Migration is sustained by imagining success despite structural constraints

Evidence

Thus, for transnational migrants, the process of imagining global destinations becomes an important part of reconciling the rigors of migrants’ work with the desired pleasure and rewards of travel abroad. In the process of subject formation, migrant workers engage in a constant mapping of the labor diaspora. As much as the migrants exert agency in this process, however, structural features of the migration industry and the labor diaspora confine their life worlds to a specific set of possibilities. Although the actual experience of migration is filled with failures and disappointment, success is part of how migration is continually imagined. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 577 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The imagined U.S. destination outranks all other labor-migration sites; Migrations become self-sustaining processes that outlive their original causes — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3836; Migrant labor subjecthood is formed by imagining destinations against structural constraint — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 577 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Migrant labor subjecthood is formed by imagining destinations against structural constraint #corroborates (0.93) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 577
• The popular model treats cultural identity as fixed by birth and impermeable to migration #complicates (0.72)