Historicising the 1970s migration turn: policy cycles and the making of the North–South divide

This introduction frames the special issue’s account of the 1970s as a decisive turn in global migration governance, when relatively open, often imperially structured regimes of mobility gave way to restriction, differentiation and a hardening North–South divide. It sets out the collection’s shared analytical framework – a policy-cycle model read alongside ­historical institutionalism, rational-choice reasoning and contingency analysis – and shows how the seven contributions, spanning the former colonial powers, international organisations and the Global South, reconstruct the migration turn as a negotiated, multi-scalar process whose legacies continue to shape migration politics today.