Mapping migration studies: An empirical analysis of the coming of age of a research field

Abstract

Migration studies have developed rapidly as a research field over the past decades. This article provides an empirical analysis not only on the development in volume and the internationalization of the field, but also on the development in terms of topical focus within migration studies over the past three decades. To capture volume, internationalisation, and topic focus, our analysis involves a computer-based topic modelling of the landscape of migration studies. Rather than a linear growth path towards an increasingly diversified and fragmented field, as suggested in the literature, this reveals a more complex path of coming of age of migration studies. Although there seems to be even an accelerated growth for migration studies in terms of volume, its internationalisation proceeds only slowly. Furthermore, our analysis shows that rather than a growth of diversification of topics within migration topic, we see a shift between various topics within the field. Finally, our study shows that there is no consistent trend to more fragmentation in the field; in contrast, it reveals a recent recovery of connectedness between the topics in the field, suggesting an institutionalisation or even theoretical and conceptual coming of age of migration studies.

Introduction

“…It has become increasingly mainstream to acknowledge that academic and policy studies of and responses to migration have been dominated by scholarship produced in the Northern Hemisphere (i.e., Bommes and Morawska 2005;Gardner and Osella 2003;Piguet et al 2018;Pisarevskaya et al 2019). Indeed, migration studies, as an Anglophone institutional fi eld of study, was fi rst born in and dominated by scholarship from North America and, since the 1970s and 1980s, Europe.…”

“…For instance, it has been widely argued that studies of migration have oft en closely paralleled the interests of states that are the main funding sources for many academics in North America and Europe, and that oft en both explicitly and implicitly direct research agendas (Bakewell 2008;Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2018;Geddes 2005;Schinkel 2018). As a means of highlighting connections with state priorities, researchers have traced both the predominance of particular themes and research questions in this fi eld (i.e., Pisarevskaya et al 2019) and particular directionalities and forms of migration. With reference to the former, for example, scholars have noted a long-standing focus on "classical" questions in migration studies.…”

Multiple Facets of Migration Research: Key Questions, Topics, and Avenues yet to Be Explored

“…Migration and its diverse forms, including economic migration, irregular migration, forced migration, and the plethora of factors that undermine people's decisions to leave their habitat and seek fortune in new places, occupy a dominant position in contemporary research and political debate [1][2][3][4][5]. At that debate unfolds, the aggregate term 'migration' has turned into a buzzword of popular discourse [1], with its key components, such as individual agency, an individual's suffering and success, the causal relationships defining individual decisions to move, regulatory frameworks, red tape, and transaction costs being-perhaps unconsciously-but, effectively, ontologically reduced in this debate.…”

“…As the debate continues and a growing number of scholars call for a new research agenda in the field of migration [1,2,21], the role that sophisticated information and communication technology (ICT) plays with regards to migration remains underdiscussed [25][26][27]. In this context, somewhat surprisingly, the nexus between cities and migration, and perhaps most prominently, between smart cities and migration remains opaque in the literature.…”

Avances en los estudios migratorios. Nuevos enfoques, nuevos instrumentos en el estudio de la movilidad internacional

“…Aunque la presencia de especialistas procedentes del mundo académico anglosajón sigue siendo mayoritaria, en la última década ha aumentado también la de investigadores procedentes de otras geografías. Esta «mayoría de edad» de los estudios migratorios (Pisarevskaya, Levy, Scholten y Jansen, 2019) ha corrido paralela a la centralidad que la movilidad humana ha llegado a adquirir en la agenda política y en las dinámicas sociales y económicas internacionales. Se trata por tanto hoy de un área bien establecida, con una clara vocación multidisciplinar, crecientemente multisituada y en donde abundan los estudios comparados y la diversidad en los niveles de análisis.…”