However, his interest and expertise in labour developed into a wider project about the continuing significance of the movement of people across national boundaries and the problems to which this has given rise in very many parts of the world.
Cohen made a number of other contributions to the field of migration studies by giving new understandings to key contested concepts such as diaspora and borders, citizens and denizens, and collective or national identity.
His most influential work, Global diasporas, (1997, with subsequent editions and translations)[5] continued his analysis of the relationship between identity and migration.
Through the use of typologies, comparisons and suggestive lists of shared characteristics, Cohen was able to employ the ancient concept of diaspora to enrich the study of present-day transnational migrant flows.
[6] Along with James Clifford, William Safran, Paul Gilroy and Khachig Tölölyan, Cohen can be considered one of the founding figures of contemporary diaspora studies.