Turning to Grand Theory: Cultural Political Economy and the Regulation of Immigration

Abstract

Theorizing the relationship between migration and politics continues to be a haphazard and fragmented affair, both in Europe and beyond. This chapter therefore attempts to establish a common research perspective for one of its subfields, the political regulation of immigration. The first goal is to reinterpret the existing literature by identifying three paradigmatic turns (statist, scalar, semiotic) which crisscross separate schools of thought. Secondly, the chapter acknowledges that possible tensions between the respective turns exist. Therefore it proposes to integrate them drawing on a grand theory. In this vain, cultural political economy (CPE) is advanced to provide a sound ontological framework which can guide future research on social transformations and their impact on migration. Following from this, the chapter lastly shows that CPE uncovers the economic dimension of immigration as a thematic blind spot. However, it rearticulates immigration regulation by embedding it in a broader material-constructivist perspective on the capitalist state.