The Colonial Present: How Transnational Genealogies Shape Migration, Space, and Identity Today

Abstract

There is a correlation between colonial histories and contemporary migration practices, and this paper examines these transnational enduring connections. Using a qualitative thematic synthesis of existing interdisciplinary sources, this paper argues that the politics of space, migration, and identity in the present cannot be fully comprehended without tracing their colonial genealogies. The findings demonstrate that colonial migrations in all forms (forced, enslaved, or settled) formed transnational genealogies that determine who moves, who is stopped, who belongs, and who is an outsider. The paper concludes that understanding current migration politics, spatial inequalities, and identities requires an appreciation of transnational genealogies that connect the past to the present. The paper suggests that colonial history is more than a background but a framework that sets the conditions within which migration occurs today. This paper contributes to showing that family functions as a neglected site where genealogies are transmitted and contested across generations.

1. Introduction

Understanding the colonial threads woven into the fabric of contemporary migration is critical. The complex pattern of current global migration is composed of threads spun throughout the colonial era. Contrary to explanations that treat contemporary migration as a product of recent globalization or economic crises, this paper argues that colonial mobility regimes established deep historical continuities that persist today. This reality demands that we reconsider the usual ways of thinking about when and where migration happens. As such, this calls for reconsidering the temporal and spatial coordinates that are used to understand human mobility. In fact, contemporary migration is not a brand-new phenomenon, driven by current globalization, conflicts, or global economic downturns. There is a deep historical continuity that connects the past to postcolonial mobility. These connections manifest in current forced movements, spatial reorganization, and identity formations.

Colonialism deeply altered the politics of geography, migration, and identity, creating transnational genealogies that continue to have a powerful influence. Colonial powers did not just draw maps; they controlled space and reshaped populations (Northrup 1995). They forced new boundaries and created new forms of belonging and exclusion. Colonial powers compelled large-scale migrations such as the transatlantic slave trade and the movement of enslaved workers from Asia to Africa and the Caribbean. These forced movements resulted in enduring diasporas that broke up communities and generated new, often contested, identities in colonial territories that were strictly separated to uphold racial and social inequalities (Mamdani 1996).

The colonial politics of migration was about more than just labor; it was fundamentally about space: who can occupy it and who could move through it and under what conditions. As a result, the identities created during colonial migration were always hybrid and transcultural. Urban planning, land seizure, and creating borders that arbitrarily separated ethnic groups and altered notions of belonging all exemplify the colonial politics of space. Colonial migration was rarely voluntary; it was a tool for empires to operate their economies and generate profit. As a result, identities formed during colonial migration were always hybrid and transcultural, shaped by the trauma of displacement, resistance to imposed categories, and the necessity to move across different cultural spheres (Bhabha 1994). The politics of space implied that placement or permission to move within a space determined individuals’ rights and social value.

This paper’s unique contribution is to foreground the family as a crucial site where histories are transmitted, contested, and reignited across generation, a niche which is overlooked in migration studies. This paper argues that tracing the concept of transnational genealogies offers both methodological and theoretical orientations and connections that show that colonial histories are not past but present, manifesting in legal frameworks. The transnational genealogies provide answers to spatial arrangements, forms of identification, and patterns of mobility that are evident in the postcolonial era. The transnational genealogies frame the family as a crucial site where these histories are transmitted, contested, and reignited across generations. These family trees remain in the postcolonial era. Former colonial powers and newly independent states continue to grapple with the effects of these planned migrations and spatial divisions. Economic disparities and conflicts initiated when colonial boundaries were established often influence modern migration patterns that follow the same routes as colonial ones. Postcolonial nations frequently adopt and modify laws and perspectives on space from their colonial past, especially concerning citizenship, border control, and managing differences (Mbembe 2001). The identities of migrants and their children remain closely linked to colonial histories. This connection shapes how others perceive them (as former colonial subjects or members of diasporic groups) and how they find a sense of belonging both in their host countries and ancestral homelands. To understand contemporary migratory politics, spatial inequalities, and ongoing struggles for recognition and decolonization of identity and territory, we need to explore these transnational genealogies. They demonstrate how colonial history continues to influence migration today.

It is essential to elucidate that this research does not contend that colonial roots are the sole determinants of migration. Modern migration choices are influenced by destination variables such as salary disparities, employment demand, family reunion regulations, established diasporic networks, and educational prospects. A lot of these destination characteristics are the result of colonial history. For example, Commonwealth migration to the UK followed legal paths that were used during colonial times. Nonetheless, a comprehensive analysis of migration must encompass both origin and destination characteristics. This article prioritizes origin variables, as they are often undervalued in mainstream migration research. It also recognizes that migrants are not just driven by colonial legacies; they are also attracted by perceived possibilities in host nations.

This paper examines the conceptual terrain of transnational genealogies as a bearer of the politics of space, migration, and identity. The structure of the paper is as follows: first is the methodology underpinning this study. Second are the examination of colonial mapping and the forging of modern borders. This is followed by identifying hybrid identities and the legacies of coerced mobility. The fourth section traces continuities of control from colonial administration to postcolonial migration governance. This is followed by considering how diasporic communities engage in (re)claiming space and the efforts to decolonize migration through reparative justice and knowledge production. Last is the conclusion of the study.

2. Methodology

This study used a qualitative desktop analysis and thematic synthesis to collate existing interdisciplinary sources to map a conceptual terrain of transnational genealogies. According to Bowen (2009), qualitative research that uses published documents can generate new insights by putting together emerging patterns. Desktop analysis entails collection, evaluation, and rigorous interpretation of existing materials. According to Bowen (2009), qualitative research generates new insights by putting together patterns within the published materials. Since I did not need primary data collection, this approach was helpful to my study because it enabled me to trace theoretical connections across postcolonial studies, politics, and urban studies. I collected data using thematic axes and keywords. Boolean operators helped me to combine terms such as “colonial migration” AND “spatial segregation”. Other key words were “postcolonial identity”, “diaspora”, and “colonial mapping”. I focused on published materials, particularly peer-reviewed journal articles.

I used Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis approach to make sense of the data. Using this approach, I identified recurring concepts and themes that reveal the continuities between colonial and contemporary migration regimes. My data synthesis and critique went beyond summarizing to investigating how existing scholarship frames and connects issues of colonial pasts and contemporary migration. I also looked at what gaps, tensions, and future directions of migration are informed by past histories. To avoid my bias, I applied reflexivity and integrated scholarship from diverse discipline and geographical contexts. My idea was to reveal connections that may be missed or remain invisible within narrower frames.

3. Colonial Cartographies and the Forging of Modern Borders

It is helpful to appreciate that the current borders and structure of current political space are not natural features of the global landscape. The borders are historical artefacts marking the imprint of the colonial power. The colonial mapping and divisions were beyond mere geographical descriptions: they were a crafted technology of domination that warranted the appropriation of territory. Also, the colonial mapping gave rise to the control of populations and the introduction of new spatial orders. The lines drawn by European officials mark boundaries that continue to shape contemporary migration patterns, conflict, and belonging.

3.1. The Violence of Arbitrary Division

The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 about Africa’s partitioning is a typical example of the violence imposed on mapping nations. The European powers divided Africa into territories whose boundaries are divorced from pre-existing political formation, ethnic geographies, or even patterns of living. According to Popescu (2011), the arbitrary divisions of Africa disregarded existing social formations, producing new ones that forced people with no history of shared political community together. People bound by language, culture, and kinship were separated. The aftermath of the creation of these colonial boundaries continues to be noticed in conflict over citizenship, belonging, and resources. Prominent countries experiencing these issues include, but are not limited to, Nigeria, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In a similar way, the Middle East has a similar example. In 1916, the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which was championed by Britain and France, resulted in the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire’s Arab provinces. These boundaries reflected imperial interests as opposed to local realities. According to Mbembe (2001), these impositions by colonial powers resulted in instability, as populations were confused, failing to forge internal coherence and legitimacy. This colonial mapping is responsible for the region’s wars, refugee crises, and conflicts over identity and territories.

In 1947, the partition of India shows how colonial mapping affects people. The colonial borders divided Punjab and Bengal, causing the largest mass migration in human history. Estimates suggest about 10–15 million people moved between India and Pakistan. The communal violence associated with this movement led to over one million people being killed. This example shows that the division of a territory had ripple effects, dividing families, communities, and ways of life. The aftermaths of this action have enduring conditions of displacements and statelessness that continue to shape South Asian migration patterns today.

3.2. Borders, Securitization, and the Postcolonial States

To understand how colonial borders continue to shape migration governance, this section traces three interconnected logics: first, the epistemological assumption of methodological nationalism; second, the passport as a colonial technology of racial exclusion; and third, the production of statelessness as a deliberate administrative outcome. Each logic builds on the previous one, showing that border management today is not a neutral state function but a colonial inheritance.

The impact of colonial divisions and impositions of borders have shaped the “securitization” framework that most postcolonial states use to manage their borders and populations. Most postcolonial states have reproduced colonial logics of surveillance, exclusions, and spatial control (Popescu 2011). The label “migrant” is a category of suspicion and the “border” a site of reinforcement. Borders are not neutral administration components but remains of colonial worries about racial purity, territorial integrity, and management of mobile populations.

A close analysis of the “methodological nationalism” that has structured migration studies shows that most policies about migration are a reflection of colonial inheritance. Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002) define methodological nationalism as the tendency to take the nation state as the natural starting point for analysis. The observation by Stilz (2019) is that political philosophy makes the nation state a normative starting point to decide how to treat cross-border migrants. There is less focus on the migrants as mobile people, but the presumed rule is that of immobility. Beyond just the borders, the challenge of migration is deeper. According to Getachew (2019), Mongia (2018), and Sharma (2020), each reveal, in different ways, how the labels of citizenship, migrant, and nationality are made using imperial and colonial practices. Nation states are not neutral; they are hubs of colonial expansion and racial hierarchy and determine belonging and expulsions of populations.

However, passports also provide consular protection, legal identity, and mobility for citizens. In this context, this study is not saying that passports are inherently harmful, but this paper argues that their genealogical origins in colonial racial governance continue to shape unequal access to them. For many migrants, especially those from postcolonial countries with poor consular systems, getting a passport from the nation they are moving to is a hard-won triumph that gives them safety, the right to be with their family, and the ability to roam about. So, we need to remember that migrants actively seek and cherish passports as means of safety and movement while also criticizing them as colonial technology. The issue is not with the passport itself but with its inequitable distribution along colonial racial lines. The example of Indian migration processes to the UK provides a good example of how contemporary migration processes are not an expression of nation self-determination; rather, Mongia (2018) argues that Indian migration is a technique for managing racialized labor forces in postcolonial contexts. The passport system, now popular in all nation states for migration governance, is an effort to produce racially homogeneous settler states.

In sum, colonial borders did not simply divide territory; they produced enduring administrative technologies, the nation state as the natural unit of analysis, the passport as a racial filter, and statelessness as a structural condition. These three logics operate together in contemporary migration governance, often appearing neutral but consistently reproducing colonial hierarchies of mobility.

3.3. Enduring Displacement and Statelessness

Colonial borders are the starting point for producing forced migration and statelessness today. The colonial boundaries separated people from their kin and cut them off from ancestral lands. Such actions made people vulnerable and often persecuted as minorities in nations dominated by other groups. The Rohingya in Myanmar, hundreds of thousands of whom were forced into exile, trace their marginalization to colonial policies encouraging migration from South Asia but not recognizing communities as belonging to the Burmese state (Shahabuddin 2019). Another example of statelessness involves the Kurds, who were divided amongst Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria by post-Ottoman boundaries. To a greater extent, the Kurds’ self-determination and aspirations are frustrated by state systems that are inherited from colonial powers (Gunes 2019).

These examples of displacement and statelessness are critical to highlight that borders are active forces that produce identities, exclusions, and patterns of movements. Thus, colonial genealogies determine which populations move and answer the question of why they choose to move via particular routes and why they experience specific forms of exclusions or inclusion at borders. In a way, transnational genealogies shape the spatial possibilities and constraints within which migrants traverse their lives.

4. Hybrid Identities and Coerced Mobilities

The creation of new spatial orders by colonial migration created new forms of identities. The slave trade’s forced labor and the displacements of Indigenous populations inevitably created diasporic communities. These diasporic communities, over time, transformed their identities, making them different from those of the origin or destinations. The identities can be regarded as hybrid formations calibrated with the trauma of displacement, the violence of imposed labels, and experiences of survival and resistance.

4.1. Theorizing Hybridity in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts

The concept of hybridity is used in postcolonial studies to comprehend cultural formation that occurs because of colonial encounters. According to Bhabha (1994), hybridity is a space of cultural production that disrupts the simple binaries between colonizers and colonized. Colonial encounters produce a “third space” where meanings and identities are negotiated. Within the third space, there are translations and transformations that open up possibilities for agency that go beyond the terms of colonial discourse. This hybridity should be distinguished from a mere fusion of pre-existing cultures into a new synthesis and should be understood as a new cultural production where new cultural identities are instituted.

The theoretical orientation of hybridity provides insights into how identities are forged through colonial migration. For instance, the descendants of enslaved people in Africa and the forced labor in the Caribbean and Pacific have identities that are difficult to reduce to either their place of origin or destination. Inevitably, these people’s culture became syncretic because they drew on diverse traditions while their relations to these traditions remained complex. No specific vocabulary is adequate to understand these hybrid formations. Common identity labels include, but are not limited to, “metissage”, “creolite”, “anthropophagy”, “transculturation”, and “syncretism”.

The development of hybridity brings to the fore the idea not to celebrate these conditions as a subversive or liberating condition but to pay more attention to the amount of violence that produced it. Nomadic migrants are viewed as people who disrupt hegemonic practices of citizens, and this finding omits migrants’ experiences of mobility and hybridity (Holle et al. 2021). Factors such as class, race, language, and legal status shape and differentiate hybridities, producing asymmetrical migrant experiences of both citizenship and belonging. For instance, the Franco-Maghrebian context shows that there is a different hybridity between middle-class professionals and those who work in labor. Such differences can be noticed between migrant French-born citizens of North African descent and those who arrived recently and who speak French with an accent. Following these examples, hybridity is not a single condition but a set of multiple positions structured by power.

However, critiques argue that hybridity risks romanticizing displacement. According to Holle et al. (2021), it is possible that young Franco-Maghrebians may experience hybridity as stigmatization as opposed to liberation. Factors such as class, race, language, and legal status are critical components that shape and differentiate hybridities to produce asymmetrical migrant experiences. It is clear that migrants who are middle-class professionals experience aspects of belonging differently from labor migrants. Therefore, hybridity should not only be treated as a single condition but as a multiplicity of positions which are shaped by power.

A further critique of hybridity comes from Indigenous and black feminist scholars who argue that the term can obscure ongoing structures of racial domination. For example, when hybridity is celebrated as resistance, it risks minimizing the continued material violence of border enforcement, deportation, and family separation. Hybridity must therefore be understood not as an endpoint or a political victory but as a contradictory condition produced by violence and lived alongside ongoing exclusion. This paper adopts that more cautious view: hybrid identities are real and meaningful to migrants, but they do not undo colonial power relations.

4.2. Memory, Trauma, and Resilience Across Generations

Migrant identities are complex because of their lived experiences within diasporic communities, involving navigating trauma, cultural resilience, and negotiations of memory. An example of this is the concept of “matriarchatehood”, which is demonstrated by Afro-Brazilian women who experience memory loss because they struggle with long-distance relationships between Yoruba communities in Nigeria and their displaced people in Bahia (Alakija 2025). The Afro-Brazilian women continue to share the oriki (lineage history) so that the subsequent generations can keep their precolonial roots regardless of displacement. This approach is a creative reworking of changing traditions.

Trauma is another issue affecting migrants. Soker (2013) studied the Alevi-Zaza family and how trauma shaped identity across generations of displacement. The Alevi-Zaza family came from the Dersim region of rural eastern Anatolia and later settled in urban Germany; they experienced trauma from murder and state violence (Strasser and Akçınar 2016). The transnational space presents similar challenges, for instance, between Turkey and Germany, where most families negotiate competing attributes of insider and outsider status. They draw on both religious (the role of Alevi priests) and culture to maintain identity and belonging across generations.

These cases show that hybrid identities are complex, normally forged through histories of violence and the survival of migrants. In this process, families are critical sites for the transformation and transmission of individual identities. Families are hubs where memories of displacement are communicated and passed down from one generation to another. Also, families maintain and pass on cultural practices and communicate the traumas they have experienced in silence or are currently encountering. Thus, the transnational genealogies approach does not look at large-scale historical processes but at functions in intimate spaces where the practices and processes are both lived and negotiated.

4.3. Challenging Nationalist Narratives

The hybrid identities produced by colonial migration processes are not simply historical but challenge contemporary nationalist narratives, particularly the assumption that states are culturally homogenous and territorially bounded. According to Moulettes (2024), nationalistic narratives are responsible for integration policies in many states. The nationalistic narrative expects migrants to conform to the receiving nation’s culture. This position challenges migrants’ identities and treats national culture as static, but in essence, culture is dynamic and constructed through historical processes. This approach contradicts hybridity, which asserts that cultural formation is shaped by contexts, colonialism, and migration processes.

The idea that nations continue to insist on national homogeneity is a sign of continuance with their colonial legacy. According to Stilz (2019), the colonial racial exclusions in the settler-colonial context gave rise to the idea that the state is a natural unit entitled to self-determination and control of its borders. “White Canada” is an example of this, where the nation sought to exclude Indian immigrants as a way of controlling racial formation. The contemporary invocation of national identity as the foundation of exclusion is inherited from colonial genealogy. However, states attempt to dismiss the racial dimensions.

The nationalist narrative needs to be challenged by attending to actual identities of migrant and diasporic communities. It is apparent that migrant identities are hybrid, transcultural, and transnational. These identities are real and not deviations from the norm of national homogeneity. Migrant identities are expressions of historical processes at the crossroads of colonialism, imperialism, and global capitalism. These factors have shaped human mobility and cultural formations over time. Thus, this analysis also highlights the colonial origins of modern labels for irregular migration and shows how labels such as “illegal migrant” or “bogus asylum seeker” are framed by genealogical colonial efforts to distinguish between desirable and undesirable mobile populations.

4.4. The Family as a Site of Transmission, Silence, and Contestation

The family is often ignored as a site in migration matters, but it is a critical component where colonial genealogies are transmitted, contested, and lived across generations. According to Alakija (2025) and Soker (2013), families are a critical hub for preserving memory through practices such as oriki. Other rituals may include maintaining religious rituals, for instance, the Alevi priests and telling the stories of displacement. Within families, there is the passing on of trauma, silence, and resilience between grandparents and grandchildren. These practices provide room for younger generations to navigate issues of belonging in postcolonial states. Therefore, it is important to note that transnational genealogies are not only large-scale historical processes but that they manifest and imitate the everyday practices within family units. This paper argues for the centering of family-level analysis to understand how colonial histories persist in migrant lives.

This paper contends that the family serves as the principal locus for the remembrance, suppression, negotiation, and transmission of colonial displacements across generations. This assertion is not metaphorical. Empirical research on diasporic families indicates that grandparents who endured partition, forced labor, or colonial violence frequently convey these histories through ritual, storytelling, or notably, through silence. Children and grandchildren assimilate not only overt narratives but also embodied reactions to state authority, border interactions, and racialized categorization.

For instance, in South Asian families that were split up by the 1947 partition, family photos, heirlooms, and even recipes bring back memories of homes that were lost across the India–Pakistan border. Tolia-Kelly (2004) refers to these items as “precipitates of re-memory,” which means they change how second-generation immigrants in the UK, Canada, or the US think about belonging. Likewise, in Alevi-Zaza families from Dersim, religious practices conducted at home—such as the function of the dede (spiritual leader)—preserve identity within Turkish and German contexts despite state authorities in both nations regarding that identity with skepticism.

Importantly, the family is not a place where heritage is passed down without question. Generational conflicts arise regarding what to remember, what to forget, and how to publicly express identity. Younger family members may reject or selectively adopt ancestral customs, particularly when such customs are associated with stigma. Transnational genealogies are not linear; they are contested within the domestic spaces where they are reproduced. This paper contends that migration studies should transcend state-centric and individualistic paradigms to incorporate the family as a meso-level analytical unit. This shows that colonial histories live on not only in laws and borders but also in the daily, intergenerational negotiations of migrant families.

5. Continuity of Control from Colonial to Postcolonial Migration Governance

The contemporary national governance of migration is not something fresh but is heavily informed by multiple layers piled upon histories of colonial administrations. The colonial administration focused on controlling mobile populations, labelling subjects, and managing differences. It is critical to trace these continuities and show how colonial frameworks influence postcolonial and universal policies.

5.1. Colonial Genealogies of Migration Controls

Contemporary nation states employ immigration controls not as a legitimate exercise of self-determination but as a continued effort to manage racialized labor forces and to produce homogenous settler states (Stilz 2019). The Indian migration demonstrates that the movement of populations was not that of “free” subjects and that this was not decided in the metropolitan centers in Europe but was built upon a colonial legacy where contemporary officials created bureaucracies to oversee the recruitment of laborers (Mongia 2018). This approach is now prominent in most postcolonial nation states.

The use of passports for travel is prominent, mirroring colonial genealogy. In Canada, the introduction of passport requirements for Indians enabled Canada to exclude unwanted migrants, as well as tone down racial issues (Mongia 2018). In this sense, a passport is not designed to protect the traveler; it is a technology of racial exclusion, subtly used as administrative neutrality. This position challenges the notion that passport systems are only for border control and protecting the interests of state sovereignty.

The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees is celebrated as a milestone for universal human rights. However, this instrument bears the aftermath of colonial contexts. According to Anghie (2005), the convention defines a refugee as an individual fearing persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or ethnicity—a definition that reflects the forms of displacement that occurred during World War II. This definition mirrors the forms of displacement produced by colonialism and its legacy. There are similarities, particularly to the mass movements that were propelled by the drawing of borders or structural violence within postcolonial inequalities. Nation states use this convention’s exclusions and limitations, and to a greater extent, they shape asylum practices, but the convention disadvantages many postcolonial migrants.

5.2. Racial Categories, Surveillance, and Exclusions

It is clear that contemporary migration governance uses the legal framework of the colonial period. In addition, nation states use techniques of surveillance and classification. Migrants are categorized based on race, ethnicity, religion, and ethnicity to enable control, extraction of labor, and management of conflict. These migration categories are not only descriptors but actively produce pre-existing identities and create new forms of belonging and exclusions. As Mbembe (2001) argues, postcolonial nations employ and adapt to colonial techniques of population control. Migrants are distinguished between citizens and migrants for political representation and resource allocations. The surveillance of mobile populations ascribes fixed identities to control movements.

Securitization is another concept used and is similar in function to surveillance. Contemporary securitization views migration as a threat to be managed through surveillance, detention, and exclusions. Such approaches are a further development of colonial frameworks. According to Popescu (2011), the migrant is often constructed as a figure of danger who should be monitored. This assertion is like the colonial representation of mobile populations as threats to order and purity. Today, the emergence and use of technology have increased securitization, using drones, databases, and biometrics to control and manage mobile bodies. Citizenship remains a crucial legal mechanism for rights and belonging. Nevertheless, colonial genealogies show that who can access citizenship, and through what process, often reflects racialized hierarchies.

The continued use of colonial methods in migration administration within postcolonial states should be viewed as more than a matter of historical interest but as an intentional form of exclusion. The exclusionary frameworks provide a distinction between desirable and undesirable migrants. This approach manages suspicion of mobile populations and frames the equation of belonging with racial or cultural homogeneity. According to Moulettes (2024), nation states exclude migrants by opening opportunities that attract those needed for labor. Colonial exploitation prioritized labor but did not value the laborer. In modern postcolonial states, migrants are welcomed for their economic contributions but are denied access to full membership. Often, migrants are seen as temporary workers and not as potential citizens who can be valued for their utility. Diverse categories are designed by postcolonial states for exclusion purposes. For instance, migrants were given the status of “guestworkers” to deal with postwar Europe; in the Gulf states, migrants are part of “temporary labor schemes”; and other states used “points-based systems” as instruments for inclusion and substantive exclusion. For continuity, integration programs in receiving states dismantle this agenda by positioning migrants as outsiders to their national communities. The language of integration and its assumptions keep migrants as outsiders. The problem with this is that migrants are treated as passive subjects of governance, whereas they are active agents who navigate, resist, and reshape the systems that try to control them.

Recognizing that migratory decisions are not only influenced by colonial-origin issues like borders, displacement, or violence is necessary to acknowledge migrant agency. In postcolonial nations, destination considerations such as anticipated career possibilities, salary disparities, existing diasporic networks, family reunion channels, and labor demand are equally important. These pull forces are frequently the direct offspring of colonial history; thus, they are not distinct from them. Commonwealth immigrants, for instance, relocated to postwar Britain specifically because colonial ties had created legal entrance privileges and labor recruiting routes. Similar linguistic, institutional, and economic networks established during French colonial administration are followed by migration from North Africa to France. Therefore, both origin causes (colonial brutality, boundary drawing, statelessness) and destination variables (labor markets, network effects, economic opportunity) must be included in a comprehensive understanding of migration governance.

6. (Re)Claiming Space: Diaspora, Memory, and Landscapes

The colonial regimes focused on controlling space, and this area is still contested in postcolonial states, with migrants demanding the right to occupy, belong in, and shape environments where they live. Cities are treated as sites of both colonial design and postcolonial space and as an arena for spatial politics.

6.1. Colonial and Liminal Urbanism and Migrant Place-Making

The design for colonial cities was such that they produced and reinforced racial hierarchies. Historically, European houses were distinct from native quarters. These were monitored using buffer zones, regulations, and surveillance. Strategically, colonial powers made sure that infrastructures, services, and amenities were distributed unequally, and this produced spatial orders that preserved naturalized colonial privilege. According to Mbembe (2001), this approach by colonial powers was not a mere segregation matter but an intentional production of different kinds of spaces for different people. It was a weapon of racialization.

The remains of these colonial designs continue to shape postcolonial cities. Spatial segregation persists, ensuring that the concentration of resources remains in formerly European areas, and working-class populations and migrants are pushed to the city peripheries. In most cities, the areas with infrastructure deficits are racialized neighborhoods. New migrants arriving in receiving nations enter and live in these cities, which are shaped by these histories. Migrants are inserted into these spatial orders that position them as outsiders or latecomers. For example, the “Manichaean urbanization” that developed in Mediterranean cities—a concept drawing on Frantz Fanon’s description of colonial space as divided into two opposing zones (the settler’s city and the native’s city)—demonstrates this dimension of colonial legacy (Fanon 1963; see also Radivojević et al. 2018 for an application to Budva). The study conducted in Budva, Montenegro, revealed that the Manichaean framework divides urban spaces into labelled zones that legitimize belonging and exclusion. These approaches produce political constructs that make privileged citizens assume authority to govern cities at the expense of migrants and other marginalized groups. Local and Indigenous residents make use of local identity and political power to exclude arriving migrants and newcomers to the communities, treating them as people invading or threatening their character and the integrity of the city. This dynamic is exacerbated by development, which is tied to colonial design, as it tends to serve wealthier and often white populations.

Migrants are not passive subjects of exclusionary spatial orders. Inevitably, they claim space and communities for themselves. The claims are subtly manifested through practices of inhabitation, adaptation, and resistance. The concept of “liminal urbanization” illustrates this spatial agency. This is evident through the Budva studies, which revealed that migrants inhabit small spaces and physically marginal neighborhoods and occupy informal settlements and or even places overlooked by city planners. These practices challenge the Manichaean divisions between “legitimate” residents and “others”. Migrants create spatial, cultural, and social heterogeneities that go beyond the dualistic view that seeks to exclude them.

Liminal urbanization goes beyond the mode of survival; it constitutes a strong political claim. By creating these pockets of places within cities, migrants assert their presence and the right to belong. Accordingly, this practice transforms migrants’ marginalization into resistance. These spaces challenge the dominant order and provide open possibilities for inclusive cities in the future. The informal neighborhoods contest their sociopolitical invisibility. The existence of liminal urbanization highlights pathways for decolonizing cities by recognizing migrants as legitimate city-makers as opposed to viewing them as temporary laborers.

Decolonized cities would involve migrants in planning and cultural integration initiatives. Any vision of decolonized cities must, however, also address a challenging tension: migrants themselves frequently inhabit Indigenous territories in settler-colonial contexts like the United States, Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand, and they may unintentionally reinforce colonial spatial logics. According to Tuck and Yang (2012), decolonization necessitates the restoration of land to Indigenous peoples and is not a metaphor for social justice. Without participating in Indigenous sovereignty efforts, migrants who profit from settler-colonial infrastructures run the risk of contributing to continuous dispossession. Thus, critical analysis of how migrant place-making may either undermine or strengthen settler-colonial processes is essential to decolonizing migration.

6.2. Memory, Commemorations, and Spatial Claims

New diasporic communities’ claims within global cities are built on relationships and shared pasts. The migrants bring with them memories of other places, homelands, ancestral villages, and sites of victories and losses. These factors, and many more, shape how migrants relate to these new spaces and how they occupy them. To commemorate these memories, migrants name streets and buildings and perform religious rituals to remind them of their migration processes. These inscriptions within global cities broadcast the presence of diasporic histories in areas that may want to erase these memories. Thus, understanding how people establish homes in receiving states calls for attention to these mnemonic practices which make distant places become present.

The work of Tolia-Kelly (2004) on South Asian diasporic communities in Britain shows how memories of meaningful places help migrants with homemaking. Common memories used include, but are not limited, to rivers, fields, and villages as instruments for making home in receiving nations. Further, migrants display photos, tend gardens, and maintain family stories that connect them to places, making their lives present and remembered here and there. These migrant homemaking processes challenge the idea that migrants are rootless or uprooted. Diasporic communities should be understood through complex geographies and attachments to past histories.

However, on the downside, postcolonial cities are sites of memory for colonial brutality (Mbembe 2001). The remains of buildings, streets, and squares once occupied by the colonial masters bear witness to a history of suppression. The naming of buildings, streets, and other sites is a struggle over historical memory. The inscriptions of new names give migrants the option to choose whose pasts are acknowledged and whose are erased.

7. Decolonizing Migration and Reparative Justice

The preceding sections sought to trace colonial genealogies and reveal how these continue to influence contemporary migration, space, and identity. While these are essential, tracing history is not enough. It is critical to decolonize migration in order to transform structures, knowledge, and practices to dismantle perpetual colonial frameworks. To achieve this goal requires intentional and active intervention across multiple fronts.

7.1. Reparative Justice

The movement for migrant justice is slowly being recognized as necessary, particularly to demand reparation for colonial wrongs. Given that contemporary migration and displacement are continuous with colonial heritage, the justice needed must address the historical conditions that produced both. Scholarship shows that claims for land restitution are gaining traction (Goldstone 2024). The focus of reparative justice is on matters related to the right to return, recognition of colonial violence, and the repayment of material resources.

Tuck and Yang (2012) argue that the concept of decolonization is not a metaphor but, rather, an attempt to return land to Indigenous people and undo the structures of settler colonialism. Reparative justice for migration is not divorced from other forms of social justice. However, reparative justice for migration makes further demands that cannot be subsumed within migrant rights or racial equity frameworks. It is important to note that the demands of reparative justice take diverse forms, for example, the recreation of new migration processes that do not replicate colonial inequalities. Riebe (2020) provides resources for understanding how different histories of displacement are related and how claims for justice can be articulated across them.

7.2. Decolonizing Knowledge Production

In scholarship, the role of the decolonial approach is gaining traction in migration studies and policy. Funding has been increased for scholars from the Global South, targeting how to decolonize curricula and migration research methodologies. The challenges noted by Tuck and Yang (2012) are that the concept of decolonization in migration studies has become a buzzword, but it is divorced from the critical material practices of repatriation and land return.

Decolonizing migration is not a mere effort to come up with policies but concerns how knowledge is produced. Contemporary migration studies and other disciplines are influenced by Eurocentric assumptions and use methodological nationalism. These works marginalize voices and contributions from the Global South. Thus, to decolonize knowledge production, the focus should be on centering migrant voices to challenge overarching methodologies that are not adequate to address the transnational genealogies that structure migration. This resonates with Moulettes (2024), who argues that migration should not be framed solely in terms of economic utility and labor resources but should consider marginalized non-Western perspectives and treat migrants as whole persons.

Decolonizing knowledge production brings to light the symbolic capital that shapes migrants’ experiences. Failure to pay attention to this symbolic capital and the artefacts that shape the lives of migrants can hinder successful integration. Upholding colonial legacies continues to decide what is valued and what is devalued. Decolonizing knowledge production allows migrants to produce oral histories, family stories, cultural practices, and community archives. Indigenous knowledge is often marginalized, but it offers rich sources that provide critical insights into the lives and experiences of displaced migrants. The stories contain strategies that migrants use to navigate the systems that control them. This paper argues that the transnational genealogies approach, which centers the family as a site of transmission and transformation, is appropriate for engaging with these forms of knowledge.

7.3. Alternative Frameworks for Migration Governance

Although the decolonial framework is celebrated as effective for dealing with migration, this paper argues that there is also need for alternative frameworks for migration governance. To decolonize migration, we must imagine and build alternative frameworks for governing mobility. This approach resonates with the challenges noted in using the Global Compact for Migration and Global Compact on Refugees. The main issues noted are that these frameworks remain embedded in state-centric assumptions and pay less attention to colonial histories that structure contemporary displacement. Also, these frameworks protect states’ interests over providing opportunities for migrant voices, with fewer solutions for accountability for nation states.

This paper proposes that alternative frameworks for migration governance might include:

• Mobility frameworks that consider the rights of return for displaced populations.
• Migration systems that transcend borders inherited from colonialism.
• Frameworks that prioritize migrant voices as opposed to nation’s interests.
• Recognition of displacement as a continuous restructuring of colonial heritage.

8. Conclusions

This paper traced the transnational genealogies that connect colonial histories to contemporary migrations. Colonial histories divided people and forced mobilities, creating hybrid identities. Violence calibrated these processes, installing enduring regimes of control. This colonial heritage shapes the contemporary politics of space, migration, and identity. Thus, the colonial past is not past; it is actively relived in border controls and in the labels attached to migrants and the spaces they live in, which are either permitted or forbidden; these controls and labels make migrants create unique identities. Transnational genealogies are not unilinear but multiple, contested, and continually reworked. Thus, a history that produced violence and displacement in one generation also produces hybridity, resilience, and resistance in the next. This reality makes migrants not only objects of colonial heritage but also active subjects, navigating, appropriating, and transforming them. At the center is the family, functioning as a site for transmission and transformation of these genealogies. Families keep memories of displacements, pass them down, and preserve cultural practices. Family units maintain, adapt, and create identities that are negotiated across generations. Decolonizing migration calls for attention to multiple aspects: reparative justice for past wrongs, new epistemologies for knowledge production, and the development of alternative frameworks for governing mobility. This study has looked at transnational genealogy from a number of angles, including colonial borders, hybrid identities, governance continuities, and territorial claims. But the key point of the study is that families are where these enormous things happen and are handed down. The family is not only a passive recipient of colonial legacies; it serves as a site for remembrance, silence, negotiation, and even resistance. Future study should go beyond macro-structural analysis to investigate how specific household practices—such as storytelling, rituals, the preservation of photographs, and even silence—transmit colonial genealogies between generations. Without this family-level viewpoint, migration studies may unknowingly perpetuate the methodological nationalism challenged in this research, perceiving migrants as isolated individuals rather than as members of intergenerational, transnational kinship networks.