993. Among the reading notes, we would like to draw attention to the one on the *Dictionnaire des migrations internationales. Approche géohistorique* (2015), a vast undertaking launched by Gildas Simon, the creator of the *REMI*. It is written by Ralph Schor.

17

Finally, to conclude this editorial, in these times of crisis, violence, withdrawal, but also mobilisation and defence of certain values, it is worth repeating word for word the concluding sentence of the first *REMI* editorial: “Open to all scientifically substantiated opinions, the journal’s coordinators would like to stress their attachment to a certain conception of Human Rights, and in particular of the rights of foreigners, in any country whatsoever⁴”.
## NOTES

1. Extract from page 5 of the *Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales* (1985) Editorial, *Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales*, 1 (1), pp. 5-7.

2. Extract from Temporal and Brutel's article in this issue.

3. Extract from the article by Kassatly, Puig and Tabet in this issue.

4. Extract from page 7 of the *Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales* (1985) Editorial, *Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales*, 1 (1), pp. 5-7.

## AUTHORS

### VÉRONIQUE PETIT

Co-director of the journal *REMI*, Demographer, Professor, University of Paris Descartes, CEPED, 45 rue des Saints-Pères, 75006 Paris; veronique.petit[at]ceped.org