Migration as a Family Business: The Role of Personal Networks in the Mobility Phase of Migration

Since it was first proposed by John Salt and Jeremy Stein in International Migration in 1997, the idea of migration as a business has transformed the perception of this phenomenon among academics, as well as in the popular media. But while it provided a new and useful tool with which to view the movement of people across the globe, the popularity of the business model as a metaphor obscured other aspects of the subject for which it could provide no place. As this analysis of interviews with migrants who moved from Morocco and Senegal to Spain and from Egypt and Ghana to Italy, and profiles of various migrants to the Netherlands seeks to demonstrate, the business metaphor provides only part of the answer. It fails to account for the overriding significance for most migrants of existing networks of friends, relatives, and acquaintances when undertaking their journey.