Migration as Resistance: Power, Governance, and Survival in the Global South

Migration has often been framed as a policy challenge related to border control, security, and humanitarian management. In this paper, an alternative framing is developed through a critical understanding of migration as resistance emerging from global structures of inequality. The paper places migration within Resistance Studies and studies of the Global South in order to get a more fine-grained understanding of how mobility signifies agency, survival strategies, and contestation in light of systemic oppression. This paper seeks to critically do three things: a) explore how migration acts as everyday and structural resistance; b) investigate the nexus between migration, governance, and power in the Global South; and c) engage with how migration studies can offer resistance to, and therefore further develop, Resistance Studies. The research uses a systematic secondary literature review, including articles, texts, and documents published by journals, publications, and institutions of peer-viewed articles, on studies of both migration and political economy, feminist studies, Subaltern Studies, and studies of Resistance. The review states that the role of migration is not only about responding to poverty, conflicts, and environmental challenges but is also about actively resisting structural inequalities like labor exploitation, political marginalization, gender subordination, and environmental subjugation. The migrants employ their agency through various channels like international mobility, irregular labor systems, remittances, transnational family ties, and diasporic politics and society. All these strategies contest the state and market-controlled systems through the redistribution of resources, recasting identities, and communities that extend beyond national borders. Nevertheless, the results also illustrate that the agency in migratory resistance is being limited by securitized borders, immigration policies, surveillance systems, and criminalizing mobility. The paper suggests that the governance of migration should shift as a result of a resistance-informed and rights-centred framework that positions migrants as agents in society and politics, and not as mere beneficiaries of aid. The global issue of inequality and labor rights abuses must also be addressed and should not simply be construed as a reason for the phenomenon of migrants moving from one country to another. Thus, emphasis must also be placed on the rights of migrants and their involvement in various functions that could develop and change society. In academic institutions, Resistance Studies must be mainstreamed in studying migrants. Future studies ought to investigate cases in the Global South from a comparative perspective, investigate gendered and climate-related types of resistant migration, and use secondary analysis in conjunction with qualitative methods to achieve greater understanding.