Why are people who did not cross state borders called international migrants?

This animation explores the social meanings of the statistical category of ‘international migrant’ used by the OECD, Eurostat, and the World Bank Indicators.

The animation illustrates research conducted by Anastasia Gorodzeisky, Head of the Master’s Program in Migration Studies, Tel Aviv University and Inna Leykin, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The Open University of Israel. They argue that these seemingly politically neutral statistical categories in fact privilege the current ethnonational definition of the state.

Anastasia Gorodzeisky, Associate Professor of Sociology, Tel Aviv University. She is currently the head of the International M.A. program in Migration Studies and a faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Her main research interests lie in the area of immigration, cross-national comparative sociology, and intergroup relations. https://english.m.tau.ac.il/profile/anastasiag

Inna Leykin, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The Open University of Israel
Trained as a cultural anthropologist, she studies the interactions between the cultures of intellectual expertise and policymaking, the democratic transformations in post-socialist countries, cultural significance of statistical knowledge and emerging practices of the self in contemporary Russia.