De-naturalizing the national in research methodologies: key concepts of transnational studies in migration

Abstract

Building on the transnational approach to migration, this introduction outlines some elements of the programme of an emergent methodological transnationalism. This effort aims to de-naturalize the concept of the national within migration studies. First, the analysis identifies methodological challenges of migration studies, such as contextualization, the ethnic lens and the essentializing view on ethnicity. Second, it indicates the relevant conceptual elements which deal with these methodological challenges, such as the critique of methodological nationalism, cosmopolitanism and the relational concept of space. Third, it addresses the relevant methods, such as multi-sited ethnography, the mobile methods approach, as well as researchers' positionality and strategies of deethnicization, all of which correspond to the new epistemology of migration studies. Finally, it highlights the common characteristics of the contributions to this special issue, which go beyond the normative view of cross-border migration.

2,000 Families: identifying the research potential of an origins-of-migration study

“…Specifically, this literature advocates multi-site and cross-border approaches that include both origin and destination sites (FitzGerald 2012;Beauchemin 2014), undocumented international migrants (FitzGerald 2012) and longer time spans (Telles and Ortiz 2009) to unravel the complexities of international and internal migration. Amelina andFaist (2012, 1708) warn against the dominance of "methodological nationalism" (Wimmer and Schiller 2003) that primarily explains migration processes using terminologies and categories of destination nations and is driven by the policy concerns of these nations. They propose a greater focus on understanding the causal mechanisms of migration processes, which necessarily involves clarifying the relationship between those living in and moving between origin societies.…”

Narratives of success among Irish and African Caribbean migrants

“…To conclude, this paper has also illustrated the complexities of insider and outsider ethnic positioning (Amelia and Faist 2012) and how both men's identifications with ethnic categories and cultural narratives shift over the life course. Ethnicity and masculinity are in this case negotiated between the stories that people tell about themselves and the stories that are told about them.…”

‘In the beginning all is chaos …’: Roaming the Dystopic Realm in Australian Multiculturalism

“…In this chapter, I argue that traditional ethnographic methods of interviewing and participant observation, which often occur at fixed sites, at fixed moments and over fixed durations, often fail to engage with the complex questions emerging around international migration and time. Although ideas that methodology is 'multi-sited' or 'de-nationalized' have been explored in the international migration field (Amelina and Faist, 2012;Fitzgerald, 2006;Marcus, 1995), this chapter asks, in addition, how we 'do' ethnographic migration research that captures multiplicity in both the temporal and the spatial dimensions. I first establish some of the key ideas in contemporary theoretical and empirical discussions of migration and time.…”

“…Such models range, in the case of our fieldwork countries, from the official Australian acceptance of multiculturalism as a necessary aspect of a nation built through immigration, to the South Korean principle of maintaining cultural homogeneity as an essential basis for social solidarity. Methodological nationalism is, hence, a key problem of migration studies (see Amelina et al, 2012). Migration research is often rather atheoretical and short-term in its approaches, frequently taking the form of research commissioned by governments to resolve specific dilemmas through administrative means.…”