A joint initiative of the IMISCOE Standing Committee Reflexivities in Migration Studies and the nccr – on the move
Research about migration has historically been shaped and dominated by a Western, state- and immigration-centred perspective. An early challenge of this perspective was Wimmer’s and Glick Schiller’s article ‘Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Science’, published twenty years ago in 2002. The diverse debates address not only methodological nationalism but also other problematic features (e.g. the ‘ethnic lens’) that frame mobile humans as problematic and migration as exceptional. A growing number of scholars furthermore criticize the geopolitics of knowledge production in Migration Studies, for example by examining the researchers’ positionalities or exposing the colourblindness or postcoloniality of migration research in Europe. In order not to reproduce essentialist views and hegemonic power relations, reflexive migration researchers have proposed participatory methods. Contributions to this series may address the development of the field at large, zoom in on specific conceptual debates or methodological approaches, or reflect on individual experiences. Blog posts could also examine the impact of reflexive migration studies on certain disciplines or discuss the operationalization of the rather theoretical ‘reflexive’ considerations in qualitative or quantitative research. Equally welcome are contributions challenging certain assumptions widely shared in ‘critical’ / ‘reflexive’ approaches to migration and mobility, or that raise hitherto little considered issues.
The deadline for submissions is 27 February 2022.
https://nccr-onthemove.ch/events/call-for-blog-contributions/
Didier Ruedin 