The 2006 United Nations report, the State of the World's Refugees, outlines many of the challenges of studying migration in the contemporary moment. The first of these being the recognition that migration today is increasingly 'mixed' or blended. In contrast, the postWorld War II state-based migration regimes seem to offer governmental categories that, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, grasp at the smoke of an evaporating reality. These days, student migration is also widdy recognized (even by governments) to be blended with labour migration. With increasing restrictions on labour migration, applications for asylum offer one of the few routes to a better life; and, with increasingly restrictive asylum systems, unknown numbers are falling into irregular routes. All of this must be situated against a background in which the numbers of migrants in the world continues to grow. Of course, many migrants are not asylum seekers, refugees or 'illegal' immigrants, but rather migrants working at different levds of the globalized world economy. This special issue of the Irish Journal of Anthropology on Managing Migration looks at migration from different angles, from hightech workers to asylum seekers, and examines the migration regimes, management thinking and processes of securitization evident in today's world.