AccScience Publishing / IJPS / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/ijps.3004
PERSPECTIVE ARTICLE

Immigrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees: Navigating conceptual challenges through multidimensional migration space-time

Jared Keyel1*
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1 Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey, United States of America
IJPS 2024, 10(4), 40–44; https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.3004
Submitted: 24 February 2024 | Accepted: 5 July 2024 | Published: 20 September 2024
© 2024 by the Author (s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Migration is a pervasive social, political, and economic experience. Despite its ubiquity, the complexities of migration present challenges for scholars. Ongoing debates revolve around defining central categories that describe and understand human movement. Concepts such as migrant, asylum-seeker, and refugee are fraught with tensions and overlapping characteristics. Disaggregating these categories is complex due to the messy and varied nature of individuals’ lived experiences. This complexity prompts scholars to critically examine how these categories are constructed and applied. Considering this, I argue that reconceptualizing migration categories as interconnected positions within a temporally and geographically contingent multidimensional migration space-time allows scholars to better examine the complexities of movement. Moreover, the intricate nature of migration necessitates the construction and reconstruction of adaptable concepts to better understand highly contextual experiences. Therefore, researchers must design research projects that can capture the nuances, tensions, and contradictions inherent in migration experiences, even when these nuances do not align with narrow, instrumentalized definitions used in legal regimes and public policy. While more flexible concepts offer valuable opportunities for deeper insights, there are also significant risks to consider.

Keywords
Migration
Immigrants
Asylum-seekers
Refugees
Mobility
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that he has no competing interest.
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International Journal of Population Studies, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8606 Print ISSN: 2424-8150, Published by AccScience Publishing