Rina Agarwala

For centuries, migration has toggled between being seen as an opportunity for some and a curse for others. From the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, migration from Europe to South and Southeast Asia, North and South America, and Africa offered new resources, land, and opportunity to European immigrants. But these same migration flows meant conquest, land dispossession, disease, violence, and (in some cases) total cultural annihilation for native populations...

Global migration is among the greatest challenges of our century. The topic itself is determining election results, and people’s views on the issue are dividing countries, communities, and even families. How can sociology help address this challenge? For decades, sociologists have helped redirect our gaze from simply looking at individual migrants to also understanding the broader economic and social forces catalyzing internal and global migration...