Knowledge production, reflexivity, and the use of categories in migration studies: tackling challenges in the field

ABSTRACT

Recent debates in migration studies target the non-reflexive use of categories that derive from nation-state- and ethnicity-centred epistemologies. However, what a category is and how categorization works remain undertheorized. Our paper addresses this gap. Through a qualitative study on experiences of Othering among migrant descendants in Zurich (CH) and Edinburgh (UK), we scrutinize the perspectival, political, and performative nature of categories. We show how the persons informing our study were highly reflexive when using the category migrant descendant: They contested, negotiated, and navigated it in multiple ways. Although this specific category is firmly embedded in the “national order of things”, it ultimately proved to be inclusive. We argue that reflexivity in the field can not only create space for the often-muted voices of research participants, but also helps to overcome important pitfalls that derive from issues of legitimacy, representation, and power relations in scientific knowledge production.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflexivity
• categorization
• knowledge co-production
• migrant descendants
• post-migration societies
• nation-state- and ethnicity-centred epistemologies

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the international workshop Sociology of Migration: Past, Present and Future, which took place in Geneva in December 2018. Many thanks to Milena Chimienti and Claudio Bolzman for the opportunity to collect valuable comments on the paper. Another version was presented at the IMISCOE annual conference in Malmö in June 2019 during the Reflexive Migration Studies panel, where we again received important feedback from the participants, to whom we express our gratitude. Finally, we would like to thank Daniel Moure, who once again miraculously turned our “German English” into more elegant language. We take full responsibility for all content presented here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This article was jointly written by the three authors. The first author had the lead and mainly wrote the theoretical, conceptual, and analytical parts. The second and third authors did the fieldwork and contributed with data, data analysis and conceptual issues.

2 By common-sense categories we understand categories as they are used by actors in everyday life and in politics and political regimes. Analytical categories are conceptual tools that originate in the social sciences, often in disciplines other than migration theory ((Dahinden 2016), see also (Brubaker 2004)).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the nccr – on the move (National Center of Competence in Research - The Migration-Mobility Nexus) and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. [grant number 51NF40-142020]. The article is an outcome of the project “Gender as a Boundary Marker in Migration, Citizenship and Belonging”.