The Two Corn Unicorn: Revising the Divide Between Lifestyle and Economic Migration in European Immigration Research

Over the course of just a few decades, European immigration has reached levels similar to traditional settlement countries and made the subject of a vast and growing scholarship. However, research on European research tends to distinguish between ‘economic migration’ and ‘lifestyle migration’ and to define the two as antithetical varieties of international migration: they are explained by different factors, regulated by different policies and with different social consequences. While the divide is also present informs research on immigration in non-European contexts, it is been most influential in migration research in Europe. The paper examines this divide in migration research by first systematically analysing the works published in three migration journals over the last years on European immigration and, second by exploring its sources and its impact on migration theory in general. The paper argues that the split in migration research on European case has emerged because of the consolidation of the freedom of movement regimes for European citizens and because of the specialization within social sciences (lifestyle migration is predominantly studied by  geographers and social anthropologists and rarely by economists and political scientists whereas with opposite is happening with economic migration). The paper ends by calling for more interdisciplinary approaches and argues in favour of mainstreaming migration in broader social sciences to reconnect particular cases with migration theory.