The Temporalities of International Migration: Implications for Ethnographic Research

Abstract

Transformations in both time and space are central to theoretical understandings of modernity and globalization (see, for example, Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991; Harvey, 1999; Urry, 2000). This chapter is specifically concerned with understandings of time in terms of the empirical study of contemporary international migration processes and, in particular, in terms of ethnographic methodological approaches. I argue that, in the context of a complex and globalized modernity, temporalities of migration are increasingly recognized as heterogeneous and dynamic. While circular, temporary and staggered mobilities have always been a part of global migration circuits, modern transportation and communications technologies have facilitated increasing temporal heterogeneity, and new modes of temporariness are becoming institutionalized in new ways (Rajkumar et al., 2012). In particular, although Western Europe has an extensive history of guestworker-type temporary migration (see, for example, Castles et al., 1984), traditional ‘settler’ receiving societies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand have only recently begun to shift from the policies of permanent settlement that dominated postwar mass immigration schemes to more-temporary or ‘staggered’ migration programmes.