Doing and undoing categories in migration

This article examines the relationship between migrants and migration categories in the Global South. As an agenda-setting contribution, we argue that while classification is fundamental to social organization, categories are inherently unstable, permeable, and contingent on socio-cultural context. Migration categories, such as ‘irregular’, ‘labour,’ or ‘privileged’ – may appear fixed, yet they are fixed, yet they are continually reshaped through everyday practices and lived experience. Attending to these quotidian encounters reveals the extent to which such categories are blurred, negotiated, and contested. A closer analysis of how categories are produced and inhabited demonstrates that they are neither coherent nor universal. Migration categories, including the category of the ‘migrant’ itself are similarly fluid, as illustrated by the contributions to this special issue. Together, these articles explore the phenomenological, theoretical, and methodological implications of categorising migrants and their movements in specific ways, as well as the tensions that emerge for both migrants and non-migrants, particularly in the Global South. Foregrounding empirical cases beyond West Europe and North America, the issue highlights how migration categories are implicitly and explicitly reproduced, appropriated, and challenged. In doing so, it offers new conceptual grounding for understanding how categories might be more equitably and inclusively constructed and operationalised. At the same time, this focus on the South calls attention to the persistent Northern bias in migration scholarship, and to how this shapes broader understandings of migration processes. Overall, the article advances new perspectives on the structural, affective, and collective dimensions of how migrants navigate and contest categorisations, and reflect on the implications of these dynamics for research and society at large.