Building bridges: what migration scholarship and cultural sociology have to say to each other

Abstract

This article illustrates how more intensive exchanges between migration scholars and cultural sociologists would yield greater analytical purchase in both fields. It uses tools from cultural sociology to illuminate aspects of the transnational migration experience and, in turn, brings to light additional dimensions and levels of cultural production that cultural sociologists could profitably take into account. Cultural sociology asks migration scholars to take culture seriously and to pay more explicit attention to the dynamics of meaning-making and boundary construction. It asks researchers to look not only at the process of adaptation from one culture to another but at what is inside the “black box” and how it changes over time. On the other hand, transnational migration studies complicate cultural sociology by encouraging researchers to move beyond the expectation that the nation is the natural container for social life. Instead, transnational migration scholarship foregrounds how boundary creation and meaning-making can involve multiple cultural repertoires that transcend national contexts and are available at multiple levels.