Editorial: Migration, identity, citizenship and conflict in the globalized world

The nexus between migration, identity, citizenship and conflict remains a fertile ground for research among scholars and practitioners from different academic persuasions. Over time, this interdisciplinary subject has generated a lot of academic, official and popular literature in several countries around the world. Similarly, divergent opinions and perspectives on the past, present and future of migration have been advanced at different levels in different countries and regions. This point should be understood within the context that no society is immune to the implications of migration and its multifaceted dimensions due to the increasing globalised nature of the world since the early 1990s.The key issue is that migration is inevitable because it is a function of both push and pull factors. Thus, the integrated nature of the economic, educational, health, technological and other systems around the world suggests that there is no country that can exist in isolation. It then follows that at times, migration is caused by attempts to escape political persecution and/or the desire to access socio-economic opportunities. The former is justifiable, but it should be time-bound. That is, the migrants should be able to easily return to their home countries as soon as peace and security reign. That is, even when they are away from their home countries, they need to come up with creative ways to make a meaningful contribution towards finding solutions to the political and/or security challenges in their countries. Where there is a perception that socio-economic opportunities are emphatically accessed by immigrants at the expense of locals, conflict becomes unavoidable. We share a realist view of International Relations that conflict is a key feature of human interactions. However, it becomes a serious challenge when it assumes violent proportions, which is illegal in terms of domestic and international law. When such unjustifiable and barbaric violence happens against immigrants, some observers and national leaders of the migrants' countries of origin are quick to condemn the locals as xenophobic, which at times assumes a violent character in countries across the world. This rather presents an opportunity for key stakeholders to pool resources together and address economic and political drivers of migration. Despite this, migration as a research question and policy issue remains unsettled. This situation cannot be delinked from the fact that migration has not been uniformly understood by both scholars and practitioners. Even where attempts to generate a shared understanding have been made, they have hardly been followed up by targeted civic education, which has the potential for a wider and more sustainable impact on peaceful co-existence. The polarisation of the discourse between those who are pro-migrants and those who are anti-immigrants does not make the situation easy. In some instances, the lack of mutual respect between some of the migrants and locals complicates matters in an already fragile situation. Both migrants and the locals are equally responsible for their conflictual relations. Some migrants live as organised communities in foreign countries. That makes them soft targets for discrimination and prejudice. If migrants could fully integrate in the foreign communities that host them, the evolving intermarriages and shared socialisation would reduce and eventually end the whole notion of "othering", the reciprocal view of "them" and "us". All countries give preferential treatment to their citizens when it comes to access to opportunities, and this has everything to do with the very selfish nature of a state as a political construct. While condemning discrimination against migrants, we should also concede that sporadic incidents of criminality by immigrants exacerbate negative stereotypes.Our well-considered view is that in any society, there are good migrants and bad migrants. Similarly, there are good locals and bad locals. As such, we should never fall for the trap of generalisation. Our viewpoint is not the last on the subject under review. We hope that it would generate the much-needed scholarly and policy discussions towards the creation of the peaceful world that we all envisage. In embracing the contested nature of the ideational space, our call on this subject has resulted in seven contributions: four original articles, one opinion piece, one review paper and one perspective. The original papers on the Research Topic under consideration address cross cutting issues ranging from migrants' language uses and social identities in Bangkok, Thailand; the implications of bifurcated citizenship and access to land in Africa: the case of DRC conflict; opinion leadership, threats, and enhancers to social cohesion and unity of South Africans and African immigrants in the post-apartheid era; and emplacement of trauma in migrant spaces: non-places and unhomeliness in Living Undocumented and Stateless. These original works are complemented by a novel contribution whose focus is on displaced belongings: indigenous identity, customary law and the struggles for recognition in postcolonial migration systems; immigration policy as public health policy: Trump's first administration and a critical public health response to the second; and transnational ties: LGBTQ+ rights, migration, and legal frameworks in Thailand and India. The richness of this collection lies in the diversity of the contributions, with experiences drawn from Africa, Asia and North America.