Perspectives of flow and place: rethinking notions of migration and mobility in policy-making

ABSTRACT Why do some migration policies cause controversial debates while others are barely noticed? And why do migration policies consistently fail to meet their stated objectives? This paper argues that identifying the underlying perspective that informs migration policy-making can be a productive tool to answer these questions. I start by reviewing notions of ‘migration’ and ‘mobility’ used in political and scholarly discourse and argue that the ways of differentiating between the two entail not only biases related to norms of sedentariness or social hierarchies, but also blind spots for how states and individuals perceive cross-border movements. As an alternative, I propose to conceptualise ‘migration’ and ‘mobility’ as categories reflecting perspectives that either normalise sedentariness and fixed borders or movement and fluidity. In a second step, I combine the two perspectives with the perceptions of the state as the main regulator of movement and the individual on the move, leading to four ideal-typical situations of aligned and non-aligned perspectives on human movement. This notion of intersecting perspectives can help us explain both policy-making processes and the impact of migration policies. This is illustrated through two examples of EU-level policies on intra-corporate transferees on the one hand and family reunification on the other.


Introduction
When is the movement of a human being across a state border called 'migration', and when is it called 'mobility'?What looks like a banal distinction has profound implications for how states regulate movement and stay, how societies perceive it and how individuals on the move experience their movement and subsequent stay.While migration research is increasingly tackling the complex interaction between migration and mobility (Dahinden 2016;D'Amato, Wanner, and Steiner 2019;Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013;Wyss and Dahinden 2022), such attempts have been largely absent in migration policy research which 'has failed to engage with the question of who is a migrant in the first place' (Amelina 2021, 2).Recent advances in migration studies have started to unpack different categorizations of migrants and migration, studying both the production of categories through discourse and policy and how they impact people on the move (Bakewell 2008;Crawley and Skleparis 2018;Dahinden, Fischer, and Menet 2021;Kunz 2020;Raghuram 2013).This has allowed for new conceptualisations of who is labelled a 'migrant' (Amelina 2021;Scheel and Tazzioli 2022).I argue that in order to make these advances productive for understanding migration policy-making and its consequences, we should consider the production of 'mobility' alongside the notion of 'migration'.By embracing the ambiguities inherent in both terms, we can identify the underlying perspectives on movement in different types of migration policies.
To develop my argument, I start from the most common differentiations of migration and mobility in migration policy and scholarly literature.These are distinctions based on time (migration is a long-term phenomenon while mobility is short-term), national border crossing (migration is a movement across borders while mobility stays within borders) and privilege, based on often racialised and classed notions of desirable 'mobility' and unwanted 'migration'.I find that these differentiations are not only unsatisfactory for 'objectively' distinguishing between migration and mobility, they also each entail significant blind spots for many forms of human movement.In a second step, I argue that we should go beyond critiquing definitions of 'migration' or 'mobility' and turn our attention to the question how our understanding of human movement and its function shapes what we define as migration and mobility respectively.I then develop a conceptual framework that defines and delineates them as terms capturing two contrasting perspectives on human movement.The first perspective refers to movement from the point of view of sedentariness, or 'place', while the second perspective does so from the point of view of mobility itself, referred to as 'flow'.The place perspective normalises rootedness and a view of the world as organised in mutually exclusive national containers whereas the flow perspective emphasises movement, mobility, and fluidity in an interconnected world.Rather than taking one perspective or the other as a starting point, we can look at a specific policy or an individual process of movement and ask which one of the perspectives underlies it.To make these perspectives productive for understanding migration policies, we can then consider and contrast the understanding of movements of the statethe instance that regulates movement and stayand of the individual on the move.
This conceptualisation makes two contributions to the study of migration policymaking: first, it helps to identify the core assumptions and blind spots that are inherent in both perspectives.This can help explain why some forms of human movement are subject to high political salience while others are hardly noticed.Second, the combination of the state view on movement with an individual's own perception is a tool to bridge policy rationales and migrant agency and to think about instances where the intention of a given policy is not congruent with the perspective of migrants who are supposed to be covered by it.Uncovering such unaligned perspectives can be important to identify why migration policies fail to achieve their stated objective (Castles 2004;Lutz, Kaufmann, and Stünzi 2019).I illustrate this through two empirical examples of EU-level migration policies that are close to the ideal types of the place and flow perspective at the level of state regulation: the Directive on Intra-corporate Transferees, where regulation clearly reveals a perspective of flow, and the Family Reunification Directive, which testifies to a place-based perspective on movement and stay.

Distinguishing migration and mobility
'Migration' and 'mobility' are omnipresent, yet contested terms to describe the movement of humans across space.In migration studies, efforts to unpack these terms have gained traction in recent years (Anderson 2019;Dahinden 2016;Kunz 2020;Amelina 2021;van Ostaijen 2020;Scheel and Tazzioli 2022).Scholars have engaged with the production of categories such as 'migrant', 'refugee' or 'expat' and with the way in which migrants navigate categories that are ascribed to them by state policies (Bakewell 2008;Crawley and Skleparis 2018;Dahinden, Fischer, and Menet 2021;Kunz 2020;Will 2023).This has brought attention to the question of who is considered a migrant in the first place (Amelina 2021;Scheel and Tazzioli 2022).Defining migrants as those who struggle with borders, as Scheel and Tazzioli propose, or looking at the social processes and practices through which some persons are labelled 'migrants' (Amelina 2021), helps to render visible the unequal application of statecraft though processes of 'enacting migrants' or 'doing migration'.However these efforts have hitherto not considered 'other forms of mobility' (Scheel and Tazzioli 2022, 9).Movements that are rarely discussed as 'migration' make up large shares of mobility across the globe, be it in the form of temporary or seasonal workers, international students, intra-company transfers, development workers, youth mobility schemes or in other forms (Coderre and Nakache 2022;Hooper and Coz 2020;Lavenex et al. 2023;Raghuram 2009;Ruhs 2013;Salt and Brewster 2023).Engaging with the policies that govern such movements requires to unpack not only the processes and discourses through which they get labelled as 'migration', but also the processes and discourses that result in the avoidance of this label.This paper aims to develop a conceptualisation which captures both migration and mobility as underlying perspectives of migration policy-making.To do so, I first revisit three key ways of understanding the difference between migration and mobility.I aim to show that all three of these distinctionsalong a time dimension, along the crossing of a political border, and along notions of privilegeleave out important aspects of what they want to capture.
Attempts to delineate 'migration' from 'mobility' thus inherently produce ambiguities and a blindness for many forms of human movement.The distinctions along a time dimension and the crossing of a nation-state border are mostly taken for granted in theories of migration policy (Boswell 2007;Freeman 2006;Hollifield 2004).They overwhelmingly engage with movement across state borders and that has 'a time dimensiondecided by convention (one year in the statistics)after which [migrants] can be considered to have moved residency' (Favell 2007, 269).Consequently, 'temporary movements' are called 'mobility', and tend to be neglected in policy discourses (Coderre and Nakache 2022).The meaning of 'temporary' is, however, not straightforward, and one can only assess ex-post whether a movement across a border is indeed temporary (Bauböck 2011, 670).Some 'temporary mobile persons' might stay for several years and still not count as 'migrants'.Circular movements such as those of seasonal workers or repeated short-term stays also escape a definition of migration based on time thresholds, even though they might be long-term in nature (Triandafyllidou 2022, 3852).Ultimately, the distinction between migration and mobility based on a time threshold thus involves arbitrary judgments along a continuum between very short-term movements on the one hand and permanent settlement on the other (cf. D 'Amato, Wanner, and Steiner 2019, 6).Favell (2007, 274) illustrates the resulting blind spot by referring to service trade-related cross-border movement: A posted service worker is no longer a temporary migrant or potential immigrant.Yet move across borders they certainly mustservices nearly always require a physical movementand it is quite possible that they might relocate and work for several years in another society under these regulations, with all the social implications this entails.The space they live in is a space carved out and largely ungoverned within the receiving society.The all-integrating nation-state has many such holes, like a giant Swiss cheese.
The quote also illustrates how the second distinction between migration and mobility based on the crossing of a state border is inherent to our understanding of who is a migrant and who is a mobile person.Yet, quite obviously, a distinction based on the mere crossing of a border would count international tourists and business travellers as migrants, while most would agree that they are not.But even combined with a time threshold, this supposedly 'neutral' distinction disregards movements within a political entity as irrelevant, although they might be equally significant for the individuals on the move and for answering research questions related to the regulation of human movement (Kalir 2013;King and Skeldon 2010).Moreover, it cannot explain why some policies, even though the movement they regulate is 'migration' under the above definition, escape this label.Here, critical and discursive approaches are more helpful.
The discussion around methodological nationalism in migration studies has shown that the focus on state borders in defining migration rests on the unquestioned 'assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world' (Wimmer and Schiller 2002, 302).This makes us see the earth as a space of clearly separated territories defined by national borders.Migration across such borders thus becomes an exceptional phenomenon that needs to be controlled, whereas the same movement within states is 'seen as normal, even desirable' (Brubaker 2010, 63).The focus on state control over cross-border flows is omnipresent in at least the political science accounts of international migration.However, scholars have acknowledged for some time that the economic structures of nation-states have become increasingly interdependent, leading to a tension between demands for open economies on the one hand and closed societies on the other referred to as the liberal paradox (Hollifield 2004).Movement that follows the needs of an interdependent economic structure does not fit easily with the notion of an all-controlling state and is often disregarded in policy debates.However, such movements exist in many forms (Spijkerboer 2018, 454), most prominently in the form of regional integration frameworks but also in the form of migration within multinational companies (Salt and Brewster 2023) and inmost forms of intra-state migration, to name some examples.Arguably, this neglect is connected to the third differentiation between migration and mobility along a social hierarchyi.e.those whose movement is 'desired' or considered 'useful' are not labelled 'migrants' while 'unwanted' or 'problematic' ones are (Anderson 2017(Anderson , 1532;;Faist 2013;Spijkerboer 2018, 453;Wyss and Dahinden 2022, 2).A similar differentiation is the one between immigrants who settle in the country of destination and 'highly mobile individuals, such as highly skilled migrants, global jet-setters, global individuals of high social class, or diplomats [who] make mobility their lifestyle and are less in need of integrating themselves into their host environment' (Gianni 2017, 214).In both accounts, 'mobility' is equated with high skills, frequent movement and no need for belonging or integration in the place of destination.The discussions around the categories of 'expats' and 'migrants' reveal similar ascriptions, while also uncovering the classed and racialised notion of both 'migration' and 'mobility' (Kunz 2020;Wyss and Dahinden 2022).Another discursive distinction is based on the use of 'mobility' vs. 'migration' as part of a discursive political strategy.This is most prominently the case in official EU discourse where cross-border movement of EU nationals, also for long periods of time, is labelled 'mobility', while the term 'migration' applies instead to the movement of third-country nationals only (cf.van Ostaijen 2020).Privileged immigration schemes, such as facilitated rules for investors, are often labelled with terms that avoid 'migration', such as residence-for-investment, 'golden visas' or 'golden passports' (Consterdine and Hampshire 2023;Surak and Tsuzuki 2021).Similar discursive distinctions can be found in free trade agreements, which allow for binding rules on the admission of some labour migrants but avoid the term 'migration' and use 'terms of mobility or, even more abstractly, "Mode 4"' instead (Lavenex 2006, 52).
However, while identifying the distinction between 'desired' mobility and 'unwanted' migration is useful to critically analyse attributions of both terms, it ultimately proves to be as elusive as the two other perspectives: first, an 'elite-focused' view on mobility fails to account for other forms of 'highly mobile individuals', like low-paid temporary or seasonal migrant workers (Crettaz and Dahinden 2019;Gogia 2006).Mobile persons can be just as unwanted, and indeed this is often the reason for denying them the status of 'immigrants'.Second, amidst the mounting backlash against globalisation and 'global elites', privileged forms of mobility such as 'golden visas' for investors have also encountered heightened scrutiny in recent years (Surak and Tsuzuki 2021).In the following section, I put forward that one potential remedy to these lacunae is a heuristic that integrates the differentiations between migration and mobility into an overarching framework based on two ideal-typical perspectives on the world and movements within it.

Migration and mobility as perspectives of place and flow
As an alternative to defining what 'migration' and 'mobility' are or are made to be, I propose to conceptualise them as two fundamentally different perspectives on human movement, the perspective of place and the perspective of flow.Hereby, I build on Manuel Castells' work on the 'space of places' and the 'space of flows' as different organising principles of society.Networks and connections characterise the space of flows, which is independent from territory, while the space of places depends on the existence of 'places' in a territorial or local sense where 'function and meaning are self-contained within the boundaries of physical contiguity' (Castells 1996, 412-413;423).This differentiation resonates with Tim Cresswell's critical geographic approach, which identifies two fundamentally different perspectives on the world and the movements occurring within it: the 'sedentarist metaphysics' [cf.also (Malkki 1992)] and the 'nomadic metaphysics'.In the sedentarist metaphysics, mobility is seen 'through the lens of place, rootedness, spatial order, and belonging', making it 'ideologically suspect, a by-product of a world arranged through place and spatial order' (Cresswell 2006, 26).The nomadic metaphysics, on the other hand, 'has little time for notions of attachment to place, and revels in notions of flow, flux, and dynamism.Place is portrayed as stuck in the past, overly confining, and possibly reactionary' (Cresswell 2006, 26).
Relying on the concepts of flow and place as different worldviews allows to conceptualise 'migration' and 'mobility' as revelatory of certain perspectives instead of distinguishable phenomena.If we take the 'migration', or place perspective, movement from one place to another happens against a norm of sedentariness, whereas from the 'mobility' or flow perspective, movement happens in the context of a general norm of mobility, not only of humans but of ideas, goods, and capital, among others.Understood in this sense, the perspectives are heuristic tools to capture different understandings of human movement by those who speak about them, regulate them, or live them.
The place perspective roughly corresponds to the classical (now often criticised) approach in migration studies in which migration is seen as a one-off, long-term phenomenon that is neatly regulated and controlled by states.It reflects the 'sedentary bias' in migration studies and in social sciences more broadly (Dahinden 2016;Sheller and Urry 2006).The term 'migration' itself implies that movement is place-oriented, being composed of 'emigration'the move away from a placeand 'immigration'the move towards a place.Fixed boundaries in a 'space of places' imply that persons either belong to a place or they do nottemporalities, multiple movements and the ensuing ambiguity of belonging do not fit well with a place perspective, which emphasises the need for 'integration' and state control over movement, both physically and conceptually as the ability to control who should be part of a place.
The flow perspective, on the other hand, describes a lens which has become prominent with the emergence of the new mobilities paradigm (Sheller and Urry 2006).It puts mobility at the centre of interest and 'within the context of various forms of movement of people in spaceat first independently from nation states' (Dahinden 2016(Dahinden , 2215)).From a flow perspective, human movement is not directed towards a new 'place', but is either a goal in itself or connected to other flows, such as those of goods, services, knowledge, etc.It is shaped by connections, opportunities and constraints rather than by the place of destination.The role of borders and state regulation of movement is also reconceptualised: rather than being a tool for control and a prime expression of state sovereignty, borders and regulations are either irrelevant or a regulatory impediment to the free flow of people, goods or capital.. Just like the distinctions discussed above, each of the two perspectives entails limitations and blind spots.Taking these blind spots seriously allows us to more productively engage with the implications of taking one or the other perspective on human movement.A place perspective entails a disregard for short-term or frequent movement, for the instrumental character of movements and for connections to places other than the destination.A flow perspective overlooks the importance of territorially defined places, desires for belonging and recognition and for the control and regulation of movement.By way of example, 'literature on highly skilled migrants has often associated high levels of skills and human capital with increased mobility' (Babar, Ewers, andKhattab 2019, 1554), and thus has only recently paid more attention to the struggles of persons seen as highly-skilled but temporary migrants to obtain a more secure status (Isaakyan 2022;Triandafyllidou 2022).When mobility is seen as part of one's lifestyle and even right of some sort, migration policies become 'legal technicalities' (Kunz 2020(Kunz , 2154)).However, by neglecting the importance of policies, the flow perspective cannot account for inequalities in the conditions of moving and staying (Akbar 2022).Yet 'legal status, as well as global racialising categories, can make a world of difference in terms of the ease of travel, the repercussions of trying to move, and whether or not the traveller gains or loses status from being from elsewhere' (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013, 188).Neglecting notions of belonging equally hides inequalities between those whose belonging is assumed and those whose is not.
Normalising either sedentariness or mobility thus leads to a selective understanding of the phenomenon studied, the research questions related to it, and the importance given to regulation and control.I suggest that embracing these limitations and looking at the two perspectives as simultaneous possibilities can be productive when we consider both the level of regulation of movement and the individual on the move.

The migration-mobility nexus: four intersecting perspectives on human movement
How a movement is characterised depends to a large degree on who characterises it.In the following, I assume that the two main actors involved in human movement are the individual who is moving and the state of destination.This is, of course, a simplification, but it allows us to contrast the perspective of regulation with that of the person actually doing the move, even if those might be influenced by a multitude of factors and actors.
The state stands for the authority that regulates the movement and stay of individuals and is responsible for enforcing these regulations.Two dimensions define the relationship between state and individual: rules on movement and stay (e.g.conditions for entry, length or legitimate purpose of stay) and (human) rights obligations of the state towards the individual.We can see regulation and rights as the result of a certain (place or flow) perspective on a specific movement.From a place perspective, the state's main role is to control access to its territory and to regulate attachment to a place through rights and obligations.From a flow perspective, on the other hand, the role of the state is to manage the movement of people so it contributes to other goals, such as the need to fill labour shortages, foster innovation, promote tourism, generate revenue, facilitate cultural exchange, etc. Examples where the state adopts such a flow perspective in regulating cross-border movement are manifold, from seasonal workers programmes to intra-corporate transferees to students and academic researchers.An extreme example are the Gulf states, where the goal […] is to create the ultimate urban-neoliberal dream: permanent, self-sustaining global hubs for talent which are constantly made and remade as they attract new flows of knowledge and expel those which are no longer contributing to urban competitiveness and where migrants are not given 'the possibility of long-term integration and citizenship' (Babar, Ewers, andKhattab 2019, 1554).Taking a flow perspective does not mean that long-term stay is excludedindeed, highly-skilled immigration programmes, student immigration schemes or even policies for intra-corporate transfers often facilitate access to permanent residence (Akbar 2022;Deloitte 2018).The main point however is that neither long-term stay nor 'integration' are required or expected from the person on the move, even if for the individual, questions of home or belonging can be as salient in these moves as in cross-border moves.
The individual who moves is subject to the rules imposed by the state and bearer of the rights that a state grants.Above all, however, they are the agent of the movement in question and have a subjective conception of their movement.Thinking in ideal types, these understandings can also reflect either a place or a flow perspective, which may or may not be in line with the state's regulatory approach.For the individual, adopting a place perspective implies that the movement is a way to establish new roots at another place.A flow perspective implies that the stay in another place is not driven by the intention to 'belong' to this new place.The place of destination may be 'just another work place' (Kalir 2013, 324) or a destination to discover (Kesselring, 2006); notions of belonging are not tied to places but constructed around relationships, objects or memories (Nowicka 2007).
From the state perspective, but even more so in the view of an individual, the separation of a place and a flow perspective is probably never clear-cut in reality.As the transnationalism literature points out, the identification with the place of destination and concepts of belonging or 'home' are 'multiple, hybrid and dynamic' (Ralph and Staeheli 2011, 522).Moreover, both state and individual perspectives are dynamic and often change over time (Triandafyllidou 2022).Yet, the identification of these ideal-typical perspectives allows us to specify where the perspectives of state and individual can be at odds, and thus lays the basis for analysing the implications of aligned and non-aligned perspectives.Table 1 captures the four constellations of individual and state perspectives, meant as ideal-typical representations of 'pure' cases (Weinert 1996, 74) which do not necessarily correspond to or capture all empirically observable constellations.Rather, they can be a heuristic tool for better understanding the use of the concepts of migration and mobility by individuals and states alike and for identifying when they meet, overlap or contradict each other.
When the perspective of the state and the individual align, both conceive of the specific movement and the following stay either in terms of flow or of place.In the upper left constellation of 'settlement', the state emphasises place and belonging, and thus designs policies with a view to selectively grant access to its territory for longterm stay, requiring 'integration' of migrants into that place and ultimately regulating naturalisation.The individual equally envisages a long-term stay as well as inclusion in the host society.The mobility needed to do the initial move loses its importance shortly after arrival.The lower right constellation of 'passage' captures situations where both actors take a flow perspective.Here, notions of 'hypermobile individuals' Examples could be seasonal workers, intra-corporate transferees, digital nomads, researchers or travellers, to name just a few.The distinguishing characteristic of those on the move is that they do not intend to belong to the 'place' to which they come and in which they might stay for some timeirrespective of how privileged or comfortable they are in their movement and stay.Both state and individual have an instrumental outlook on the movement, while notions of belonging or 'integration' seemirrelevant.Aligned perspectives do not mean that the respective movements are without conflict or problematic regulations.Rather, both involved actors approach the movement with a similar lens, attaching importance to questions of belonging and rights or mobility and more instrumental and temporary stay.As a result, when there are conflicts, they play out on the same battleground, for example around the question how belonging should be achieved or lived, but not whether belonging is a question at all.The two other boxes represent cases where the perspectives of the state and the individual clash with one another and hence where their blind spots become apparent.Examples of the upper right constellation of 'imposed mobility', where the state takes a flow perspective while the individual seeks belonging, include persons with temporary residence permits whose desire to settle is obstructed by the host state authorities.They have entered a country based on regulations and policies coming from a flow perspective, granting only temporary access or access based on a certain status (e. g. as a worker or asylum seeker) and negating questions of inclusion and belonging, thereby rendering their existence precarious.Examples of such imposed mobility or 'befallen temporariness' (Triandafyllidou 2022, 3851) might be family members using short-term visas to join their relatives or refugees who can only access temporary protection in another country.Perspectives can become misaligned over time too, for example when temporary migrant workers shift from a flow to a place perspective over time.The lower left constellation of 'imposed settlement' refers to movements that individuals regard from a flow perspective, while the state emphasises stasis, control and 'integration'.This might apply, for example, to long-term immigrants for whom it is difficult to maintain a mobile life because the state's regulation inhibits circular movement or requires loyalty to the place of stay, e.g. by disallowing dual citizenship.A similar discrepancy in perspectives can exist with highly skilled and highly mobile migrants whom a state might want to attract and retain with a long-term perspective but who do not wish to settle and might end up moving on to a more attractive destination.Indeed, recent migration research highlights situations where long-term settlement policies such as naturalisation or acquiring permanent residence by marrying a national can be a way to make further mobility possible (Galeano, Pont, and Wanner 2022;Isaakyan 2022).
This concept of aligned and non-aligned perspectives is a descriptive concept, not a normative one.Identifying the lens from which a movement is categorised can help explain why it is 'defining' for some and 'irrelevant' for others, and why some forms of movement are labelled and regulated as 'migration' whereas other forms escape this term.Combining both perspectives and considering both state and individual, then, makes explicit who conceives of movement this way.Thus, we can avoid conflating 'objective' notions of what migration and mobility are with categorisations used by policymakers or in public discourse (Bakewell 2008).The blind spots of an emphasis on either migration or mobility become apparent when juxtaposing the rationale underlying a certain policy with the view of an individual concerned by it.The conceptualisation can thus be a helpful tool to analyse policy measures and their implications.Often, a clash between the individual's and the state's perspective on movement is at the heart of what is described as a policy failure (Castles 2004).For example, policies that aim to ensure the closeness of a geographically defined place can be confronted with the 'mobility norm' of individuals crossing borders on a regular basis.This visible clash can then lead to learning effects and further interactions between a flow and a place logic, be it through even stronger enforcement of border control or the eventual support of circular movements.Similarly, the attachment to the place of destination which some of the 'guest workers' in Western European countries have developed despite their stay always being instrumental and temporary from the state's point of view has ultimately led to the adoption of a 'place perspective', leading to (often problematic) integration discourses and a reluctant recognition of their belonging.Equally, policies can be contradictory and consist of elements testifying to a flow and a place perspective simultaneously.Whether the flow perspective or the place perspective becomes the view guiding public policy or political discourse often depends on which state function dominates in a specific case.This is illustrated in the next section, which discusses two pieces of EUlevel legislation in order to demonstrate the usefulness of thinking of underlying perspectives when analysing migration policies.
Policies of flow and place: intra-corporate transfers and family migration I use two examples of migration regulation to illustrate the conceptualisation of human movement in terms of place or flow and to show its usefulness for understanding migration policies: rules of entry and stay for intra-corporate transferees (ICTs) on the one hand and for family migrants on the other.The two examples were chosen as two cases that come close to the two ideal types of the place and flow perspective at the level of regulation respectively.ICTs embody the notion of the 'transnational elite' whose mobility follows the needs and strategies of multinational corporations, while family reunification policies have been subject to heightened politicisation where debates centre on questions of 'integration' and belonging.I use examples of EU-level directives that harmonise the national immigration regulation of the participating Member States through common rules and standards.The concept of perspectives is of course not specific to EU policies.However, EU-level legislation lends itself well to the illustration of both perspectives and their implications as both perspectives have strongly shaped the EU's approach to human movement: the integration and liberalisation of market exchanges, including through the mobility of people, has been the fundamental goal of European integration since its inception (Koikkalainen 2021).In contrast to this market-enhancing logic, migration policies for third-country nationals have developed much later and in an incremental fashion, guided by a strong 'statist' approach focused on controlling and limiting access for non-EU nationals (Lavenex 2019).The following two case studies illustrate how both perspectives can underly migration policy and how the underlying perspective impacts how immigration is negotiated.The case studies are based on an analysis of official documents from the legislative process including legislative proposals and negotiations documents, as well as secondary literature.I start by describing the main content of the two directives respectively, before analysing the policy rationales of both directives as evidenced in the legal text and the legislative proposals and reviewing the decision-making process.Finally, I juxtapose the regulatory content of both directives to identify discrepancies between policy rationales and the actual migration rules and possible realities which result from the blind spots of either perspective.
The EU Directive on Intra-Corporate Transferees (ICTD; Directive 2014/66/EU) is a prime example for a 'policy of flow'.It creates a residence permit for managers, specialists and trainees who are employed in a branch of a multinational company based outside the EU and move to another branch of the same company within the EU, while keeping their original work contract.This type of immigration presents a sizeable share of labour immigration in developed countries, including in the EU: by way of example, in France and Germany ICT permits made up 20-35 percent of temporary labour immigration of non-EU nationals in 2017 (OECD 2019, 127).Many states have also undergone international commitments to accept ICTs in trade agreements, both in the multilateral General Agreement on Trade in Services and in bilateral trade agreements (Lavenex et al. 2023).The ICTD allows intra-corporate transferees to stay in an EU Member State for up to three years and to move on to work in a second Member State under facilitated conditions in comparison with other non-EU immigrants (F.Lutz 2018, 26).
Testifying to the flow perspective, the text of the Directive emphasises the temporary and economic character of ICT migration, while muting aspects otherwise central to migration policy.In the legislative proposal, the Directive is presented as a measure to facilitate the flow of skills in order 'to boost the competitiveness of the EU economy' by overcoming 'obstacles encountered by businesses' in moving their personnel abroad' (European Commission 2010b, 2).The notion of temporariness features prominently as a way to distinguish ICTs from 'typical' immigrants (European Commission 2010a, 6), but also to justify that their rights as employees and access to social benefits are not equal to those staying long-term or permanently (European Commission 2010b, 11).With ICTs framed as a flexible workforce in the service of competitiveness, individuals on the move are seen as company assets rather than human beings with agency, and immigration regulation becomes an unnecessary rigidity that 'limit[s] recourse to highly qualified workers for companies' (European Parliament 2014, 55).As a result, the ICTD hardly produced any public controversy or even discussion (Maricuț-Akbik 2018, 167).This is especially surprising given that it is one of the few supranational policy instruments in the otherwise highly contested field of labour immigration, and considerably limits Member State discretion in regulating intra-company immigration (F.Lutz 2018, 20).Arguably, the fact that a flow perspective guided policy-makers' understanding of ICT migration helped to maintain low salience and a mode of 'quiet politics' (cf.Culpepper 2010) where the directive's benefits to multinational corporations loomed larger than concerns for migration control or sovereignty, which are otherwise important stumbling blocks for the harmonisation of immigration policies at the EU level (Roos 2019).
However, looking at the content of the Directive, it becomes clear that ICT 'mobility' can entail long-term movements, as the maximum length of stay of three years is no shorter than standard residence permits given to (supposedly long-term) immigrants.The Directive also includes the possibility for Member States to extend the stay, and most EU Member States allow for ICTs to transition into another residence permit (Deloitte 2018).Hence in practice, an intra-company transfer can be a first step towards a long-term stay.
The Directive on Family Reunification of 2003 (Directive 2003/86/EC) on the other hand testifies to an imaginary of permanent settlement and to the importance of immigration control and 'integration' inherent to the place perspective.It establishes minimum standards for Member States' policies on the entry and stay of family members of non-EU immigrants already residing in the EU.The directive's rules for family reunification rest on the assumption of permanent migration: the right to family reunification is only granted to immigrants who have 'reasonable prospects of obtaining the right of permanent residence' (Article 3 of the Directive).Contrary to the ICT Directive, the notion of 'integration' is a central theme of the Family Reunification Directive which is presented as 'a necessary way of making a success of the integration of third-country nationals residing lawfully in the Member States' (European Commission 1999, 3) which 'also serves to promote economic and social cohesion' in the host societies (European Commission 2000, 2).Hence, the directive is conceived as an integration policy instrument as much as in immigration policy instrument, testifying to a view of long-term settlement and the need to belong.However, the notion of 'integration' also serves to justify migration control and selective admission: access to a residence permit is conditional upon 'stable and regular' financial resources and adequate accommodation (Article 7 (1)), excluding immigrants who might be susceptible to rely on social benefits once in the host country (with exceptions for refugees).In addition, Member states can require family members to comply with 'integration measures' such as language tests or civic integration exams or contracts either before or after entry (Article 7 (2); EMN 2016., 26).Third, imposing suchintegration measures demonstrates that once immigrants have access to the territory, they are required to prove their ability and willingness to integrate.In contrast to the ICTD, the Family Reunification Directive was much more publicly salient and also controversial, and the Commission had to revise its proposal twice to cater to the restrictive demands of some Member States (Bonjour and Vink 2013, 394).
Whereas the Family Reunification Directive thus clearly exhibits the traits of the place perspective, here too the movement and stay does not necessarily correspond to this imaginary: the criterion of a 'reasonable prospect of obtaining the right to permanent residence' reveals an assumption of permanent migration, but what is required is merely the possibility that the current temporary status can turn into a permanent one, i. e. that the residence permit is renewable in principle (Hailbronner, Arévalo, and Klarmann 2016), regardless of the actual intention to stay permanently.The family members who join are entitled to a renewable residence permit that is valid for one year, allowing the state to render the stay temporary rather than permanent during the first years at least (Article 13).
The two instruments regulate international movements from the same group of countries and initially grant access for similar lengths of time, but the framing of these movements presents a stark contrast.This becomes most obvious in rules for family reunification in the ICTD: intra-corporate transferees are allowed to bring their spouses and children under more favourable conditions, as family reunification is not dependent on a prospect of permanent residence, and possible 'integration criteria' to be met by the family members can be established after entry, rather than being a condition for entry.While the imaginary of the family migrant is one of a 'migrant with poor prospects' (Bonjour and Duyvendak 2018), who has to be controlled and whose presence is conditional upon the state's approval, the imaginary of the ICT is one of highly skilled, flexible workers and facilitated family reunification is a way of making mobility more attractive to them (Council of the EU 2014, 2), rather than a means to control accesseven though apart from the mentioned exceptions, the rules on family reunification apply to the spouses and children of ICTs as much as to any other immigrant.
The examples of these two EU Directives show that the imaginary of 'place' or 'flow' behind a form of movement significantly shapes how a policy is perceived and whether or not it is subject to the fraught debates and struggles commonly associated with migration and integration policies.At the same time, identifying the perspective behind a given policy reveals the blind spots entailed in it: even though ICTs are not different from 'regular' immigrants in terms of how long they can stay, they escape the problemcentred discourse around 'migration' and the need to control it, as well as any expectation of 'integration'.The little importance attached to equal rights and belonging in the flow perspective can entail a precarious status for ICTs, especially if they wish to settle more permanently or switch employers (Costello and Freedland 2016).
Family migration, while being subject to international human rights obligations that limit state control, entails a much stricter notion of access control and expectations of long-term stay and integration.The place perspective is imposed through expectations of successful integration, which often requires a long stay to prove a stable income and efforts to acquire language skills even before arrival.It thus seems near impossible to escape the notions of integration tied to an idea of permanent residency unless when family members migrate as spouses or children of ICTs or other groups of persons whose movement is regulated in a perspective of flow.

Conclusion
In this paper, I have argued that the notions of migration and mobility should be seen as perspectives on human movement, rather than distinct phenomena.In a place perspective, migration is an anomaly in a world of closed spaces, whereas in a flow perspective, the movement of humans is just as normal as the movement of capital, goods, services, or ideas.The discrepancies between these two perspectives can become apparent when juxtaposing the perspectives of the regulating state and the moving individual.Two examples from EU migration policy have illustrated how this notion of perspectives can inform migration policy analysis.Considering a 'flow' and a 'place' perspective simultaneously shows that despite the strong focus on sovereign control, migration may not be contentious per se, but only when it is connected to notions of belonging tied to a bounded space and community from the perspective of the state.The example of the Intra-Corporate Transferee Directive has shown that from a state perspective, longterm cross-border movements can escape the label 'migration' when a flow perspective dominates both the rationale of a policy and the political discussion around it.Conversely, family reunification policies impose the label 'migrant' and require efforts of 'integration' independently of the actual time someone spends in the host state.Contrasting the state perspective with that of potential movers and the diversity of their experiences and ambitions can uncover inconsistencies and potential clashes that are often at the heart of why migration policies fail to attain their objectives.In this sense, the present conceptualisation can be used both for analyses of policy-making and discourse that identify underlying or changing notions of flow and place, and for analyses of policy impacts, e. g. through surveys or interviews with persons affected by specific policies.
For further refinement of the conceptualisation, two avenues appear promising: a further disentanglement of the state as regulator of movement, and a more thorough engagement of the place and flow perspectives with inequalities inherent in the labelling of movement.The simplistic unitary representation of the state in the present conceptualisation overlooks different levels of state regulations as well as different aspects and perspectives inherent in one policy.While this is a useful simplification for the juxtaposition of state and individual, it does not hinder a further disentanglement of the notion of 'the state' into different levels of governance, state functions and interests within governments (cf.Boswell 2007).Secondly, the question as to when and why a perspective of flow or place comes to shape policies and individual perspectives merits further examination.While the concept of perspectives is in itself agnostic towards inequalities, identifying how and why states adopt a flow or place perspective on a given movement can reveal how the underlying notions of who is entitled or required to belong and whose mobility is either enforced or relatively unconstrained are entangled with questions of race and imaginaries of the 'other' (Bonjour and Duyvendak 2018;Kunz 2020;Scheel and Tazzioli 2022).In this way, the present conceptualisation can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of policies and the effects they have on individuals.

Submission
This manuscript has been submitted solely to this journal and is not published, in press, or submitted elsewhere.A previous version (pre-print) of this work is uploaded on the website of the funding body: https://nccr-onthemove.ch/publications/between-flowsand-places-conceptualizing-the-migration-mobility-nexus/

Table 1 .
Four constellations of individual and state perspectives.