Conceptualizing « migration marketing »: a research agenda

Globalisation is based on the overlap of several mobility regimes (Glick Shiller and Salazar 2013), oscillating between the rejection of repellent figures (asylum seekers and low-skilled workers from low-income countries) and the attraction of coveted mobilities (tourists and talents from high-income countries). While the securitization of migration (Shamir 2005; Bourbeau 2013) and the conversion of Western societies to anti-immigration rhetoric (Kriesi et al. 2006; Bilodeau and Turgeon 2014) are well-documented phenomena, the making of the desirable foreigners and the policies aimed at targeting them and facilitating their immigration and integration procedures remain little studied in social science. Yet, devices for attracting migrants with high economic and human capital are multiplying, such as expatriation promotion campaigns (Cosquer 2019), talent passports (Petit 2019) or so-called golden visas (Amante and Rodrigues 2021). In other words, the (de)regulation of international mobility is evolving towards a globalised market for the reception of elites (Wagner 2016), with territories competing for it. This conceptual paper therefore aims at developing the concept of “migration marketing” to analyse policies, devices and practices aiming at attracting desirable migrants. To achieve an exhaustive definition of the concept of “migration marketing”, this paper first presents the results of a literature review carried out on a corpus of N¬=80 scientific articles from journals in management, urban studies, economics and social sciences. It will also discuss the first observations from an exploratory fieldwork conducted with the Prospection and Promotion division of the Ministry of Immigration of a provincial State.