Verify if you are human
What is the ‘human’ in ‘human migration’?
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24226174 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Brian Page (0000-0003-2833-8137, University College London) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-19 |
| Publication date | 2026-08-03 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Community (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369183x.2026.2702665 |
| OpenAlex | W7172318908 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 51 |
This special issue explores the instability of different migration categories from perspectives in the Global South. This contribution argues that ‘human’ is a category that hides in plain sight in Migration Studies and that it should be brought out of hiding. Sylvia Wynter’s work on ‘being human’ provides a helpful way to approach this migration category from a subaltern perspective, which unsettles the epistemic foundations of the ‘human’. She shows how ‘the human’ has been used to legitimise elite interests in relation to migration in the past and present, and how it could be re-imagined for more equitable purposes in the future. Current injustices in migration governance are reproduced because of rather despite the ideology of post-Darwinian liberal humanism that underpins ‘humanitarianism’ and ‘human rights’. As a contrast to this critical analysis, the paper develops Wynter’s view that humans are a hybrid of biological species (‘bios’) and social story-teller (‘mythoi’). This redefinition is species-based, but culturally plural: the diverse global stories of what it means to be a human are equally valid. The paper ends by showing what attending to the category of the ‘human’ reveals about migration from southern perspectives using a short case study from Cameroon.
being human · concept of the human · Cultural pluralism · Global South perspectives · Human migration · Human rights · Humanitarianism · liberal humanism · migration categories · migration governance · Speciesism · subalternity · Sylvia Wynter · Migration and Exile Studies · Migration, Racism, and Human Rights · Migration, Refugees, and Integration
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Doing and undoing categories in migration
Un-categorising ‘the migrant’ to interrogate the roles of migration in social mobility in four Asian cities
Mnemonic bordering
Generelle Morphologie der Organismen
The Intestines of the State
Unparalleled Catastrophe for Our Species?
Rightlessness in an Age of Rights
Strategic Anti-Essentialism
Sylvia Wynter's Decolonial Philosophy
Key Concepts in Migration
Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies
Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration
The Postcolonial Age of Migration
Causes and Consequences of Human Migration
Asylum after Empire
Middlemen of the Cameroons Rivers
Being Human, Being Migrant
Migration Theory
The Perils of Belonging
New Keywords
Ambitions of Bushfalling through Further Education
Towards a psychoanalytic migration studies
Kingdom on Mount Cameroon
HuManitarianism
The Universal Right to Breathe
Narration as a human communication paradigm
The postcolonial migration state
Land Restitution and Conflict in Cameroon
Whiteman Kontri and the enduring allure of modernity among Cameroonian youth
Minor keywords of political theory
Traditional and Colonial African Boundaries
Migration and the politics of 'the human
Introducing the Anti-Refugee Machine
"On Sylvia Wynter's Darwinian Heresy of the "Third Event
Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom
The Taliban and the humanitarian soldier
Elite associations and the politics of belonging in Cameroon
Sylvia Wynter's Theory of the Human
On the Coloniality of Being
To decolonize migration studies means to dismantle it. On Adrian Favell's The Integration Nation and question-ability
| Citations per year | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |