Migration and the critique of ‘state thought’: Abdelmalek Sayad as a political theorist

Abstract

This article argues for reading the Algerian-French sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad (1933–1998) as a political theorist of migration. Various contributions have recently called to move away from the court-like assessment of claims by host states and foreigners and to engage more frankly with empirical work more attentive to concrete experiences and power relations. I contend that Sayad’s sociological work constitutes a substantial empirical and normative resource for ethical and political theory of migration, pointing to the persistence of ‘state thought’ and presenting original normative perspectives on emigration, inclusion in democracy, naturalization or postcolonial relationships. Such a reading of Sayad from a political theory perspective would then constitute a prime example of the cross-fertilization of empirical and normative approaches.

Exploring subject positions in Greek migrants' discourse on mobility decisions

“…At the same time, though, participants also constructed themselves as adventurous young people who are trying to deal with negative emotions or stagnation in their places of origin. In these constructions, migration decisions were not represented as the result of rational calculation (Boudou, 2021) but as an emotion-driven process. These different subject positions put forward different and dilemmatic explanations, which seemed to constitute a complex rationale for migration.…”

“…It also sustains that mobility is a constant “plus” and “minus” grading between the area of origin and the area of destination, or at most, a calculus between “intervening obstacles” and “personal traits” (see Kline, 2002). The conceptualization of migration as a by‐product of a meticulous calculation theorizes migration as a cluster of rational decisions, which conceals its complexity and depicts it as a mere passage from one place to another (Boudou, 2021).…”