Handbook on Migration and Cities

by Els de Graauw, Jan Rath, and Ceren Kulkul Akyunak

Cheltenham: Edward Elgar

The publication is Open Access and can therefore be downloaded free of charge.

Coming out soon (January 2027)
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Cities and migration shape one another in profound ways, yet migration studies and urban studies have often developed separately. This Handbook brings them together, placing human mobility at the center of contemporary urban transformation while also highlighting how processes of urban transformation shape patterns and experiences of human mobility. Migrants—from marginalized newcomers to highly skilled professionals—reshape neighborhoods, labor markets, institutions, and political life, even as the histories and structures of cities shape how migrants settle, access opportunities, and experience belonging or exclusion. Cities are therefore not neutral backdrops but dynamic socio-spatial arenas where rights, resources, and inequalities are organized and contested.

With 51 chapters, this volume offers a wide-ranging exploration of these versatile dynamics. It moves from broad concepts and theoretical debates to grounded analyses of how cities structure these processes on the one hand, and how migration shapes housing, work, education, politics, and cultural life in cities around the world on the other. Attention is given not only to major structures and institutions but also to the everyday practices through which migrants and city dwellers create meaning, negotiate difference, and build community. Organized around themes such as concepts and debates, mobility and settlement, everyday urban life, proliferating social worlds, and politics, the collection draws on diverse disciplines and perspectives to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the intersections of migration and urban life.

Bringing together leading scholars from Europe and North America while engaging perspectives from the Global South, the Handbook offers a fresh and integrated framework for understanding how mobility and cities together drive the social, spatial, and political transformations of our time. Accessible yet firmly rooted in scholarship, the book offers readers the knowledge to explore cities as spaces where migration is not peripheral but central—an ongoing force that shapes the past, present, and future of urban society.

For more information, visit the publisher’s website.