Some of my projects have been cooking—slowly—for years, sometimes even a decade. I’ve shared and reshaped them through conferences, workshops, and seminars, each time thanks to the generous engagement of colleagues who have followed the journey. I am deeply grateful for their insights and companionship along the way. For me, slow research truly means slow research—and that’s exactly how I like it.
In 2004, while working on my PhD in Yemen, I introduced the idea that Yemen was an indirect rentier state, benefiting from the oil economy of its richer neighbour through its emigrants settled in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies and their remittances, both financial and social. I was inspired by the concept of the secondary rentier state coined by B. Destremeau and P. Signoles (1995). Working on both origin and destination countries of Eritreans exiles and migrants as part of my PhD, I argued migration generates rent not only for migrants' countries of origin (Eritrea and Yemen), but also for destination countries (Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen), their citizens and potentially for migrants themselves. My dissertation as a whole discussed the role of countries of origin and destination in the political economy of migration and exile within the Arab world and the diplomatic relations they generate over time. After completing my dissertation, I introduced the notion of migration rent (Thiollet 2015). I argued that migration rent is produced and extracted by nationals when they benefit from the presence and labour of foreigners, by states, and by a myriad of intermediary institutions and actors. However, I observe a process of governmentalisation of migration control, which involves increased control and appropriation of the migration rent by migration rentier states in countries of origin and destination. I call this process the sovereign turn. It is fundamental to domestic state-building processes and to international and transnational relations. It is part of a broader migration rentier social contract (Thiollet 2021).
More theoretically, the migration rent entails migration and the social and economic relations that operate both within and across countries. These relations are inherently intermestic, linking domestic politics with international and transnational dynamics and they bring together the role of states with the agency of private actors, including migrants themselves.
While I have been refining the notion of migration rent in a series of writings from 2016 to the present, this book project seeks to offer a broader theory of migration rent as a key framework for understanding the structures and transformations of socio-political and economic relations. In addition to its theoretical ambition, this project is firmly anchored in the belief that social theories can emerge from long-term empirical observations of non-Western contexts.
See
2004. « Aux marges du monde arabe. Place du Yémen dans les itinéraires de migrants et de réfugiés érythréens », Arabian Humanities, n° 12, <https://journals.openedition.org/cy/190>
2011. Migration as Diplomacy: Labour Migrants, Refugees and Arab regional politics in the oil rich countries, International Labor and Working Class History, (79), p. 103-121. DOI: 10.1017/S0147547910000293
2015. Migration et (contre)révolution dans le Golfe : politiques migratoires et politiques de l’emploi en Arabie saoudite Revue européenne des migrations internationales, Vol. 31(3), 121-143. https://doi.org/10.4000/remi.7400.
2016. Gérer les migrations, gérer les migrants. Une perspective historique et transnationale sur les migrations dans les monarchies du Golfe [Managing migration, managing migrants. A historical and transnational perspective on migration in the Gulf Monarchies], Arabian Humanities, 7. DOI: 10.4000/cy.3150 In english: Managing migrant labour in the Gulf. Transnational dynamics of migration politics since the 1930s, IMI Working Papers Series, No. 131, 2016 p.1-25. URL : https://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/publications/managing-migrant-labour-in-the-gulf-transnational-dynamics-of-migration-politics-since-the-1930s
2021. Migrants and Monarchs: Regime Survival, State Transformation and Migration Politics in Saudi Arabia. Third World Quarterly , 43:7, 1645-1665, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2021.1948325
2023. Immigration rentier states, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2023.2269783
"Political Economy and Moral Topographies of Urban Change: Rethinking the Religion-Urban Nexus from the Middle East" Special feature for City. Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action co-edited with Azadeh Mashayekhi (UCL)
"Les mots et les choses des politiques migratoires : perspectives comparées", dossier pour Mondes & Migrations. Coordination: Mehdi Alioua (UIR Rabat), Antoine Pécoud (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord), Sadio Soukouna (Université du Québec à Montréal), Hélène Thiollet (CNRS/CERI Sciences Po) & Emeline Zougbédé (Université de Rouen)
"Diffusing Borders. The Politics and Meaning of European externalisation Policies" with Katharina Potinius and Filip Savatic, presented at ISA 2024.
"The International Politics of Migration (Inter)dependency" presented in CES and ISA annual conferences in 2022, 2023 and 2024; Working paper version of nov. 2024 circulated available as https://shs.hal.science/view/index/docid/5336276 (halshs-05336276v1) [expanding upon the 2019 IMI working paper. ]
"Intersectional Politics of Migration Management: Rethinking State-led Stratification from the Gulf". With Laure Assaf presented in 2025 at CEFREPA Workshop in Kuwait.
“Resilient Residents: Migrants’ settlement and anti-immigrant policies in the Gulf monarchies” earlier versions presented at MESA annual conference 2013, Sciences Po 2015, à Paris 7 2016 and univ. of Exeter 2018, recent version at NY Abu Dhabi 2025.
"There are no others in Eritrea but Arab citizens: Eritrean Asylum diplomacy and pan Arabism from below (1962-1991)" paper presented at the "Transnational Lived Citizenship: practice of citizenship as political belonging among emerging diasporas in the Horn of Africa" workshop – Khartoum 9th - 10th November 2022
"Making Crisis, Manufacturing Europe. How Media Discourses on Migration Crisis Produce Negative Europeanisation" with Etienne Toureille, Romain Leconte, Michelle Reddy. Presented at ISA in 2024 and UBC in 2025.
"A Global Migration Crisis? Spaces and Times of Media Frame Diffusion of Across the World" with Etienne Toureille and Romain Leconte.
"Migration and International Interventions. Migration Mainstreaming and Migration Washing", presented at ISA and APSA Annual Meetings 2022.
“Mixed Migration. The Multilateral Politics of Migration Labelling” presented at APSA Annual Meeting 2019.
“An Anatomy of Agency. Eritrean Refugees in Eastern Sudan, 1962-2013”, King's college, 7 Feb. 2014