Everyone is talking about globalisation. From different viewpoints, more or less critical stances and emphasising some aspects more than others, we all seem to agree that we live in an increasingly globalised world. This is to say a world characterised by the emergence of global dynamics and institutions and a progressive denationalisation of what, until very recently, had been constructed as national and from the national sphere. In economics, this has been characterised by the emergence of productive and financial markets on the world scale. In politics, it points to the construction of international regimes that regulate spheres ranging from international trade and intergovernmental relations through to intellectual property and human rights. In the social domain, a consolidating worldwide articulation of struggles and social conflicts is a point of reference. As for the cultural realm, warning voices identify the appearance of a uniform culture or great melting pot on the global scale. While this discussion of globalisation is notable for its diversity, there seems to be a common denominator: different points of view depart from the conviction that national confines and frontiers have undergone great change.

This certainty has marked a major part of present-day debates in the field of migration studies. First, several scholars have noted that the state is ‘losing control’. Arguments refer to the growing gap between the intent of immigration policy and the reality of immigration. One explanation has focused on the impossibility of continuing to apply ‘old rules of the game’ and, more specifically, on the growing contradiction between (new) border- free economic spaces and (old) border control (Cornelius, Martin & Hollifield 1994, 2004; Sassen 1995). Second, others point to the emergence of post-national forms of citizenship. From this standpoint, the establishment of an international human rights regime after World War II is seen to have led to the formulation of a set of citizenship rights defined and defended beyond the confines of the nation-state (Soysal 1994; Bauböck 1994; Sassen 2002). Finally, more recent studies stress transnational practices of the migrants themselves (Glick Schiller, Basch & Blanc 1992, 1995; Portes 1999, 2001, 2003; Faist 2000). Dubbed by Faist (2000) ‘the third generation of migration scholarship’, these studies focus on how the daily practices of migrants construct social spaces (or simultaneous multi-stranded social relations) that weave together their country of origin and their country of settlement.