Migration has always been there, regardless which ways of travelling people could make available. Today, in times of struggles for (economic) resources, migration especially from south to north is regarded as a problem from a north-western perspective. A system of borders and control was established, which should regulate and where applicable even block streams of migration. Groups of good migrants (e.g. flexible, cheap and skilled workers) and problematic migrants (e.g. refugees) are created.
Within the context of migration, different groups and individuals can experience individual and social inequalities simultaneously – this is particularly true of groups and individuals who are refugees and asylum seekers. The change of environment mostly means to adjust one’s identity to the new surrounding, e. g. by processes of self-ethnicising and external ethnicising.
Cases of intrastate migration have also to be taken into account as causes for far-reaching changes in one’s life and as processes with impact on identity constructions.