Between fragmentation and institutionalisation: the rise of migration studies as a research field

Abstract

It is clear that the field of migration studies has grown significantly over the past decades. What is less known is how this growth has taken place. This article combines bibliometric metadata with expert interviews to analyse the institutionalisation of the field in terms of self-referentiality, internationalisation, and epistemic communities. Self-referentiality in migration studies has gradually increased as the field has grown, until recently. The field has internationalised in terms of international co-authorships but has done so unevenly. Finally, we find that epistemic communities in migration studies, based largely on disciplines, increasingly refer to one another and are increasingly interdisciplinary.

On migration, geography, and epistemic communities

“…A trickier question to answer is about the trajectory of migration studies: what are its origins and where is it now heading? Levy et al (2020) advance the idea that migration studies emerged from the shadows of ethnic and racial studies in the 1970s-1990s. This is a perspective that I do not recognize: for me the origins lie much further back in classic writings by sociologists, geographers and economists, starting with Ravenstein (1885Ravenstein ( , 1889 and proceeding via important contributions by Thomas (1954Thomas ( , 1972, Sjaastad (1962), Lee (1966), Jackson (1969), Mabogunje (1970) and Zelinsky (1971)to name but a very few of the notable pioneers.…”

“…What's not to like about these beguiling multi-coloured bubble diagrams? From a picture of strung-out and fragmented clusters in 1975-1984 and 1985-1984, the pattern becomes a coherent, consolidated mass in 2005-2014, indicating that 'a new age of migration studies has emerged' (Levy et al, 2020).…”

“…The second part of the answer to this 'coming of age' question is provided by the qualitative material presented in Levy et al (2020), and in another paper by the same research team (Pisarevskaya et al 2019). This evidence comprises testimonies from the expert interviewees, the growth in the number of dedicated journals on migration, and the foundation of many research institutes and postgraduate degree programmes.…”

“…In this commentary on the important paper by Levy, Pisarevskaya, & Scholten (2020), I focus on four main reactions.…”

Two cheers for Migration Studies

“…Migration Studies is a multi-and inter-disciplinary research field that, over the past 30 years, has substantially both changed and remained the same. As part of the EU-Horizon 2020 CrossMigration project, Asya Pisarevskaya, Nathan Levy, Peter Scholten and Joost Jansen have evidenced how this processparticularly the change sidehas developed (Levy et al 2020;Pisarevskaya et al 2019). On the one hand, it is not remarkable that there has been a large increase in the number of journals and articles in the field of Migration Studies over 30 years, since this is the case with practically all sciences.…”