Migration Research Research Articles

Building an ethical research culture: Scholars of refugee background researching refugee-related issues

Abstract Recent scholarship on the need to decolonize refugee research, and migration research more generally, points to the urgency of challenging ongoing colonial power structures inherent in such research. Increased involvement of scholars with lived experience is one way to challenge and remake unequal and colonial power relations. Through discussions with researchers of forced migration, we aimed to explore the challenges, barriers, and supports related to involvement in such research, and to identify how research practices and structures could be improved to increase and facilitate the involvement of scholars with refugee backgrounds. In this field reflection, we highlight key points and suggestions for better research practice that emerged from these discussions. In doing so, we are endeavouring to contribute to the important ongoing conversation about ethics and decolonizing research. We build on existing ethical guidelines by opening up some of the complexities of ethical practice and offering concrete actions that can be taken to work through these.

Qualitative analysis of migrants' network data: Using conceptual reflexivity to reveal the ‘magic trick’

AbstractWhile in recent years, qualitative social network analysis (SNA) has advanced considerably – particularly in migration research – there is still an overall tendency to focus more on issues of network structure and on the generation of data, rather than on how data can be interpreted and analysed qualitatively in practice. In this article, we discuss how a genuinely qualitative SNA should not only apply qualitative techniques in generating visual and oral network data but also in the analytical processes. Building on our earlier work, we advance methodological debates by presenting the idea of ‘conceptual reflexivity’: an awareness of how our thinking about networks and the ways in which we interact with participants – and the wider field – inform layers of meaning making. Using two recent examples from our migration research, we explore the inter‐subjectivity of the research encounter, offering insights into the ‘craft’ of qualitative SNA and the epistemological issues underpinning it. In doing so, we aim to make analytical processes more open and visible, to reveal, so to speak, what goes on behind the curtain: the ‘magic trick’ of how qualitative SNA is performed.

Identifying the push and pull factors for migration patterns vis-à-vis smart cities’ context

Purpose While the causes of migration across a range of diverse societies have been studied in the extant literature, a systematic study encapsulating the extant literature pertaining to the push and pull factors for the phenomenon of migration has not been conducted so far. The purpose of this study is to present a gist of the push and pull factors that are responsible for migration patterns across different contexts. Design/methodology/approach Inferences from the literature review and documentary analysis show that, on the one hand, the push factors for migration entail the enforced reasons like natural causes, wars, health and the like; the pull factors are, by and large, the affirmative ones related to better job opportunities, anticipation of improved well-being, etc. Findings It may also be deduced that both the categories of migration causes are analyzed at the individual, group, societal as well as regional levels. Originality/value Hitherto, the migration research has focused on understanding the antecedents and consequences of migration in temporal–spatial context, but a syncretic understanding of the push and pull factors behind migration vis-à-vis smart cities is required. The present study seeks to fill this gap. Besides contributing toward the mainstream literature on migration in general, the present study also adds to the literature pertaining to the specific factors responsible for migration patterns.

Evaluating the potential of bioacoustics in avian migration research by citizen science and weather radar observations.

The study of nocturnal bird migration brings observational challenges because of reduced visibility and observability of birds at night. Remote sensing tools, especially radars, have long been the preferred choice of scientists to study nocturnal migrations. A major downside of these remote sensing tools is the lack of species-level information. With technological advances in recent decades and with improved accessibility and affordability of acoustic tools, sound recordings have steeply increased in popularity. In Europe, there is no exhaustive qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the content of such acoustic databases and therefore the value for migration science and migration-related applications, such as bird collision hazard assessments, is mostly unknown. In the present work we compared migration schedules estimated from citizen science data with quantitative temporal occurrence of species in four years of acoustic recordings. Furthermore, we contrasted acoustic recordings with citizen science observations and weather radar data from one spring and one autumn season to assess the qualitative and quantitative yield of acoustic recordings for migration-related research and applications. Migration intensity estimated from weather radar data correlated best at low levels with acoustic records including all species in spring while in autumn passerine species showed stronger correlation than the entire species composition. Our findings identify a minor number of species whose call records may be eligible for applications derived from acoustics. Especially the highly vocal species Song thrush and Redwing showed relatively good correlations with radar and citizen science migration schedules. Most long-distance passerine migrants and many other migrants were not captured by acoustics and an estimated seasonal average of about 50% of nocturnally migrating passerine populations remained undetected. Overall, the ability of acoustic records to act as a proxy of overall migration dynamics is highly dependent on the migration period and species involved.

Emic and etic perspectives in transnational migration research: methodological reflections of a cross-national research team

PurposeThis article presents fieldwork perspectives and research reflexivity gained from the cross-national research team, with the aim of promoting better qualitative research practices in transnational research. It focuses on how the team incorporates diverse cultural perspectives and insider and outsider roles to enhance the research in the data collection process.Design/methodology/approachThis article is drawn from the authors' qualitative research with 25 Japanese retirees in Thailand, addressing cultural challenges encountered by researchers in the cross-national team when conducting field research.FindingsOur findings indicate that researchers with an emic view in the cross-national team who shared nationality and cultural background as the participants facilitated an effective recruitment process and productive collaboration in data gathering. They also served as cultural brokers, tailoring smooth communication during interviews on certain cultures, participant traits and sensitive issues. On the other hand, the outsiders helped the team uncover more transnational issues that the insiders had overlooked. Additionally, combining emic and etic perspectives helps to avoid ethnocentric narratives or purely etic and emic conclusions.Originality/valueThis article addresses a gap in the methodological reflections in transnational research that remains largely overlooked. Our reflection highlights the advantages of cross-national teams, which include researchers from emigration and immigration countries. Their status and roles as insiders and outsiders significantly facilitate a positive impact on the research process and increase the extent of investigating the complex cultural dynamics of transnational practices. The incorporation of emic and etic perspectives is suggested in the methodological approach for transnational migration research.

Challenging knowledge production on migration with statactivism: the category ‘migration background’ and some destabilizations

ABSTRACT ‘Migration background’ has been an official category of population statistics in Germany since 2006 and has become an integral part of knowledge production about Germany as an immigration country. However, ‘migration background’ is not only a way of constructing ‘migrant’ and ‘native’ populations; it is also employed as a marker of ethnic inequality and often differentiated into subgroups to stand for national links or ethnic descent. I reflect on these observations as utterances of methodological nationalism inscribed into data practices and (non)knowledge production in migration research. I link them to ideas about statactivism (Bruno et al. 2014. “Statactivism.” Partezipatione & Conflitto 7 (2): 198–220) as a means of intervention. I give some examples of how I have tried to destabilize the usual (non)knowledge production in migration research and reflect on the possibilities for individual researchers to do so. My ethnographic analysis is based on a close reading of national statistical reports, fieldwork in statistical offices, participatory observations in workshops, informal and formal interviews, and my own involvement in (non)knowledge production.

“We Never Say We Are Integrating People!” Interpretative Repertoires of Integration Among Local Stakeholders in Sweden

This article examines how local stakeholders in Scania, the southernmost county of Sweden, talk about integration. Drawing on 28 qualitative interviews, we use the theoretical concept of interpretative repertoires to analyze perceptions and conceptualizations among those who work closely with migrant integration. We identify two interpretative repertoires that stakeholders draw upon to make sense of the concept on the ground: the separation and de-migranticization repertoires. The repertoires display a shared understanding among the stakeholders of integration as a failure, although they do not agree on the extent or cause of the perceived failures of integration, or even how the problems should be defined or tackled locally. Within the separation repertoire, integration is failing in terms of processes where primarily migrants are seen as accountable and responsible for their (in)ability to adapt to the Swedish society. Within the de-migranticization repertoire, integration is differently perceived as something that is plagued with misdirected or even false boundaries between groups (in this case “migrants” and “non-migrants”), and authorities are held accountable for problems beyond migrants and migration, such as inequality, racism, and discrimination. The findings reflect the contested field of integration on the ground and contribute to ongoing critical debates on the concept of integration within migration research, by providing snapshots from a bottom-up perspective of local stakeholders’ acceptance of, or resistance to, present-day integration discourses.

Reinventing the politics of knowledge production in migration studies: introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT This special issue (SI) calls for reinventing the politics of knowledge production in migration studies. Academic migration research should make knowledge production an essential part of its research agenda if it wants to remain relevant in the transnational field of migration research. A risk of marginalisation stems from three interrelated tendencies: First, non-academic actors producing authoritative knowledge about migration have proliferated in recent years. Secondly, academic knowledge production is challenged both by counter-knowledge produced by social movements as well as new digital methods and information structures owned by policy-oriented and private actors. Thirdly, academics no longer hold a hegemonic position in the transnational field of migration research. The contributions to this SI interrogate the politics of knowledge production on migration along three lines of inquiry: (1) the enactment of migration as an intelligible object of government through practices of quantification, categorisation and visualisation; (2) the production of control knowledge in border encounters about subjects targeted as migrants and (3) the modes of thought seeking to unknow and re-know migration beyond dominant nation-state centric understandings. This introduction elaborates how the nine articles of the SI intervene in the politics of knowledge production in migration studies along these lines of inquiry.

Data reusability for migration research: a use case from SoDaNet data repository

This study highlights the role of Research Data Repositories (RDRs) in the concept of data reuse by examining a use case on migration research, a domain that requires up-to-date and accurate data for research and policy purposes. The survey from which the data for the use case was derived aimed to investigate the alignment of humanitarian assistance and social protection in Greece during the post-2015 refugee crisis. Through our analysis, we try to formulate a new corpus of variables and information that can create a value chain for research and policy purposes related to migration research, as well as to draw useful conclusions from this use case study in relation to the concept of data reuse. We address several issues related to data reuse, such as its definition, the role of research data repositories and research infrastructures in data reuse, as well as the limitations and advantages of reuse. We also present some specific features of the SoDaNet RDR, which hosts the primary data. We argue that comprehensive documentation of data adds value to the data and, through reuse, this value can be recycled to the RDR and, therefore, to potential new reusers.

The course of love in the migration process: Germans in Israel, and Israelis in Germany

Love, to a significant other, can be the motivation for migration, inform a migration trajectory, or provide reasons for remaining in situ. Even so, love remains in the undercurrents of migration research. It is not explicitly addressed, even though it underpins migration within the constellation of arranged marriage, or if the pursuit of love is limited by social structures, or law. This paper links the dynamics of agentic love and self-initiated migration by way of German (non-Jewish) and Israeli (Jewish) migrants in Israel and Germany, respectively. It highlights individual trajectories of love migrants, establishing that love within the area of migration studies needs to be conceptualised as multifaceted and complex, at times contradictory, and as part of an affective trajectory of the migration process; and that the ability to follow up on falling in love, and to actualise love, cannot be unhinged from privilege.

Migration information infrastructures: power, control and responsibility at a new frontier of migration research

ABSTRACT The nature and production of migration statistics are in flux. State bureaucracies are no longer the primary source of migration data. Instead, there are a myriad unofficial data sources and processing collaborations which produce migration and mobility data as a by-product of both commercial and governmental processes. This has implications both for international processes of migration assessment and control, and for states’ domestic policies with respect to migrants. This paper brings together migration studies with Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature to take stock of these new data sources’ theoretical and empirical implications for both migrants and the links between migration and broader social processes. We identify migration information infrastructures: configurations of data assemblages which involve private and public sector actors, where data originally collected for one purpose (billing customers, sharing social information, sensing environmental change) become repurposed as migration statistics. We explore the implications of such migration information infrastructures for migration researchers: what are the entanglements that such infrastructures bring with them, and what do they mean for the ethics and practicalities of doing migration research?

Intersectional migration research: Re‐centring governance structures

Intersectional migration research: Re‐centring governance structures

The Visibility of Disabled Cross-Border Migrant Workers in Thailand in Migration Research

Migrant workers contribute significantly to Thai economic growth. Their importance attracts the attention of scholars around the world. Many researchers have investigated their lives before and while living in Thailand and when they return home. However, it is still questionable to what extent disabled migrants are included in these studies. This paper intends to answer this question by reviewing works conducted in Thailand related to migration and disabilities that appear in Thai and international journal citation databases. The results show that disabled migrant workers in Thailand are not yet clearly visible in migration research or migration data collection. This investigation suggests that the government, scholars, migration research institutes, and non-profit organizations should put disabled migrant workers on their research agendas. This can make them visible and raise society’s awareness of them, as with other groups of disabled people. The information can be used to support disabled migrants throughout the migration process to give them a better quality of life and prevent them from suffering human rights violations.

Cranes soar on thermal updrafts behind cold fronts as they migrate across the sea.

Thermal soaring conditions above the sea have long been assumed absent or too weak for terrestrial migrating birds, forcing obligate soarers to take long detours and avoid sea-crossing, and facultative soarers to cross exclusively by costly flapping flight. Thus, while atmospheric convection does develop at sea and is used by some seabirds, it has been largely ignored in avian migration research. Here, we provide direct evidence for routine thermal soaring over open sea in the common crane, the heaviest facultative soarer known among terrestrial migrating birds. Using high-resolution biologging from 44 cranes tracked across their transcontinental migration over 4 years, we show that soaring performance was no different over sea than over land in mid-latitudes. Sea-soaring occurred predominantly in autumn when large water-air temperature difference followed mid-latitude cyclones. Our findings challenge a fundamental migration research paradigm and suggest that obligate soarers avoid sea-crossing not due to the absence or weakness of thermals but due to their low frequency, for which they cannot compensate with prolonged flapping. Conversely, facultative soarers other than cranes should also be able to use thermals over the sea. Marine cold air outbreaks, imperative to global energy budget and climate, may also be important for bird migration.

Pursuing social justice in gender and migration research

Pursuing social justice in gender and migration research

De-bordering policies at the city scale: strategies for building resilience in Barcelona's migration governance

This article bridges the fields of urban politics, migration governance and border studies by exploring Barcelona as a case study. It raises a first critical question about what happens to so-called borderlands when "borders" move to other scales, such as cities that are not usually categorized as "border cities". Within this framing debate, this study explores two fundamental questions: (1) how border practices at the state level shape constrained relations between cities and migrants, and (2) how cities map de-bordering policies to resolve such constraints, which we conceptualise as an example of 'urban resilience'. The aim is to provide a focus that brings the analytical category of "urban resilience", recently proposed within the emerging debate on the "local turn" in migration studies, to bear on issues directly related to the social impacts of state bordering processes on urban systems. The article then argues that urban justice principles drive most cities to initiate resilient de-bordering policies, and can be seen as a distinctive normative factor underpinning urban resilience when applied to migration governance. After laying the groundwork for this theoretical framework and its application to the city of Barcelona, the final section briefly outlines the potential of this new and crucial critical area of migration research. This will provide yet another opportunity to highlight that we are likely to enter an era in which cities will increasingly become sovereign geopolitical entities within and beyond the traditional hierarchical reach of their own states.

Advancing migration and health research by examining return migration

This essay offers an analysis of research on return migration and health by adopting the social determinants of health (SDH) framework proposed by the WHO. Specifically, we argue that the...

Arts-Based Methods in Migration Research. A Methodological Analysis on Participatory Visual Methods and Their Transformative Potentials and Limits in Studying Human Mobility

In the last decades, the growing use of participatory methodologies and creative methods in migration research has opened innovative ways to collect, analyze, and disseminate data. These approaches encourage experimental, interdisciplinary, and collaborative work through artistic methods to study human mobility and expand the community of inquiry and interpretation, often intervening in contexts of social injustice and exclusion. This article is intended as a reflection on the potentialities and limits of the use of arts-based methods in migration research. The contribution opens with a review of how participatory visual methods have been framed in the field of migration studies. The second part explores an example of a collaborative study that adopted photovoice and sensory mapping to reflect on the concept of “welcoming spaces”. Finally, it analyses arts-based methods as a potential space for social change, focusing on three main dimensions: collective learning, relational aesthetics, and knowledge co-construction.

Using Walking Interviews in Migration Research: A Systematic Review of the Qualitative Research Literature

In the field of migration research, the frequency of employing qualitative walking interviews has risen in recent years to delve into the construction, evolution, and negotiation mechanisms of migrant identities within everyday spatial practices. This novel mobile method emphasizes the interaction between micro-experience and macro-structure. It facilitates a shift away from viewing migrants as passive outsiders, empowering them with increased agency, and allow researchers to gain deeper insights into migrants’ emotional dynamics, life experiences, and self-identification within new social landscapes and power configurations. This systematic review aims to evaluate, integrate, and analyse the current empirical evidence in qualitative migration research using walking/go-along interviews for different types of migrants (defined as an individual who moves away from his or her place of usual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, and for a variety of reasons). This review brings together for the first time the knowledge and insights from migration research that involves walking interviews. This review employs framework synthesis to analyse the 24 included articles, identifying five major themes: (1) synergising diverse research methods within different research designs; (2) adjustment of power dynamics; (3) migrants’ place-based threefold agency; (4) migrants' identity construction; (5) place-based sense of belonging or exclusion. By integrating these themes, the methodological contribution of this review lies in recognizing the advantages of combining walking interviews with other research methods, which lies in capturing the multidimensional aspects of mobility, allowing researchers to flexibly switch between methodological strategies and spatial scales. Additionally, this paper recommends a deeper exploration of migratory experiences to transcend prevailing practical knowledge and pay sensitive attention to potential ethical issues throughout the research. Such investigation has the potential to uncover the dynamic evolution of agency, identity construction, and the fluctuating sense of belonging among various migrants throughout their journey.

Towards unraveling insider/outsider binary: A migrant researcher received as a welcome guest insider among South African research participants

Dominant theoretical debates on researcher positionalities are framed in terms of mutually exclusive insider/outsider binary where insider researchers are assumed to share social identities such as nationality or ethnicity with research participants, while outsider researchers are viewed as those who do not share such social identities with participants. Drawing on my fieldwork as a migrant researcher with Coloured South Africans, this paper contributes to debates on insider/outsider positionalities in migration research and qualitative studies more generally. Despite my foreign origin and not sharing nationality, language, ethnicity, culture, racial identity and lived experiences with participants, I was received and embraced by Coloured South Africans as a welcome guest insider. By proposing an analytical concept which I term welcome guest insider, I argue that contrary to dichotomous conceptualizations of insider/outsider positionalities, my positionality was situationally and contextually constructed. This paper proposes that the insider/outsider binary is simplistic and too rigid to capture contextual constructions of insider/outsider positionalities emerging within the fieldwork context. Researchers in the field of qualitative studies and particularly migration studies can adopt and apply the analytical concept of welcome guest insider to conceptually frame perceived researcher positionalities who are warmly received and embraced by their research participants even though they do not share social identities such as nationality, race, ethnicity or lived experiences.