Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This chapter outlines how to use focus groups (FGs) in migration studies, considering this method a forum for “public thinking” and discussing controversial issues. Moreover, the use of FGs allows us to understand the process of creating consensus and dissent via interaction. The chapter is structured in five sections: the first one introduces what FGs are and why they are useful for migration research; the second focuses on how to build the groups and how to do comparative migration research with FGs; the third illustrates how to prepare and to facilitate group discussion, and how to ask questions and engage participants in collaborative migration research; the fourth introduces how to interpret discussions and how to analyse the everyday naturalization of nation, ethnicity and race; the final section discusses how to communicate FG results. Each section is devoted to a specific methodological issue and it includes at least one “box” with an example from European migration research.

Participant observation, as most researchers would probably agree, is essential to the study of international migration. However, human mobility is irreducible to the scope of a closed, territorially based and fully controllable ethnographic field, as it involves multiple physical, social and symbolic locations, whether simultaneously or over time. Moreover, contemporary migration processes are highly heterogeneous in terms of purposes, trajectories and durations. Methodologies that continue to work under assumptions of migration as a unidirectional, purposeful and intentional process from one state of fixity (in the place of origin) to another (in the destination) fail to capture much of its complexity. Based on our own empirical research and on an extended literature overview, we discuss the core methodological issues emerging in fieldwork on migrants’ life experience, whether “in proximity” or “over distance”. We explore the potential and desirability of participant observation to capture the increasing spatio-temporal complexity of present-day mobility. As we argue, the shift from the study of the “uprooted migrant” to that of transnational and fragmented networks involves more than a simple multiplication of fieldwork locations. Moreover, we expand on some aspects of participant observation which are no prerogative of migration studies, but are particularly critical for the success of the latter: the by now well-developed debate on multi-sited ethnography; the relationship between ethnographers and their counterparts (and the influence of their respective backgrounds); and the lures and pitfalls of online ethnography in social research on migration.

Since the 1960s the multidisciplinary study of discourse has become increasingly popular in the humanities, as well as the cognitive, social and political sciences. This new cross-discipline offers many sophisticated quantitative and especially qualitative methods for the explicit and systematic analysis of text and talk, including the analysis of syntax, semantics, pragmatics, narrative, argumentation, style, corpora, metaphor, ideology, and multimodal analysis of images, among others. These methods have also been applied the fields of the study of migration, ethnic relations, minorities and racism. In this methodological chapter, various methods of discourse analysis are illustrated with passages from a variety of discourses on minorities and migrants.

This chapter offers reflection on doing digital migration studies. Digital migration studies is an emerging interdisciplinary field focussed on studying migration in, through and by means of the internet. As the so-called European refugee crisis demonstrates, the scale, intensities and types of transnational migration and digital networking have drastically changed in recent years. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have fundamentally transformed migration processes and vice versa. Top-down management of migration flows and border control is increasingly dependent on digital technologies and datafication, while from the bottom-up migrants use smart phones and apps to access information, maintain transnational relations, establish local connections and send remittances. In the first half of the chapter, drawing on (Candidatu et al., 2018) we distinguish between three paradigms of digital migration studies: (1) migrants in cyberspace; (2) everyday digital migrant life; (3) migrants as data. In the second half of the chapter, we offer the methodological research principles of relationality, adaptability and ethics-of-care to operationalize digital migration studies with a commitment to social justice. Challenging unjust power relations is important both when studying vulnerable groups as well as studying elites. The many experiences, obstacles and opportunities we found in the literature reveal that the future of digital migration studies lies at the intersection of big and small data, there is great urgency in triangulating quantified patterns with in-depth narrative accounts and situated experiences.

This chapter is based on experiences from several research projects on human smuggling and reflects on methodological and ethical concerns when considering fieldwork with smuggled migrants. It is argued that, already from the start, ethical issues may be beyond the control of researchers, as professional review boards themselves are in a powerful position to set the terms for selecting who should be included in research projects and who not. While today it is acknowledged that taking the migrant’s perspective into account is valuable, there are still some challenges to be dealt with. This chapter touches upon the issues of gaining access to participants and building up trust in a context of mistrust and how narrations might be influenced by external structural factors such as the migration experience, policies and administrations, smugglers or the migrant community itself.

Migration research and policymaking can interact in many different ways. Sometimes policy actors are directly or indirectly involved in defining migration research, for instance, by commissioning specific studies or developing funding schemes with specific objectives. Alternatively, research can also play a role in agenda setting, defining policy problems and triggering policy responses. This chapter examines how different configurations of research-policy relations can affect (and have affected) qualitative (as well as quantitative) migration research. The chapter looks at policy-related as well as academic factors that play a role in configuring mutual relations, at the European and the national level as well as the local level. Amongst others, the chapter will discuss the role of European and national funding schemes, advisory bodies, knowledge institutes and the role of international research networks such as IMISCOE. In particular, the chapter makes the argument that research-policy relations, when involving strong relations of mutual interdependency, could have a constraining effect on research questions and methodologies in migration research. This applies to qualitative as well as quantitative research. A more reflective attitude in research-policy dialogues could, in contrast, lead to more critical reflection based on migration research and prevent paradigmatic closure.