1.1 Introduction

‘Nowadays, we are all on the move’ wrote Zygmunt Bauman in his book Globalisation (1998, 77). He noted how globalisation was making natural borders meaningless and bringing out the natural traveller in humankind. The end of the twentieth century was indeed a time for optimistic outlooks.

Fast forward to the third decade of the twenty-first century. Bauman was right – up to a point. A growing number of people are on the move. In 2020, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM, 2022), 281 million people were estimated to live in a country other than that in which they were born – an increase of around 65% compared to when Bauman wrote those lines. Of the 281 million – which, incidentally, represents 3.6% of the world’s population – most were to be found in Europe (86.7 million, 30.9% of the total global ‘stock’ of migrants), Asia (85.6 million, 30.5%) and North America (58.7 million, 20.9%).

Migration and mobility are, at one level, the fruit of individual decisions but, crucially, also subject to powerful macro-structures dictating the ability to move. The Covid-19 pandemic, which dominated global health concerns throughout 2020 and 2021, imposed severe restrictions on mobility. Even when the world is emerging from this era of forced immobility, new borders have sprung up as a result of Brexit but, even more vehemently, as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For Russian citizens, a new iron curtain is drawn by both the Russian regime and states that have barred Russian citizens’ access to their territory.

Moreover, even in pre- (and post-) Covid times, not all migrants move of their own free will, taking advantage of the benefits of globalisation. Witness Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which forced more than ten million people to flee their homes in a matter of days.Footnote 1 At the time that this book went to press, more than seven million Ukrainians had sought refuge abroad. As Douglas Massey (2020) has presciently noted, crisis-induced migration is likely to define the face of migration in this century. Climate change, political instability and conflicts, as well as demographic transitions and fluctuations in the economy, have mixed together into a cocktail of turbulent times, where it is often hard to tell where one crisis ends and another begins. So, while some people are embracing their inner natural traveller as part of their lifestyle or in the hope of improving their living standards to some degree, others are hitting the road because they have no other option.

Crises also affect migrant-receiving societies and those for whom migration has been more of a choice. When crises, especially of financial nature, hit host countries, migrants – who were once welcomed as complements to the labour market or in the spirit of hospitality and solidarity – are suddenly expected to disappear or are perceived as a problem. Anti-migrant hostility, increasingly restrictive immigration policies and securitisation efforts can result in various kinds of protracted situations, disrupted mobilities or migrants’ ‘dis-embedding’ from host societies, as Louise Ryan, in the next chapter in this volume, points out.

If, a few years ago, state borders might have seemed to be losing some importance, recent developments, including the 2015 refugee arrivals in Europe, Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, have shown that they stand as firm as ever before, guarded by cutting-edge surveillance technologies, restrictive immigration legislation and anti-migrant discourses and sentiments. In these turbulent times, deeply felt anxieties often come to mark the experiences of those migrating or trying to settle in a new society and of those members of receiving societies who perceive newcomers as an economic, social or cultural ‘threat’.

This is the state of affairs which this volume aims to address. How do migrants cope with such turbulent times? How does this affect their migration trajectories, their patterns of integration in the host society or their transnational linkages to their countries of origin and other places? Likewise, it is equally relevant to ask what effect turbulent times might have on host societies – how do perceptions of migration change and how does that translate into immigration and integration policy? Last but not least, it is also important to assess what such turbulent times mean for migration research: how to research migration in a context of turbulent times – i.e. with sensitivity towards the context, which is not defined by just one crisis but by multiple layers of crises.

The following sections of this chapter provide a framework for answering these questions. In the next section we draw on the literature on crisis and migration to explain the multi-layered nature of ‘migration crises’. This leads on to the introduction of the core concepts of the book – turbulence and anxiety as an optic for making sense of the complex relationship between migration, integration, and migration and integration governance in contemporary times. The chapter concludes with an overview of the subsequent chapters of the book.

1.2 The Complex Relationship Between Migration and Crisis

Migration has a complex relationship with the notion of crisis (Collyer & King, 2016). Migration is often the result of a crisis, can create a crisis or can be constructed as a crisis in itself (Menjivar et al., 2019; Virkkunen et al., Chap. 3 in this volume). However, often the concept of ‘migration crisis’ remains largely undefined and little attention is devoted to the complex relationship between crises and migration.

1.2.1 Crisis Theory

Typically, a crisis is understood as an unexpected and undesirable circumstance which requires an urgent response (Boin et al., 2016, 5). According to Boin and ‘t Hart (2007, 42), a crisis is a situation ‘where a community of people – an organization, a town, or a nation – perceives an urgent threat to core values or life-sustaining functions, which must be dealt with under conditions of uncertainty’. Thus, a crisis is a situation that has both objective and subjective qualities: crises are basically caused by objective factors but a crisis becomes a crisis if it is constructed as such. However, crises can be notably different – e.g. in terms of their causes, dynamics and duration.

Based on their causes, crises can be subdivided into natural disasters (e.g. floods, droughts, wildfires, mudslides) and human-made disasters (e.g. wars, collapsing buildings, terrorist attacks). So-called natural and human-made crises can also interact, such as when the effects of an earthquake or flood are magnified by human error, examples being the poor construction techniques of buildings and lax planning allowing building on floodable plains. Furthermore, crises can also be systemic – i.e. not stem from a sudden onset of extraordinary events but, rather, be slow-onset crises which can arise from a systemic error, fallacy or injustice leading to undesirable outcomes. For instance, financial crises are built into the logic of the capitalist system and, when preventive safeguard mechanisms fail to work, they are bound to occur. Jürgen Habermas (1971) builds his theory of legitimation crises on similar assumptions, suggesting that such crises are a part of virtually any political order and bound to occur when a certain balance is tweaked. Thus, crises can be either exogenous – i.e. caused by external factors (disasters) – or endogenous, i.e. caused by systemic factors.

Crises can also be typologised based on their dynamics: they can either be triggered by quickly escalating events or be so-called ‘creeping crises’ (Boin et al., 2020), which manifest early signs long before events actually start to escalate. The same applies for how crises end: this, too, can be quite rapid and concrete or can take a long time and cease gradually. Based on this, ‘t Hart and Boin (2001) have divided crises into fast-burning ones, cathartic ones, long-shadow ones and slow-burning ones. Fast-burning crises emerge suddenly and escalate quickly but do not last very long, whereas long-shadow crises also emerge suddenly but then tend to linger on. Slow-burning crises emerge much more gradually (similar to creeping crises) and endure over a longer period, while cathartic crises start out similar to creeping crises but end abruptly, when decisive action is taken and the situation is contained. In some cases, crises can also occur as cascades (Pescaroli et al., 2018) – where a crisis transcends from one domain to another – e.g. starting out as a man-made disaster but then turning into a systemic crisis of trust in an inefficient government or morphing from a slow-burning demographic crisis into a fast-burning one of civil unrest.

Finally, we can focus on the predictability of crises. In risk management, a known/unknown framework is used to assess how easily predictable – and thus preventable – crises may be (see e.g. Lindaas & Pettersen, 2016). Some risks are dubbed the known knowns – where the planners or managers are aware of both the likelihood of the occurrence of the risk as well as of the potential effects. For instance, occasionally, there is less precipitation in the farming season and farmers have already calculated whether or not it makes sense to invest in additional watering systems for their crops or simply to harvest poorer crops in those years as a less-costly solution. Such risks are easy to manage. However, some risks are known unknowns – risks we are aware of but whose occurrence or managing costs we cannot yet estimate. For instance, with climate change we are aware that so-called super-droughts are more likely to occur although we do not yet know how often or what kind of watering system would actually help to prevent their consequences. There are also unknown known risks, where the likelihood and consequences of a crisis can be assessed but are simply not dealt with – thus implying negligence. Finally, there are also unknown unknown risks, which risk managers are neither aware of nor can predict and prevent – and which result in the so-called Black Swan crises (Taleb, 2007).

A glance at these heuristics already shows us how difficult, if not indeed impossible, it is to pinpoint exactly what a migration crisis is. Migration crises can, in principle, pass as ‘fast-burning crises’, especially in cases where migration occurs on a smaller spatial scale and in lower numbers and remains temporary. However, when the disaster affects vast populations – and/or they are forced to seek safety across longer distances or without a realistic prospect of return – or when they are poorly managed, they have the tendency to turn into protracted crises and cast long shadows, sometimes for decades, as in the case of the Palestinians displaced as a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. However, there are also slow-burning migration crises – for instance, situations where systemic factors cause sustained emigration flows, which then cause notable population decline – which eventually become recognised as an emigration crisis (see, e.g., Lazutka et al., 2018).

Despite their differences, events that come to be known as migration crises tend to share two characteristics. One, they involve a large-scale movement of people and a degree of unexpectedness; two, they tend to roll out as ‘cascading crises’. To explain this better, we have developed a heuristic model to demonstrate the cascaded nature of the so-called migration crisis.

1.2.2 Migration Crisis as a Cascading Crisis

We argue that migration crises actually consist of up to four different sub-crises (see Table 1.1) and can thus be defined as cascading crises. These are events where vulnerabilities accumulate across different domains when not properly managed (Pescaroli et al., 2018): where a first-order crisis or the chosen (non-)response to it can lead to increased damage (Zuccaro et al., 2018) or prompt a crisis in another domain (Bernburg, 2019). While sometimes likened to the domino effect, cascading crises are not necessarily linear but can, to an extent, unfold in parallel – and mitigating the different sub-crises can require different means (Pescaroli et al., 2018).

Table 1.1 Cascades of a migration crisis
Full size table

The first-order migration crisis is typically set in motion by a crisis in another domain – e.g. by a natural disaster like a flood, earthquake, volcanic eruption or desertification, by a human-made disaster like an armed conflict or major accident, by a systemic crisis such as an economic downturn or by a systemic dysfunction like widespread corruption. We remind ourselves here that some crises represent a combination of natural and human-made disasters, such as a flood resulting from deforestation or desertification caused by human-induced climate change. While, sometimes, such disasters can be avoided, the first-order migration crisis is more typically a known unknown crisis, i.e. it can be predicted but is hard to prepare for. Often, migration is actually a best-case scenario for avoiding casualties and further damage; if the damage from the disaster can be quickly repaired, return migration can be swiftly undertaken and the next cascades of the crisis will not ensue.

The second-order migration crises are primarily experienced by the receiving or transit contexts for crisis-induced migration: for instance, situations where there are insufficient or inadequate facilities to house refugees, where asylum-processing systems receive high numbers of asylum applications or where border guards or sea-rescue teams are no longer able to perform tasks assigned to them. These crises are no longer disasters but, rather, systemic crises, where certain services or operations fail to respond promptly and effectively. Here, dealing with the crisis requires adequate response measures, which help to bolster existing systems (e.g. through organising international humanitarian aid to refugee camps, employing more staff to work on asylum applications etc.) or the declaration of an emergency where the regular systems get substituted by alternative, crisis-time measures. Yet, in many cases, the second-order migration crisis is an unknown known risk – something that could be prevented (especially with migration crises becoming more frequent) but was not adequately predicted and for which governance structures are simply not properly prepared.

Occasionally, the second-order migration crisis can be the result of incompetent governance, although it can also be a deliberate strategy of hiding one’s head in the sand – pretending that the crisis does not exist in order to avoid public backlash against preparations and the costs these might entail (Geddes, 2021) – or simply a result of the path dependency of international law (Ramji-Nogales, 2016).

However, situations described as ‘migration crises’ are often also third-order crises; these are in essence legitimation crises, whereby the host society perceives the whole system to be under urgent threat because of migration. Performing such legitimation crises is particularly common among populist radical-right parties, which construct situations as crises in order to delegitimise the ruling elites (Moffitt, 2016). Third-order crises can, to a certain extent, be prevented through adequate management and communication of the first- and second-order crises: in cases where the situation is effectively managed and adequately communicated, there is little space for constructing the situation as problematic. If the response to the second-order crisis is inadequate, stakeholders may make use of the crisis frame to legitimise their response (e.g. advocacy organisations aiming to get the attention of policy-makers or policy-makers trying to (de)legitimise a crisis-response bill or budget); a third-order migration crisis is then likely to erupt. Thus, the logic of party democracy and contemporary accountability mechanisms do not really warrant the prevention of third-order migration crises.

Third-order migration crises tend to be known unknowns; under current circumstances where populist radical-right parties are a force to be reckoned with, they are easy to predict but difficult to prevent or contain. Over time, however, these may shift to the category of known knowns, e.g. when political parties which are not running on anti-immigration agendas learn to cope and respond to such framing.

Finally, migration crises can, over time, also morph into fourth-order crises, which we can call ‘integration crises’. As a result of second- and third-order crises, migrants may experience difficulties embedding in their host societies – either because the problems and limitations with service provision uncovered during the so-called ‘second-order crises’ have not been addressed properly and/or because they fail to address the needs of specific migrant groups. Integration crises can also be triggered by the societal reaction to the third-order crisis, which affects the extent to which migrants feel accepted and are able to become members of their settlement society. The integration crisis is perhaps the closest to the known known type of risk which all modern societies experience. It is also quite easy to predict that at least some of the migrants who have arrived in the host society will remain there for a longer time; therefore, with sufficient research into migrant communities, appropriate support can be provided. Yet, in practice, integration issues are often neglected – deliberately overlooked in the hope that migrants will eventually return when the first-order crisis ceases – or constructed with particular agendas in mind (unknown knowns).

1.2.3 How Long Do Migration Crises Last?

The cascading nature of migration crises also makes them difficult to position with respect to duration. As mentioned, migration crises can be very different in their dynamic and can vary from fast- to slow-burning. However, those which become dubbed as migration crises typically tend to be long-shadow crises.

The structure of migration crises is complex and an evolution from first-order to fourth-order crises typically takes years. Indicative of this is how impossible it is to precisely date migration crises. For instance, when exactly did the so-called European migration crisis begin? Has it ended? Will it ever end? Has it become, or has it been constructed as, a kind of permacrisis?Footnote 2 Many migration crises become protracted crises, where a large number of people remain at heightened risk for a long time. According to the UNHCR (2021), 77% of all the world’s refugees (almost 16 million) are caught up in protracted crises. Typically, systemic crises, like third- and fourth-order crises, tend to cast long shadows.

The longevity of migration crises and their cascading from one type to another can also be explained by a feature inherent to the definition of crisis – that there is ‘a community of people’ who perceive a threat to their ‘core values or life-sustaining functions’ (Boin & ‘t Hart 2007, 42). Thus, the definition of crisis rests on an assumption of a cohesive community based on their values and needs. While migrants can and often do function as organic members of communities, they can have different values and needs in a crisis situation. For instance, while migrants may perceive visiting family and friends in their country of origin as an essential need (see Miah, Chap. 7 in this volume), members of the host society might not see travelling abroad as a pressing need. An a priori division into ‘insiders’ sharing core values and ‘others’ who might have a different outlook often leaves migrants as the ‘outsiders’ or ‘inbetweeners’, which bears not just on political identity but also on practical consequences. While citizens can influence decision-makers through the existing accountability mechanisms to hasten the pace at which they contain a crisis, migrants – who are often non-citizens – cannot. Being an ‘outsider’ or an ‘inbetweener’ is thus a position that devalues migrants’ concerns in a crisis situation, as those of ‘insiders’ take precedence. This explains particularly well why migration crises as second-order crises are not managed more efficiently or why fourth-order crises are so persistent. A protesting asylum-seeker who has been waiting for months or even years to be able to go to work because their asylum application is stuck in a backlog is not seen as a particularly pressing issue for society as a whole. While ‘poorly integrated immigrants’ have become a rallying cry for the populist radical-right, reserving public funds for supporting their integration and pre-empting the alleged problem is not on their agenda.

1.3 From Migration Crisis to Turbulent Times

In a way, the notion of ‘migration crisis’ has become an oxymoron – a contradiction in terms. Because crisis-induced migration is becoming more common and migration crises are often long-lasting, we are in a situation in which ‘crisis mode is the new normal’ (Geddes, 2021) but where measures remain designed for times when crisis-induced migration is an exceptional phenomenon. We have thus arrived at a paradoxical situation where, as Dines et al. (2018) affirm, there is too much ‘crisis talk’ and not enough crisis response. Due to their longevity, migration crises often coincide with other crises or ‘unsettling events’ (Kilkey & Ryan, 2021), which adds even more to their complexity and duration. For instance, this volume introduces the effects of the Covid-19 crisis which followed and affected mitigation of the so-called European refugee crisis;Footnote 3 it speaks of how the legitimation crisis of the European Union affected dealing with the refugee crisis in the first place and how the crisis of democracy in Latin America is affecting perceptions of the Venezuelan migration crisis and vice versa.

In order to grasp the situation, we borrow the concept of turbulence from complexity theory (Drucker, 1993), which we see as wider in scope and better suited in the current context than ‘crisis’ per se. Turbulence denotes a situation of tension and change that occurs when the structures and processes that sustain world politics are unsettled or are undergoing rearrangement (Rosenau, 1990, 8). Thus, turbulence incorporates not just crises but all kinds of ‘unsettling events’ such as political, social and economic transformations which have the potential to disrupt pre-existing migration projects (Kilkey & Ryan, 2021; Ryan, Chap. 2 in this volume). Other definitions reveal further differences between the two concepts. Ansell et al. (2017, 7) have notably defined turbulence as ‘a situation where events and demands interact in a highly variable, inconsistent, unexpected and/or unpredictable manner’. Turbulence and crisis hence share traits such as uncertainty and time constraints but turbulence additionally incorporates complexity (Ansell et al., 2017, 1).

The concept of turbulent times is then also somewhat more neutral than that of crisis, since it does not distinguish between an insider and an outsider position. While the concept of crisis presumes a threat to in-group values and welfare, the concept of turbulent times acknowledges the multiplicity of perspectives but does not position them in hierarchies. In times of constant turbulence, the various members of society can perceive hardships differently and experience anxieties over different matters. Turbulence can also be caused by major events, which affect the life of society as a whole, as well as by meso- and micro-level life events such as the birth or passing of a loved one, job loss, etc. Furthermore, turbulence is not essentially or uniformly negative. For instance, a liberalisation of the migration regime can also act as an unsettling event – one which can be interpreted as negative by some but as a wondrous opportunity by others.

In this book, we use the notion of ‘turbulent times’ to emphasise the increasingly routinised nature of the transformative situation brought on by cascading crises and their (mis)management, as well as the bundling together of various unsettling events. The co-occurrence of unsettling events causes interactive effects, which make turbulent times even more difficult to predict and control. It is no wonder, then, that such an amount of indeterminacy and complexity, along with alarmist discourses that exaggerate or construct them altogether, generate a sense of anxiety in both migrants and non-migrants. This is our second key concern, which switches attention to the subjective, emotional dimensions and implications of migration in turbulent times. We turn to this next.

1.4 The Anxieties of Migration in Turbulent Times

Emotions are a constant presence in our lives and have a strong bearing on how we think and behave (Smith & Lazarus, 1990; Wagner & Morisi, 2019). Migration is no exception. A major life decision, such as migration, comes with a variety of intense emotions, from the guilt of leaving loved ones behind to the anxiety about a perilous journey and settling into an unfamiliar place or the excitement about new opportunities and adventures abroad. At the receiving end, migration has often been met with fear, suspicion and hostility, spurred by alarmist news and political elites that present migrants as a societal threat and frame migration in ‘crisis’ terms. Yet, migration can also generate positive emotions, as the outpouring of sympathy and solidarity in response to Ukrainian refugees has recently shown.

Despite their centrality in migration experiences and events, however, emotions have only recently drawn the attention of migration researchers (Boccagni & Baldassar, 2015). Existing studies in this area highlight the wide reach of the emotional dimensions of migration. As Boccagni and Baldassar (2015) observe in their work on ‘emotions on the move’, individual migrants may experience profound emotions as a consequence of leaving ‘home’ and settling in a new and often hostile place; however, those connected to them are no less affected. This includes people in ‘home’ societies, who stay behind and become embedded in transnational networks, as well as locals in ‘host’ societies, who interact with migrants and see their environment transformed by migration (Duyvendak, 2011).

Furthermore, as the examples above suggest, migration can generate a wealth of positive, negative or mixed emotions amongst those affected. That said, it is negative emotions that often take centre-stage. As Boccagni and Baldassar (2015, 77) note, ‘what we may call negative emotions need not be the only emotional currency of immigration-elicited interactions, although they are probably the most visible and best researched’. Of these, anxiety in particular emerges as emblematic of turbulent times. Suffice to consider the many examples of natural, societal or personal crises that put individuals into motion or situations where migration itself is perceived as a crisis. Examining the anxieties surrounding migration is therefore indispensable for understanding its consequences and reception in contemporary societies.

Anxiety is usually understood as a negative emotion, which arises when individuals confront uncertainty, limited control or accountability in their evaluation of a particular situation or its outcomes (Wagner & Morisi, 2019). For example, anxiety may emerge in the context of economic crises – where responsibility is difficult to attribute – or political developments, which create a profound sense of uncertainty and powerlessness. A telling example of the latter is the Brexit vote, which threw many migrants’ rights, status and sense of belonging suddenly into question (Guma & Jones, 2019; Lulle et al., 2018).

It is important to note, however, that the same situation may be evaluated differently by different actors, resulting in different – and sometimes opposed – emotions. Studying how people relate to their local area in Peckham, London, Jackson (2014), for example, reveals how the culturally mixed neighbourhood could be a source of comfort, pleasure and nostalgia for some residents, whilst generating feelings of alienation and even disgust amongst others. In a similar manner, the tightening of immigration restrictions may trigger anxiety in those concerned about their or their family members’ status, whilst leaving others less affected if they have reached a certain degree of security. Likewise, political or media discourses warning about a ‘migration crisis’ or ‘threat’ may not only or necessarily trigger anxiety in their recipients but also anger, indifference, sympathy, disagreement or frustration.Footnote 4 Yet, whilst not uniformly experienced, anxieties are essential to examine because, like other emotions, they are known to impact on one’s attitudes and behaviour – resulting, for example, in greater opposition to migration (Brader et al., 2008).

Whilst acknowledging the richer emotional register of migration, this volume thus focuses on the anxieties of migration and integration as emblematic of turbulent times. Research suggests a clear linkage between these concepts. Numerous studies have shown that economic downturns can heighten anti-immigrant attitudes (Kunz et al., 2017; Pichler, 2010) – meaning, therefore, that crises hamper integration preconditions in host societies. Turbulent times can also affect migrants’ integration sensibilities and practices (Finotelli & Ponzo, 2018; Ryan, Chap. 2 in this volume). Furthermore, unsettling events have been known to affect migration volumes (Tilly, 2011) and disrupt mobilities (O’Regan, 2011; Kopliku & Çaro, Chap. 3 in this volume; Miah, Chap. 7 in this volume). Interaction effects between multiple unsettling events can amplify these anxieties and create a kind of false mirror, which makes attributing blame incorrectly a likely scenario. The Sikh turban in cartoons depicting Islamist terrorists or the sinophobia following the Covid-19 outbreak are just two examples of the misattribution of blame and associated racist tropes and practices that permeate discourses around migration and migrant integration.

Here, a clarification is in order. We acknowledge the difficulties to define ‘integration’ (Penninx & Garcés-Mascareñas, 2016) and the multiple critiques which the concept and its various academic and non-academic uses have received (e.g. Favell, 2019; Schinkel, 2018; Vertovec, 2020). Discussing the ‘work of “integration”’, Vertovec (2020) identifies no fewer than 20 grounds on which the concept has been criticised. At the same time, he reminds us of its continued and pervasive presence in everyday, policy and political discourses. Hence, when we talk about ‘integration’, our focus is on existing discourses, policies and attitudes towards ‘integration’ in receiving societies. Following Ryan (this volume), we also examine how these shape migrants’ embedding there; that is, the ‘dynamic processes through which migrants develop attachments and belonging to particular people and places over time’, which vary depending on the opportunities and reception they encounter. In sum, when examining the anxieties of migration and integration, we are primarily interested in how anxieties caused by turbulent times affect people’s migration decisions as well as their reception and ‘embedding’ in societies of settlement, depending on the different obstacles or opportunities they encounter there.

1.5 Structure of the Book

The nature and consequences of turbulent times and the anxieties which they cause are further explored in the chapters of this book. The chapters are based on selected presentations to the conference ‘The Anxieties of Migration and Integration in Turbulent Times’, held on 14–15 January 2021 in the framework of the MIRNet project. Initially planned to be held in Tallinn, Estonia, the conference itself experienced an unsettling event – that of the Covid-19 pandemic – and was consequently forced to take place online.

The chapters in this volume cover a broad spectrum of cases from Europe and beyond and connect the macro level of turbulent times with the micro level of anxieties in various ways. They disentangle different moments in recent turbulent times, brought about not only by the so-called European and Venezuelan migration crises but also by the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit, together with more-localised systemic crises related to demography, labour markets, welfare systems, human rights, political legitimacy, etc. The chapters employ various theoretical and methodological starting points. Underlining the constructivist component in crises, many chapters rely on narrated stories, which give good insights into how migrants perceive and cope with turbulent times. Meanwhile, other chapters deconstruct the narratives of the institutions in migrant-receiving societies, encompassing various government institutions and the judicial system, as well as institutions mediating between the state and society, like the media or political parties. Yet, as Umpierrez de Reguero et al. (Chap. 11, this volume) remind us, the anxieties of migration and integration are also important on a more latent psychological level. Many contributions to the volume are also insightful in terms of how the pandemic altered not just conference organisation but also empirical research. Online research methods that were once a research topic to a small handful of methodologists, suddenly became a practical necessity for a lot of scholars, not least in the field of migration studies (Lobe et al., 2020). Due to pandemic-related restrictions, we had to find new ways to reach out to our informants – mostly online – which was also where they found new ways of coping with everyday practicalities. Thus, online data collection was no longer just a method of convenience for reaching out for inquiries but was part of the ‘new normalcy’ for researchers and informants alike.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part consists of six chapters focused on exploring the anxieties and impact of turbulent times from the migrants’ perspectives. The chapters move through all the steps of the migration and integration processes, discussing how perceptions of crisis and anxieties as well as the practical conditions of turbulent times affect migration decisions and migration flows, migrant integration and mobilities.

In Chap. 2, Louise Ryan analyses how turbulence can affect migrant integration. She introduces the concept of ‘embeddedness’ as a more migrant-centric optic also accounting for emotion in integration processes. Based on the example of Brexit and by using longitudinal interviews, she explores how migrants embed, dis-embed and re-embed in the home and host society over time and in response to unsettling events.

In Chap. 3, Joni Virkkunen, Saara Koikkalainen and Minna Piipponen analyse the migration stories of Syrian and Iraqi asylum-seekers who arrived in Finland in 2015–2016. By adopting the concept of ‘ontological crisis’, they demonstrate how forced migration is not necessarily fuelled by a disaster type of crisis but, rather, results from systemic crises. Their findings suggest that many asylum-seekers were forced to migrate due to a ‘crisis of trust’ and a lack of opportunities and personal advancement in either Syria or Iraq – or in the so-called ‘safe countries’ from where they migrated to Finland. As such the study highlights how contemporary asylum systems fail to take account of the complexities of turbulent times.

Bresena Kopliku and Erka Çaro, in Chap. 4, document the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on Albanian seasonal migration. They demonstrate that the economic and policy effects of the pandemic did not affect the push and pull factors of migration but, rather, shifted migrant labour from one economic sector to another and from one country of destination to another. They also show how a macro-level unsettling event combines with turbulence in migrants’ individual lives and how economic survival becomes more important for the vulnerable seasonal migrants than the risk of infection.

Petra Aigner and Almina Bešić then explore, in Chap. 5, the labour-market integration impediments which result from the interaction effects between the European migration crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic in Austria. The assembly restrictions and adverse economic effects of the pandemic forced an already vulnerable group – refugees – into further isolation, thus contributing to an integration crisis. The chapter demonstrates the effects of the pandemic-related restrictions on integration support measures for migrants, who faced various challenges (both social and technological) in coping with the changes – and how, for them, entering the labour market became even more challenging.

Ourania Vamvaka-Tatsi explores, in Chap. 6, the anxiety-inducing effects of the United Kingdom’s refugee reception and settlement system. The chapter follows the arrival, application processing and settlement experiences of LGBTQ+ forced migrants who were settled in Wales under the UK’s ‘Hostile Environment’ policy. She demonstrates how migrants who were forced to flee their homeland after micro-level unsettling events and the fear of persecution for their sexual orientation have to relive traumatic episodes and experience discrimination in a destination country presumed to be ‘safe’. Furthermore, the chapter documents the challenges of integration of a minority within a minority.

Farid Miah, in Chap. 7, discusses the effects of the pandemic on British-Bangladeshis who engage in the transnational practice of visiting friends and relatives in Bangladesh. He points out how the pandemic, as an unsettling event, reinforces inequalities in society. Migrants who are already on the margins of their societies are often disproportionately affected by the crisis measures which, in this case, either distanced them from their families or forced them out of employment and depleted their savings. The chapter also casts light on the variety of effects which the same unsettling event can cause even within the same migrant group.

The second half of the book is devoted to how turbulent times cause anxieties about migration and integration in host societies. The chapters focus on how turbulence manifests itself in policy reforms, in changing public opinion and in framing migration.

Mechthild Roos, in Chap. 8, compares how Germany and Sweden reformed policies regarding asylum-seekers’ access to health-care services in the wake of the European migration crisis. The chapter demonstrates how, fundamentally, welfare models can change in times of crisis, when the interests of asylum-seeking ‘outsiders’ are in question, even in countries which appear as moral superpowers. However, Roos’ findings also attest to the complexity of negotiating between second- and third-order migration crises, i.e. dealing with an overwhelmed asylum system, whilst simultaneously trying to avoid voter frustration.

In Chap. 9, Giovanni Cavaggion analyses Italian court decisions related to the cultural rights of immigrant-origin minorities both before and after the European migration crisis and the subsequent wave of right-wing populism. His analysis demonstrates that, while jurisprudence followed the multicultural integration model instituted in the Italian constitution before the crisis, a much more assimilationist and securitising approach was adopted after the European migration crisis escalated, thus demonstrating one possible effect of the third-order migration crisis.

Leif Kalev, on the contrary, demonstrates, in Chap. 10, how migration policy can remain unchanged despite turbulent times. He discusses the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on Estonian migration policy. Unsettling events can function as focusing events or catalysts for policy change and the members of Estonian government tried to use the Covid-19 crisis to curb seasonal and student migration by proposing stricter rules, yet without success. Kalev’s study demonstrates that, although unsettling events can open windows for policy change, it is not easy to utilise them for highly politicised issues such as migration.

In Chap. 11, Sebastián Umpierrez de Reguero, Santiago González-Paredes and Ingrid Ríos Rivera demonstrate how, even in the Latin American context – which has been characterised by a multi-ethnic population and relatively relaxed attitudes toward immigrants – anti-immigrant sentiments and rhetoric are gaining ground due to the Venezuelan migration crisis. Based on a survey conducted in Ecuador, a country where there is, as yet, no significant anti-immigrant political force, the authors show how emotions conducive to anti-immigrant sentiment are already there and pair well with the populist sentiment.

In Chap. 12, Sevgi Temizisler comparatively analyses the immigration discourse in Denmark, Germany and the UK in 2015–2017 and demonstrates how the second-order migration crisis turns into a third-order crisis and ‘travels’ into the field of EU legitimacy. While the European migration crisis emerged around asylum-seekers from third countries, the conservative-right tabloid newspapers, in particular, associated the causes of crisis with European free-movement policies.

Katrina Koppel and Mari-Liis Jakobson’s Chap. 13 delves into the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the populist radical-right party – the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia – and how it is used to induce immigration-related anxieties in the host-country population and to articulate an antagonism between immigrants and so-called ‘virtuous people’ in populist rhetoric. However, they also demonstrate that populists do not perceive immigrants as a completely homogeneous group but construct hierarchies between ‘bad’ and ‘even worse’ migrants, which allows them the leeway to introduce more-nuanced policies when in power, which target scapegoating strategies in the wake of new unsettling events.

Finally, Andrea Carlà explores, in Chap. 14, how anxieties related to migration pair with sub-state nationalism. He analyses immigration discourses in the Italian region of South Tyrol, where the historical multicultural mix of German-, Italian- and Ladin-speakers and their power relations are altering, due to new waves of immigration. While the German-speaking group still remains in the majority within the region, migration-related framing is used to spark anxieties about becoming a minority due to new migrants integrating into the Italian-speaking community. The chapter thus demonstrates the anxieties related to immigration among the ‘old’ minorities, which the ‘new’ minorities might not be aware of, adding new tensions into the mix.

1.6 Conclusion: Coping with Turbulence

The effects of turbulent times on migration and integration are thus manifold and complex and are often a poor fit with the formal regulations or informal traditions governing the field. This raises the question of how to cope with turbulent times. While the crisis-management literature presumes that crises can be avoided or contained, the turbulence-governance literature does not aim to ‘solve’ turbulence but simply assumes that it can be factored into the governance model. According to complexity theory, the key in actively adapting to turbulent times is to ‘seek, design and pursue superordinate values or ideals’ in order to resist the disintegrative influences of turbulence (Babüroğlu, 1988, 183). It is important to revisit and articulate the purposes and values associated with migration and migrant integration and to reassess whether the existing regulations are in accordance with the respective values. These latter can both guide policy-making for society as a whole and also build resilience at the micro, meso and macro levels, which is key also in reducing anxieties.

Given the ever-changing nature of turbulent times, we can expect a continuous process, where deliberation procedures are central. Also, as Babüroğlu (1988) emphasises, the solutions should not underestimate the complexity of society. The search for resilience-inducing values does not have to take place only at the macro level of society but can also do so within and between various groups, so that the perspectives and needs of the different members of society are met. As both Ryan and Miah (the authors of Chaps. 2 and 7 in this volume respectively) suggest, networks and cooperation are key to overcoming the anxieties caused by turbulent times. As are concerted efforts to expose and challenge the agendas and misconceptions behind discourses and practices that routinely create turbulence by framing migrants and migration in ‘crisis’ terms.