By Ahmet İçduygu, Koç University
Introduction
Over the course of the twentieth century, urban studies and migration studies evolved as largely parallel intellectual traditions. Each generated rich literatures, methodological toolkits, and policy framings, but they only occasionally spoke to one another in ways that treated migration and the city as mutually constitutive processes. Urban studies, rooted in sociology, planning, geography and architecture, concentrated on urban form, governance, political economy and social life; migration studies, grounded in demography, economics and sociology, concentrated on the causes, processes and consequences of population movement across and within borders. In recent decades, however, globalization, the reconfiguration of labor markets, the intensification of forced displacement, and new conceptual and methodological innovations have created a sustained intersection between these fields. This essay selectively traces the distinct genealogies of urban and migration scholarship, explicates the factors that have driven their convergence, identifies central themes of interaction, and proposes conceptual, methodological and policy pathways for consolidating an integrated urban–migration research agenda. In so doing, I argue that treating migration and urbanization as co-constitutive processes is essential both for theoretical refinement and for the design of policy responses commensurate with twenty-first-century realities.
Separate roots: disciplinary genealogies and early emphases
Urban studies assembled in the early twentieth century from a plurality of disciplinary and policy-related interests. The Chicago School of sociology produced formative accounts of urban ecology, social differentiation and spatial patterns—most famously Park and Burgess’s concentric zone model and related analyses of neighborhood succession and social organization (Park & Burgess, 2019). Parallel debates in urban planning and architecture examined the physical form of cities, urban design and the everyday practices that produce urban experience (Mumford, 1961; Jacobs, 1961; Lynch, 1995). Critical and Marxist perspectives, in turn, developed structural explanations of urban change that emphasized accumulation, class struggle and the production of space (Castells, 1978; Harvey, 2015).
Migration studies, by contrast, drew early energy from demography and economics. Ravenstein’s nineteenth-century “laws” of migration (Corbett, 2003) gave way to neoclassical and structural models that situated movement as an economic response to spatial differentials; the Harris–Todaro model of the 1960s and 1970s formalized rural-urban migration as a function of expected urban incomes and employment probabilities (Harris & Todaro, 1970). In the second half of the twentieth century, migration research was dominated by push–pull theories that framed movement primarily as an economic response to adverse conditions at origin (push) and perceived opportunities at destination (pull) (Massey et al., 1993). Sociology contributed assimilationist paradigms that pictured immigrant incorporation as a one-way process of cultural and structural adaptation (Massey et al., 1993). Until the latter part of the century, attention to forced migration, transnational ties and the urbanization of displacement remained limited in both demography and mainstream migration sociology.
Divergent mid-century trajectories and institutional separation
Through much of the mid to late twentieth century, the differences between the two fields hardened institutionally and intellectually. Urbanists pursued questions surrounding suburbanization, housing, governance, infrastructure and municipal politics, producing literatures on growth regimes, gentrification and urban policy (Smith, 2002; Swyngedouw et al., 2002). Migration scholars concentrated on individual and household determinants of movement, labor-market incorporation, remittances and the nation-state’s regulatory frameworks (Castles et al., 2005; Massey et al., 1993). As a result, migration tended to be treated in urban studies as an exogenous “input” that altered population size or ethnic composition, while urban form and governance were often taken for granted in migration analyses. This disciplinary bifurcation was reinforced by departmental and funding structures that located urban studies in planning and geography departments and migration research in demography, economics and area-studies units.
Convergence begins: late twentieth century inflection points
Multiple, overlapping intellectual and empirical developments from the 1980s onward eroded the strict separation of the fields. Some of the most consequential currents include the rise of global cities scholarship, the transnational turn in migration studies, critiques of assimilation, the mobilities paradigm, and the subnationalization of migration governance.
Globalization and the global city thesis had a strong impact on the linkages of urban and migration studies. Saskia Sassen’s reconceptualization of global cities as nodes of command, information and specialized producer services reframed cities as sites whose economic functions were inseparable from migration dynamics (Sassen, 2001). International migration became not merely a demographic phenomenon but a functional component of urban economies—supplying labor for construction, domestic and care work, hospitality and other sectors that sustain global cities’ competitive advantages. The global city thesis thus encouraged urbanists to attend to migration as a structural element of urban capitalism and made migration scholars more attentive to the urban context of migrant labor.
The transnational turn in migration scholarship emphasized the sustained cross-border ties that migrants maintain and the multi-sited nature of social life (Conradson & Latham, 2005; Smith, 2005). This frame encouraged urbanists to view cities as nodes in transnational networks: neighborhoods and marketplaces are simultaneously shaped by flows of capital, culture and political claims that transcend national territoriality. Transnational urbanism reframes diasporic neighborhoods, ethnic businesses, and remittance-driven construction as phenomena that link urban localities across the globe.
There has also been a process in which some key concepts used in both urban and migration studies transformed—from assimilation to segmented assimilation and to super-diversity. Critiques of linear assimilation models—most influentially the segmented assimilation thesis—made the study of migration more sensitive to how spatial contexts, racial hierarchies and labor-market structures produce differentiated trajectories for immigrant groups (DelSordi, 2007; Portes, 2007). Steven Vertovec’s concept of “super-diversity” further underscored the intra-group heterogeneity produced by varied legal statuses, migration histories, national origins, skill profiles and spatial distributions (Vertovec, 2007). Urban studies responded by examining how new diversities reconfigure neighborhood life, schooling, public spaces, and municipal service provision (Ye, 2019).
The mobilities turn also created an intersection between urban and migration studies. The “new mobilities paradigm” recast social science attention from static places to flows—of people, goods, capital and information—and to the infrastructures that facilitate movement (Sheller & Urry, 2006; Urry, 2007). For urbanists, this meant analyzing cities as nodes within broader mobility systems and attending to daily commuting, long-distance migration, and the temporal rhythms that structure urban life (Jensen et al., 2020). For migration scholars, mobilities scholarship encouraged attention to the multiplicity of movement types—circular migration, commuting, seasonal labor—and to the infrastructures, technologies and policies that enable or constrain them (Mazzucato & Schapendonk, 2025).
Another element linking urban and migration studies concerns subnational governance and cities as policy actors. As states’ abilities to control mobility have become contested and complex, cities have emerged as important sites of policy innovation and contestation (for example, sanctuary policies, local integration strategies, and policing innovations). Scholarship on urban governance has therefore incorporated migration as both an object of municipal policy and a terrain of political mobilization (Clarke, 2012; Varsanyi, 2008). This subnational turn has produced a literature on the “rescaling” of migration governance and the conditions under which local governments can produce inclusive or exclusionary outcomes (Paquet, 2020).
Key themes at the intersection of urban and migration studies
The convergence of the two fields has given rise to several thematic clusters in which migration and the city are analytically inseparable. These intersecting themes point to both substantive empirical domains and conceptual challenges.
One such theme concerns spatial concentration, segregation and neighborhood transformation. Migration produces and is produced by urban spatial patterns. Studies of ethnic enclaves, immigrant settlement, and neighborhood change illuminate how migration interacts with housing markets, zoning regimes, and urban redevelopment (Zaban, 2022). Research shows that enclaves can be both sources of economic opportunity and sites of concentrated disadvantage; their evolution through gentrification and displacement is mediated by municipal policies and capital flows (Cocola-Gant, 2019). Labor markets, informality and the urban economy also remain a significant intersecting theme of urban and migration studies. Migrants are often central to urban labor markets, disproportionately represented in informal, precarious and undervalued occupations—construction, domestic work, street vending, care work and hospitality—that are vital to urban functioning (Chun & Agarwala, 2016). Such labor-market segmentation is shaped by immigration policy, local regulations, and the organization of urban economies (Samers, 2011). Understanding the reproduction of urban economies therefore requires integrating migration as a structural rather than incidental factor.
Governance, rights and urban citizenship are also among the key themes at the intersection of urban and migration studies. Cities are arenas of contestation for rights, belonging and access to services. The “right to the city” framework, developed in the radical urban political economy tradition, has been extended to migrants’ claims-making and to debates about urban citizenship, sanctuary, and municipal human rights policies (Pierce et al., 2016). At the same time, local governments often face legal and fiscal constraints in responding to migrants’ needs, producing variegated regimes of inclusion and exclusion (Oomen et al., 2021). Related themes include transnational urbanism and social remittances. Migrants’ transnational ties reshape consumption, built environments (via remittances), and political life in origin and destination cities (Byrne, 2016). Diasporic investments change urban landscapes—housing construction, commercial patterns and political mobilization in sending regions are all affected by urban-based migrant networks (Constant & Zimmermann, 2016).
Methodologically, data, measurement and innovation constitute key themes at the intersection of urban and migration studies. The recent availability of administrative registries, geospatial technologies (GIS), mobile-phone data and social-media traces has enabled researchers to map migration flows at urban scales, to analyze daily mobility patterns, and to combine macro-level analysis with micro-ethnographic insights (Ebrahimpour et al., 2020; Leurs & Witteborn, 2021). These tools allow for richer, multi-scalar analyses of how migrants move through and shape city spaces.
Towards conceptual integration: mobility, multi-scalar frameworks and intersectionality
Linking migration and urban studies systematically requires conceptual moves that treat migration and urbanization as co-constitutive processes. Several mutually reinforcing theoretical orientations can facilitate this integration.
First, it is crucial to see mobility and urbanization as co-constitutive. Urban growth cannot be understood independently of mobility: migration fuels urban demographic change, restructures labor markets, and shapes housing demand, while urban economic structures and spatial policies produce migratory pressures that feed back to other scales. Theorizing cities as both destinations and producers of migration demands models that incorporate feedback loops between mobility and urban transformation (de Haas, 2010; Sassen, 2001). Second, multi-scalar frameworks are essential to elaborate the link between migration and urban studies. The processes that structure migrants’ experiences operate across nested scales: household strategies, neighborhood contexts, municipal governance, national immigration policy, and global economic forces (Glick-Schiller, 2007). Multi-scalar frameworks are necessary to trace how international labor markets and national legal regimes interact with local housing markets, policing practices and service provision to produce differential outcomes (Kazepov et al., 2022).
Life-course and longitudinal lenses are also central to conceptual integration in migration and urban studies. Migration’s effects are temporal as well as spatial: trajectories of incorporation unfold over years and decades, shaping and being shaped by residential mobility, labor-market trajectories and family formation (Aybek et al., 2014). Longitudinal data and life-course perspectives illuminate processes of upward or downward mobility, spatial assimilation, and intergenerational change (Erlinghagen, 2021). Intersectionality and differentiated incorporation provide additional analytical purchase. Migration outcomes are mediated by intersections of race, gender, class, legal status and place. Integrative theory must synthesize segmented assimilation, place stratification, and urban political economy to explain heterogeneous incorporation patterns across groups and locales (Wessel et al., 2017).
Finally, attention to the linkages between mobility infrastructures and spatial governance is indispensable. Infrastructures—transport, housing, policing, information and financial systems—illuminate the material and institutional arrangements that enable or constrain migration and settlement. The migration infrastructures lens foregrounds how technologies, regulations and market actors co-produce mobility regimes and spatial outcomes (Leurs, 2019).
Research priorities for a consolidated agenda
To deepen the convergence between urban and migration scholarship, the following research priorities merit urgent attention.
First, cross-city comparative studies—spanning both Global North and Global South contexts—can reveal how institutions, market structures and political climates shape migrant outcomes. Comparative analysis helps identify transferable policy lessons while highlighting context dependence. Second, refocusing research on internal migration and urbanization in the Global South is needed. Much migration research has privileged international movement; yet internal rural-urban migration, circular migration and peri-urban dynamics in the Global South are central to contemporary urbanization processes and require greater study. Third, research on forced displacement and protracted urban refuge is important to deepen the convergence between urban and migration scholarship. Long-term urban settlement of refugees challenges humanitarian models predicated on camps and short-term assistance. Research should evaluate policy frameworks that enable durable integration, livelihood creation and urban inclusion for displaced populations. Fourth, studies on the linkages between climate mobility and urban resilience will be complementary for a consolidated agenda in urban and migration studies. Mapping likely trajectories of climate-related migration to cities, evaluating integration policies, and designing infrastructure that anticipates population mobility must become central components of urban resilience research. Fifth, investment in longitudinal, disaggregated urban data—coupled with robust ethical governance frameworks for administrative and mobility datasets—is crucial for convergence between urban and migration scholarship. Research agendas must prioritize data equity and protections for migrants’ privacy and rights. Finally, interdisciplinary training and institutional bridges are key to a consolidated agenda. Building graduate programs, research centers and funding mechanisms that explicitly straddle urban and migration studies will cultivate scholars equipped to analyze mobility and place simultaneously. Institutional incentives that reward interdisciplinary collaboration are essential.
Conclusion
The twentieth century’s separate trajectories of urban and migration studies reflected scholarly specializations and institutional arrangements that made analytic division convenient if incomplete. Yet the empirical realities of globalization, intensified mobility, urbanized displacement, and the centrality of migrants to urban economies have rendered that separation increasingly untenable. Integrating urban and migration studies promises theoretical enrichment—through multi-scalar, life-course, and intersectional frameworks—and practical gains in the design of housing, labor, and climate-resilience policies that recognize cities as both sites of settlement and engines of migration. Achieving this integration requires methodological pluralism, data innovation, interdisciplinary institutional structures, and an ethical commitment to the rights and dignity of migrant communities. If scholars and policymakers take seriously the co-constitution of mobility and urbanization, the resultant knowledge will be essential to shaping cities that are more inclusive, resilient and just in the twenty-first century.
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