Towards a Multi-scalar Methodology: The Challenges of Studying Social Transformation and International Migration

Abstract

Reconceptualizing the dynamics of international migration from the perspective of social transformation is a challenging methodological project. This is not only because the processes involved are extremely complex but also because they have been dominated by macro-level or quantitative analysis, which provides limited scope for understanding the nuanced relationship between migration trends and the changing realities of everyday life. This chapter focuses on the possibilities inherent in a multi-scalar approach to migration that is sensitive to the interconnectedness and complexity of migration processes enacted across multiple sites and scales, and involving multiple agents. Such a perspective explores migration across different socio-spatial levels, and seeks to problematize conceptual frameworks that theorize migration as the outcome of global forces and their local effects. It also challenges the tendency to reify another scalar construction — the nation-state — by identifying issues of methodological nationalism prevalent in migration research. Contemporary scholars of migration have argued that approaches to migration based only on the analysis of `push and pull' factors, or which regard migrants narrowly as rational economic actors (using a neoclassical lens), are ill-equipped to deal with the complex spatialities and temporalities of contemporary migration processes, which are increasingly temporary, non-linear and multi-sited and which may implicate new forms of transnational and multiple belonging (Castles et al., 2013; Collins, 2013; Vasta, 2013).