ETMU 2026

Politics of Onward Migration

Session convener: Zeinab Karimi zeinab.karimi@helsinki.fi & Linda Bäckman linda.backman@migrationinstitute.fi

Session description

Migration has long been understood as a once-and-done process — a move that ends on arrival. However, research scholarship pays increasing attention to migration as an open-ended and dynamic process, in which people may re migrate, either returning or moving on to a third and consequent destination. This phenomenon, known as onward migration, has attracted growing scholarly attention as researchers seek to understand the complex, multi-directional nature of human mobility (see Ahrens & King, 2023; Long, 2021).

Onward migration is shaped by a wide range of intersecting factors. For many, it becomes a necessity driven by labour market conditions, legal and residency constraints, and structural factors, such as racism. These forces do not act uniformly; they fall disproportionately on racialised minorities, low-income groups, and those with precarious legal status, compounding their vulnerability and narrowing their choices both for staying and leaving. Conversely, access to economic, social, and cultural capital — including more privileged passport hierarchies — affords certain populations significantly greater agency in determining when, where they move next. Onward migration is therefore not simply a matter of individual choice, but a profoundly unequal process stratified by class, race, gender, and legal status. Therefore, onward migration is also connected to how people (dis)trust the structure of the societies that they navigate along the way.

At the same time, studies have shown that onward migration is a deeply relational process, shaped by family obligations, gender roles, caring responsibilities, and the negotiation of mobility with significant others. Far from being a linear journey, onward migration may unfold in multiple ways: directly and without obstruction, delayed by periods of immobility, achieved step-by-step through intermediary moves, or following other types of international mobility that did not produce the desired outcomes.

A life-course perspective adds further depth to this picture, situating onward migration within the unfolding biographical trajectories of individuals and families. Aspirations shift over time — shaped by ageing, partnership, parenthood, and changing labour market positions — meaning that the decision to move on is rarely fixed, but continuously renegotiated in response to evolving personal circumstances and structural conditions. Crucially, not all members of a household or family unit experience these trajectories equally, and the capacity to move — or to stay — is itself unevenly distributed along lines of age, gender, and legal status. This panel brings together scholars working at these frontiers, with the aim of advancing a more nuanced, intersectional, and empirically grounded understanding of onward migration. We invite contributions that engage with onward migration from a range of disciplinary and methodological perspectives, including sociology, anthropology, human geography, sociolinguistics, political science, and legal studies.

We particularly welcome papers that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

  • Structural drivers of onward migration, including institutional (dis)trust, labour markets,
    legal constraints, and racism
  • The role of family, gender, and caring responsibilities in shaping onward mobility
  • Life-course approaches to migration trajectories and shifting aspirations
  • Methodological innovations for researching onward migration and hard-to-reach populations
  • Policy responses to onward migration and their differential impacts

The language of the session is English.