In progress

Articles


 Book project: The Migration Rent. State, Space and The Moral Economy of Inequality.

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. 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

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