Unequal internationalisation and the emergence of a new epistemic community: gender and migration

Abstract

In this contribution to the formation of an epistemic community and its knowledge production developed in the Paper Between fragmentation and institutionalisation: the rise of migration studies as a research field, I seek to go beyond the bibliometric analysis, and in particular explore the nature of its internationalisation, the connections authors have across the globe and the unequal valuation of differently located research. These aspects underpin networks in the formation and evolution of epistemic communities. I shall illustrate my points through an epistemic community which has grown significantly in the past two decades, but scarcely gains a mention in the Paper. Gender and migration can be placed within the much broader cluster of globalisation, and especially in more recent years, transnationalism. My analysis does not start from bibliometric measures, which I do not have, but is based on selected reviews at different stages of the emergence of this field and my own involvement in it since the early 1990s.