In an era characterized by heightened geopolitical friction, shifting labor markets, and evolving border regimes, the political economy of migration demands analytical frameworks that treat identity not merely as a demographic variable, but as an active, contested arena of structural and material power. Building directly upon the intervention of the volume Navigating Diaspora: Migrants' Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity, and Identity (Palgrave Macmillan), this panel expands scholarly discourse on how transnational migrants construct, leverage, and reimagine race, ethnicity, and belonging across distinct institutional and regional contexts.
The panel aims to bring together contributors to Navigating Diaspora alongside scholars working broadly on the political economy of identity. Submissions should interrogate the dynamic feedback loops between structural political economy鈥攕uch as labor exploitation, border externalization, state capacity, and legal precariousness鈥攁nd the subjective agency of migrant communities.
Key theoretical and empirical dimensions to be addressed by panelists include:
- How socioeconomic stratification and racial capital configure the lived experience of diaspora integration and exclusion in host states.
- The political leverage of diasporas through remittance architecture, political lobbying, dual citizenship claims, and extraterritorial governance.
- The strategies deployed by racialized and ethnicized migrants to challenge Eurocentric IR frameworks and domestic marginalization.
- How origin and destination states strategically regulate, mobilize, or co-opt diaspora populations for economic development and regime maintenance.
By facilitating dialogue across subfields鈥攊ncluding International Political Economy (IPE), International Relations theory, Comparative Politics, and Diaspora Studies鈥攖his panel offers a rigorous assessment of how identity acts as both a site of structural constraint and a mechanism for political transformation in global political economy.
