Qualitative methodologies in the study of citizenship and migration

Abstract

This special section brings together contributions on citizenship from social psychology. The six papers that make up the special section focus on different cases, but they all share the following in common: (a) a focus on studying citizenship and migration, albeit different aspects and in different contexts; (b) an approach to citizenship from the "ground," focusing on the ways in which social actors understand, negotiate, and enact citizenship; (c) the use of qualitative research to study citizenship and migration; (d) and a social psychological perspective. Expanding on recent contributions on the study of citizenship in social psychology (Condor, 2011a; Stevenson, McNamara, & Muldoon, 2015), the contributions in this special section display a preoccupation with social actors' own orientations toward citizenship in particular, using mainly discursive methods to analyze them.