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• W2112248975 abstract "Contemporary scholarship on the processes, institutions, practices and experiences of international migration draws on a wide range of research methodologies, reflecting the multi-disciplinary character of the field, the diverse sites and subjects of migration, and the varied concepts and theories that underpin this area of study (King 2012). Indeed, while the core of a more traditional study of migration may be centred on policy-relevant quantitative analysis of international population flows (Samers 2010), many scholars now also incorporate a diverse range of qualitative techniques (e.g. Findlay and Li 1997; Longhurst et al. 2008; Pascual-de-Sans 2004; Tolia-Kelly 2004), while others also seek to work through the often overlapping zones of quantitative and qualitative approaches by employing mixed methodologies (e.g. Beaverstock and Boardwell 2000; Findlay et al. 2012; Kwan and Ding 2008; Mountz et al. 2003). The benefits of this methodological variety in migration research are apparent in a number of contemporary foci within the field. Geographic understandings of international migration have been enlivened by increasingly sophisticated understandings of population movement and circulation (Connell and Conway 2000); migrant stories and experiences have been captured through in-depth and narrative interviews (Lawson 2000); the workings of institutions and civil society groups have been understood through detailed ethnographies (McHugh 2000); and notions of home, community and diaspora elicited through methods that incorporate the visual and the material (Tolia-Kelly 2006). The conceptual palimpsest of migration scholarship would be noticeably weaker without these methodologies: understandings of ‘transnationalism’ (Collins 2009), ‘diaspora’ (Tolia-Kelly 2008), ‘(im)mobility’ (Silvey 2004), ‘return migration’ (Ley and Kobayashi 2005), ‘integration’ and ‘assimilation’ (Ehrkamp 2005) have all been enhanced or interrogated anew through findings from a diverse range of methodological approaches. The increasingly complex conceptual and methodological treatment of migration in geography has been fundamental in expanding the subjects, registers and spatialities of migration research – unbinding these concepts from overly delimited terminology (Collins 2009) and providing a platform to critically interrogate the ‘possibilities, politics and costs’ of increasing mobility (Yeoh 2005, 413). Indeed, research now includes subjects well beyond the binary of poor third-world and wealthy first-world migrants (Conradson and Latham 2005); engages with sophisticated understandings of embodied, emotional, affective, identity and performative registers of daily life (Conradson and McKay 2007); and offers insight into the variegated spatialities of migratory processes and the wider influence of cross-border lives (Jackson et al. 2004). Yet, in spite of all this methodological development, innovation and cross-fertilisation, there is very little discussion within the field of migration studies generally and few accounts within geography specifically about the relative value of different research methods, or the challenges of designing, executing and analysing different methodological approaches; neither has there been much reflection on the ethical and conceptual implications of these choices. This absence of explicit methodological debates in the geographies of migration raises questions about the myriad of subjects, registers and spatialities that have emerged in recent research. Do new research techniques really provide deeper insight than traditional methods into the different migrant subjects that now fill the pages of geographical journals and books? How can we enliven our understandings of the different registers of migration and migrant lives, which despite our finest efforts as researchers can at best be only partial accounts, often marked by unacknowledged positionalities and methodological limitations? What sorts of methodologies are likely to support further examination of the different spatialities and dynamics of migration – at different scales, in different contexts and for different groups of migrants? The four papers collected in this special section present an important first step in critically interrogating the methodologies of migration research. They represent a selection of papers given at the international conference on ‘Migration methodologies: researching Asia’ held at the National University of Singapore in March 2010. The conference sought to examine the methodological dimensions of migration research in an interdisciplinary context with a specific focus on movement into, within and out of the Asian region. Building on the discussions that took place at this conference, these four papers pay particular attention to the subjects, registers and spatialities that lie at the heart of contemporary geographies of migration. In their efforts to address the methodological opportunities, challenges and dilemmas of migration research, the authors in this special section draw on experiences with a diverse group of participants involved in quite different ways in migratory processes. The research reflected on here includes discussion of research with rural–rural and rural–urban migrants in Indonesia (Elmhirst), Burmese refugee children on the Thai–Burmese border (Oh), American families who move ‘intact’ to Singapore (Starkweather), and South Korean international students in Auckland (Collins). They point to some of the wide diversity that characterises the subjects of contemporary migration research – that far from the individualised, adult, male, worker that dominated earlier conceptualisations (Oishi 2005), migration today incorporates multiple subjects and demands attention to the different ways in which migrants are positioned in the spaces of migration, as well as the methods by which migration researchers study them. All the authors emphasise the role of research subjects as experts in their own lives. On the one hand, this points to the importance of including subjects not just in the gathering of the information, but also in its processing (see especially the papers by Oh and Collins). On the other hand, these accounts also point to negotiations in researcher–researched relationships, not simply in terms of ethical questions, power imbalances, but also in terms of what kinds of knowledge are privileged. The researcher is an embodied subject whose emotional politics will influence the research choices made about who and what to investigate, as well as when, where and how it is investigated. This is akin to Spry's understanding of the researcher's body as a ‘site of scholarly awareness and corporeal literacy’ (2001, 706). Elmhirst in particular demonstrates that the ‘how’ of research subject selection is tied not just to larger issues that are of academic and/or societal significance, but also our own embodied and emotional subjectivities; as researchers, we tend to be drawn to issues with which we identify and ignore those we frame as less worthy. Inasmuch as migration researchers may make ‘strategic erasures’ (Elmhirst's term) in their choice of research subject, they can actively ensure the strategic inclusion of the marginalised by careful selection of methods. Thus, Starkweather argues for the untapped potential of family group interviews as not only being able to ‘better reflect the relational nature of family stories about migration’ (p. 289), but also to facilitate the voices of subjects who have often been silenced by researchers (in her case, the children and trailing spouses of lead migrants). In a different sense, Collins’ paper suggests that an emphasis on the here and now of daily life worlds, visualised in mental maps, can serve as one mechanism to foreground international student lives in a context where racialised economistic discourses about ‘Asian students’ dominate. Along the same vein, Oh argues for the effective use of PhotoFriend as a visual ethnographic method that is child-centred and enables us to hear ‘child-generated perspectives of their [own] everyday lives’ (p. 282) while addressing apprehensions around the issue of exploiting some of the most vulnerable of migrants, namely refugee children who have encountered armed conflict. Almost a decade ago, Bennett argued that ‘[g]eographers … have been … muted regarding emotions’ (2004, 414) and ‘[w]here the writing of geographers has explored emotion, it has tended to focus on the emotions of the researcher in often dramatic circumstances’ (2004, 416). The authors in this collection have moved beyond this, paying attention to the feelings and emotions of the migrants they study in everyday settings. The papers also place significant emphasis on the embodied dimensions of migrant lives. They highlight how research spaces on migration are affective and relational spaces (see also Gielis 2011) that require research practices that are emotionally laden and that go beyond the usual surveys and in-depth interviews, which often fail to capture how migrants engage emotionally and dynamically with everyday life. Notably, the papers demonstrate how the use of material graphics/objects such as home artefacts (Starkweather), photographs (Oh), as well as mental maps and home pages on the web (Collins) can help to create a better dynamic between researcher and participant, and act as significant research tools to catalyse evocative discussions of emotional encounters in everyday experiences. For example, Oh's use of photographs – which she describes as ‘portals into the children's emotional and cognitive universe’, both past and present (p. 285) – encouraged the refugee children she interviewed to spontaneously express their stories of fear and pain, as well as of strength and capacity, in confronting adversity. In deploying these visual ethnographic methods, the focus is not on the ‘what’ of the objects (e.g. what is drawn or photographed), but the ‘how’ – the manner in which these objects act as ‘visceral and tactile reminders of … experiences, histories and mobilities’ (Starkweather, p. 291) evoking memories and narratives about the lives of the research subjects. In addition, Starkweather also highlights how the often intimate setting of a family group interview goes beyond the normal focus group to draw out a wide register of emotions and experiences. Researchers taking a leaf from her work to conduct similar interviews will need to take careful note of unspoken messages and (e)motions passed between family members through glances and gestures, a gaze and a touch, and other body language. The papers also look at migration research conducted in a variety of spaces over a range of scales: from interviews in living and dining rooms of private homes, to refugee camps, from rural villages to urban neighbourhoods, and also of real vs cyber spaces. The authors highlight the importance of understanding migration processes and experiences at the intersection of these different spaces and scales. In doing so, they go beyond the conventional notion of multi-sited ethnographies as being about multiply-located research teams and/or following the migrant/thing/story/etc. to multiple locations. Thus, for example, without resorting to multi-sited ethnography, Collins highlights the use of integrative and iterative methods in providing insights into how migrants connect transnationally with home and other locations while making sense of and building their new lives abroad (see also Gielis 2011). Taking a different tack, Elmhirst argues for the need to understand the relational nature of places: that all places are ‘an assemblage of different kinds of networks (people, things, imaginaries)’ that link them to multiple other places through the mobile practices of migrant networks. This relational reading of space is also prominent in the ways in which different contexts within Asia are worked through these projects and the reflections of the authors themselves. At one level, Asian contexts serve as the backdrop for all of the research discussed here, whether a site of research experiences (Elmhirst), the specific location of a research project (Oh; Starkweather), or the different sorts of mobilities into (Starkweather) and out of (Collins) different parts of Asia. These spatialities of research are important, not least because as Elmhirst makes clear, they are embedded in broader relations between research subjects living lives in one part of the world (Southeast Asia/Indonesia in her case) and academics who so often come from or work through knowledge networks centred in the global north (England in her case). Sometimes the mobility of research participants appears akin to this academic mobility, as in the case of international students and expatriate families, but as Oh and Elmhirst show, there are multiple spaces in the region where other types of mobility are constrained. Whilst not providing methodological answers to these challenges, the papers in this special section do point to some issues that need to be addressed as researchers examine the complex fields of migration in the region. *** Together the papers in this special section highlight the importance of serious reflection on the methodological issues involved in conducting research. While this is something that geographers have paid attention to (Crang 2005), it is an awareness that is stretched in new directions here. The study of migration, perhaps more than other topics, calls into question the multi-faceted relationships that exist between people and places and highlights the local implications of seemingly distant processes (Massey 1991). With this in mind, research on migration has to be conceived as more than just an excursion into the field, the deployment of pre-conceived methods, and analysis in the unproblematic spaces of academic offices. Rather, the discussions here point to the negotiated character of much migration research: where ostensibly distinct relations with participants and funding bodies are interrelated; where emerging subject areas and conceptual approaches require new reflections on the relevance and use of different methodological strategies; and where analysis calls for an iterative approach to understanding the complex folding and unfolding of migrant present, past and future positions and experiences rather than linear deductive accounts that reify rationality and purpose. We are grateful to the National University of Singapore (WBS R-101-004-019-101) for funding the conference on ‘Migration methodologies: researching Asia’ in March 2010, Singapore, at which the papers selected for this special section were first presented. We would like to thank all of the referees who took part in the blind review process for this special section; the insights provided in these reviews have strengthened the papers published here. Thanks also to Kevin Ward and Madeleine Hatfield for their support and assistance in getting the special section published." @default.
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• W2112248975 title "Introduction to special section on migration methodologies: emerging subjects, registers and spatialities of migration in Asia" @default.
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