In migration scholarship, questions of social conflict and transformation
tend to be addressed as the backdrop rather than as central dynamics in changing
migration practices. This article calls for the integration of migration within
wider sociological analyses of social struggle and change. While it is true that the
emergence of interdisciplinary approaches, such as Transnational Studies, Diaspora
Studies and Mobility Studies, has moved migration studies in new directions, migration
continues to be addressed separately from scholarship on social conflict and
change. Nonetheless, these new domains challenge received sociological categories
and develop more nuanced accounts by identifying distinct experiences of migration
as shaped by contemporary mobilities and transnational processes. In this article
I review these approaches and consider their potential for opening up newdirections
for the study of migration as an aspect of wider social struggles. I also examine the
extent to which these fields of study work against the ‘capture’ of knowledge on
migration by those forces that attempt to control it. Given the limitations identified,
I argue that the ‘autonomy of migration’ approach provides important pointers for
how social struggle and the politics of knowledge production might be centred in
the study of migration.