Cavoti's Black Box: Definition of Migrant

Before you read this blog check out my video on this subject on youtube:at this link Link

Today we are going to work on the concept of  Migrant and  Migration  is the movement of a person or group of people from one geographical unit to another through an administrative or political border, with the intention of settling indefinitely or temporarily in a place other than their place of origin" (IOM; 2011). When one refers to international migrations, it’s a not only a fundamental fact that the person comes from another State, something one must keep in mind something that happens to the migrant, in changes his/hers legal status, which is not the case with internal migrations.

The International Organization for Migrations (IOM) defines emigrant, as anyone who leaves his country to live in another and immigrant a person who comes to a new country to reside. And finally migrant is the general term and does not express movement or better stated direction of movement (IOM; 2011).

For both States and international organizations such as IOM for example, define and build the concept migration according to their needs and depend on their political motivations, geopolitical strategies, economic interests and cultural/historical context on how they define themselves. These concepts are purely subjective and can be shared total or partially with other actors, here comes into play the intersubjectivety (we’ll see this concept in future posts). But in many cases there are directly no points in common between States, which really makes thing very difficult to resolve any problems that may arise. Migratory policies are dependent on how migrants are defined, and there can be a positive or negative view of this social phenomenon, and this will affect the policy.  

Migratory policies are also influenced by   individual people involved in applying the norm; their personal experiences come into account on how they will handle complicated situations. It is really very difficult to be objective you can see, when everything is so embedded in subjective views, from a State level all the way down an individual level.