Migration and Labour Working Group – Roundtable 1: ‘Definitions’

Defining a field of studies is always a paradoxical task. It is often needed as a preliminary action to ensure the accessibility and verifiability of research methods and findings. At the same time, destabilising what is fixed and crossing borders is at the heart of critical inquiry. This is all the more true in the fields of migration and labour, in which movement and transformation are central. The meanings of words themselves are migratory and the result of a creative process. In this roundtable, we would like to reflect on the different words and definitions employed in the fields of migration and labour (e.g. ‘migration’, ‘mobility’, ‘migrancy’, ‘labour’, ‘work’) in light of this paradox.

Some of the questions we aim to explore in ‘DEFINITIONS’ include (but are not limited to): 

• What do terms such as ‘migration’ and ‘labour’ mean?
• To what extent can migration – whose characteristics can be movement, change and instability – be defined (<Lat. definire), namely to be pinned down to a single and stable meaning?
• What is the difference between ‘work’ and ‘labour’?
• Can these concepts be complementary?
• Can they give a global point of view of the topic?