Decentering methodological nationalism to survey precarious legal status trajectories

ABSTRACT

We examine how the politics of knowledge production limit research on the relationship between immigration status and social inequality. We centre the practices of methodological nationalism in Canada, a traditional country of permanent immigration in which temporary migration has become a core feature of the immigration system. In this case, state classification and counting of populations, and the careful curation of data on nominally permanent and temporary migrants limits research on immigration status. We also document the research design process and survey instrument we developed to work towards methodological autonomy from the state categorization of people on the move. The research design included community consultations, democratization of the research process, and a commitment to experiential knowledge. The resulting survey offers a parsimonious instrument to study complex and indeterminate precarious legal status trajectories and their relationship to social inequality.

KEYWORDS:

• Politics of knowledge production
• state classification practices
• methodological nationalism
• methodological autonomy
• survey research design
• Canada
• precarious noncitizenship
• temporary migration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Goldring et al. (2009) define precarious legal status as a continuum of immigration categories and legal status situations marked by any of the following: a lack of permanent authorized residence, partial and temporary authorized access to social citizenship and employment, depending on a third party for authorized presence or employment, and deportability, the ever present possibility of being removed from the space of the nation-state.

2. The survey instrument is available upon request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patricia Landolt

Patricia Landolt is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her work examines the relationship between global migration, social inequality and social justice. Current research includes a project on schools and access to education for precarious legal status students, a survey on the relationship between precarious legal status and precarious work, and a new project on memorialization, knowledge production and Treaty Citizenship.

Luin Goldring

Luin Goldring is Professor of Sociology at York University. Her research addresses precarious legal status trajectories and social inequality, and legal status bordering practices and negotiations. This paper draws on a collaborative project that gathered survey data to analyse the relationship between precarious legal status and precarious work.

Paul Pritchard

Paul Pritchard is a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Toronto. His research explores the politics of home and belonging among precarious legal status and Indigenous youth in the context of migration and displacement.