The Development of the Field of Migration Studies in Historical, Disciplinary, and International Perspectives

This paper addresses cultures of knowledge production on the topic of migration using citation analysis and bibliometrics. We observe the development of migration and migration-related diversity as a "field" of study by analysing citation networks from a large body of literature on migration. We situate this analysis in three theoretical discussions, namely: (1) Internationalization: Has knowledge production on migration moved beyond “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002)?; (2) Interdisciplinarity: To what extent does migration research “talk across disciplines” (Brettell & Hollifield, 2000), and to what extent has it emerged as its own “field” separate to broader, more traditional disciplines?; (3) Periodization: Many paradigmatic turns have been theorized in migration studies, such as “the local turn” (Zapata-Barrero, Caponio, & Scholten, 2017) and the “diversity turn” (Meissner, 2015; Vertovec, 2011). Using the concept of “citation classics” and their life cycle (Cano & Lind, 1991), what have been the turning points in scholarly innovation in migration studies? This paper aims to contribute to broader discussions on the institutionalization of migration as a research field and the ontological implications of this development. In addition to this, it speaks to the complex relationship of research and policy (Boswell & Smith, 2017), and the role of national science organisations and, increasingly, European institutions in mobilising and funding such research. The paper is situated in the broader context of a PhD project investigating research-policy dialogues, and infrastructures for knowledge production and utilisation, on migration. The PhD project emerges from the H2020 project, CrossMigration, in which we are building a Migration Research Hub in order to facilitate systematic knowledge accumulation on migration. Co-authors Dr. Asya Pisarevskaya Prof.dr. Peter W.A. Scholten (the form would not allow me to add their email address, but they have expressed permission for me to present this paper)