First, that migration is an integral part of the everyday life of many poor people. Historically, the policies of most governments have tended to focus on trying to prevent migration, or at best on trying to address its ‘root causes’, by eliminating poverty and promoting development. Yet this approach has not prevented migration. Rather, it has simply tended to increase the costs and risks borne by poor people who continue to migrate anyway, because migration represents an essential livelihood option.

Second, that some forms of migration typify the poor more than others. Global public attention has tended to focus on the more visible international movements - perhaps unsurprising given the massive increase in movements to North America and Europe over the last two decades. Yet the migration that is most open to the poor tends to be short-term, seasonal or temporary, and contained within southern countries and regions. Such flows, although an enduring feature of migration systems, tend to represent an invisible component of migration flows, not picked up by many data-gathering systems and relatively little studied. These flows are also highly gendered, and may disproportionately affect children or other less visible groups of migrants.

Third, we start from a position that to understand the significance of migration in poor peoples’ lives, migrants themselves need to be consulted and involved in the research process. This implies a participatory approach not only to field data collection, but also to the analysis and dissemination of research findings that could directly impinge on the ability of the poor to secure their livelihoods and rights through migration.

First, the notion of livelihoods is understood in its broader conception to encompass the various entitlements and capabilities that poor people (and others) have in terms of seeking a living and maintaining well-being. The intention is to move beyond the relatively narrow framework of ‘sustainable livelihoods’, which has been developed as a policy tool in the context of particular programmes, to a conception that explores the many different ways in which people enhance their well-being.

Second, the notion of poverty itself is viewed as multi-dimensional rather than strictly income-related, and we will be concerned with exploring impacts of migration on poverty (and vice versa) that extend to broader well-being, access to education and freedom of social and cultural expression. We do not assume either that the poor are forced to migrate, or indeed that the poor are often not able to migrate. The process of migration, by exposing people to broader ideas, may intensify feelings of relative deprivation.

Third, we will seek to extend understanding of the concept of social protection in situations of migration, viewing migration both as a process that can increase or reduce the vulnerability of those affected by it, as well as an important social protection strategy in its own right.

Fourth, much of our work will be infused with a focus on rights, including analysis of the practical value of a rights-based approach to migrants and migration, rather than an approach based on mitigating risk or reducing vulnerability. Here, our understanding of rights is again broad, encompassing ‘bottom up’ economic and social rights that are embodied in customary practice as well as the ‘top down’ rights that are enshrined in international law.

Fifth, we are concerned with issues of inter-generational and gendered distributions of costs and benefits, and especially the consequences of migration for children. Children are affected by migration in a number of ways – they may migrate with their parents, or be left behind when one or more parent migrates; but they may also migrate themselves, including for work and education. Autonomous child migration appears to us a contentious, but also somewhat under-researched (and under-theorised) phenomenon. An important starting point is to recognise that in much of the world, children and adolescents do participate in the labour market, sometimes from an early age. In this context, child migration may well primarily be about choosing where to work, rather than whether to work.