Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

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

  • Chapter
Book cover Social Transformation and Migration

Part of the book series: Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship Series ((MDC))

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).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Anderson, K. and Taylor, A. (2005) ‘Exclusionary politics and the question of national belonging: Australian ethnicities in “multiscalar” focus’, Ethnicities, 5:4, 460–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Modernity (London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Brenner, N. (2001) ‘The limits to scale? Methodological reflections on scalar structuration’, Progress in Human Geography, 25:4, 591–614.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brenner, N. (2011) ‘The urban question and the scale question: some conceptual clarifications’, in Click Schiller, N. and Çağlar, A. (eds) Relocating Migration: Rescaling Cities and Migrants (New York: Cornell University Press) 23–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brettell, C. B. (2011) ‘Scalar positioning and immigrant organisations: Asian Indians and the dynamics of place’, in Click Schiller, N. and Çağlar, A. (eds) Locating Migration: Rescaling Cities and Migrants (New York: Cornell University Press) 85–103.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burawoy M. (2000) Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World (Berkeley: University of California Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Çağlar, A. (2007) ‘Rescaling cities, cultural diversity and transnationalism: migrants of Mardin and Essen’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30:6, 1070–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Çağlar, A. and Click Schiller, N. (2011) ‘Introduction: migrants and cities’, in Click Schiller, N. and Çağlar, A. (eds) Locating Migration: Rescaling Cities and Migrants (New York: Cornell University Press) 1–22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carruthers, A. (2013) ‘National multiculturalism, transnational identities’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34:2–3, 214–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Castells, M. (1999) ‘Grassrooting the space of flows’, Urban Geography, 20:4, 294–302.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Castles, S. (2007) ‘Twenty-first-century migration as a challenge to sociology’, Journal of Ethnic andMigration Studies, 33:3, 351–71.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Castles, S. (2010) ‘Understanding global migration: a social transformation perspective’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36:10, 1565–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Castles, S., Arias Cubas, M., Kim, C, Koleth, E., Ozkul, D. and Williamson, R. (2011) Karl Polanyi’s Great Transformation as a Framework for Understanding Neo-Liberal Globalisation. Social Transformation and International Migration in the 21st Century Working Paper 1 (Sydney: STIM The University of Sydney).

    Google Scholar 

  • Castles, S., Hugo, G. and Vasta, E. (2013) ‘Rethinking migration and diversity in Australia: introduction’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34:2, 115–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Collins, J. (2013) ‘Rethinking Australian immigration and immigrant settlement policy’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34:2, 160–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. (2003) ‘Ethnography on an awkward scale: postcolonial anthropology and the violence of abstraction’, Ethnography, 4:2, 147–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fitzgerald, D. S. (2010) Mixing Methods and Crossing Boundaries in the Study of International Migration. COMCAD Working Paper 73 (Bielefeld: University of Bielefeld, Center on Migration, Citizenship and Development).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gapps, S. (2010) Cabrogal to Fairfield City: A History of a Multicultural Community. (Fairfield: Fairfield City Council).

    Google Scholar 

  • Click Schiller, N. (2009) A Global Perspective on Transnational Migration: Theorizing Migration without Methodological Nationalism. Centre on Migration, Policy and Society Working Paper 67 (Oxford: COMPAS Oxford University).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hage, G. (2005) ‘A not so multi-sited ethnography of a not so imagined community’, Anthropological Theory, 5:4, 463–75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hannerz, U. (2003) ‘Being there … and there … and there! Reflections on multi-site ethnography’, Ethnography, 4:2, 201–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, D. (2006) Spaces of Global Capitalism (London and New York: Verso).

    Google Scholar 

  • Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D. and Perraton, J. (1999) Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Oxford: Polity Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Herod, A. and Wright, M. W. (2002) ‘Placing scale: an introduction’, in Herod, A. and Wright, M. W. (eds) Geographies of Power: Placing Scale (Oxford: Blackwell) 1–14.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Leitner, H. (1997) ‘Reconfiguring the spatiality of power: the construction of a supranational migration framework for the European Union’, Political Geography, 16:2, 123–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levitt, P. and Click Schiller, N. (2004) ‘Conceptualising simultaneity: a transnational social field perspective on society’, International Migration Review, 38:3, 1002–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lombard, M. (2012) ‘Using auto-photography to understand place: reflections from research in urban informal settlements in Mexico’, Area, 45:1, 23–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marcus, G. E. (1995) ‘Ethnography in-of the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 95–117.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marston, S. A. (2000) ‘The social construction of scale’, Progress in Human Geography, 24:2, 219–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massey, D. (1994) Space, Place and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Massey, D. (2004) ‘Geographies of responsibilities’, Geografiška Annaler, Series B, Human Geography, 86:1, 5–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moore, A. (2008) ‘Rethinking scale as a geographical category: from analysis to practice’, Progress in Human Geography, 32:2, 203–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ozkul, D. (2014) ‘Emotive connections: insider research with Turkish/Kurdish Alevi migrants in Germany’, in Voloder, L. and Kirpitchenko, L. (eds) Insider Research on Migration and Mobility (London: Ashgate) 117–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Papastergiadis, N. (2005) Mobility and the Nation: Skins, Machines and Complex Systems. Willy Brandt Series of Working Papers in International Migration and Ethnic Relations 3/05 (Malmö: MIM Malmö University).

    Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, K. (2001) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, 2nd Beacon paperback edition (Boston, MA: Beacon Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Randolph, B. and Holloway D. (2005) ‘The suburbanization of disadvantage in Sydney: new problems, new policies’, Opolis: An International Journal of Suburban and Metropolitan Studies, 1:1, 49–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, R. (2005) ‘The conceptual promise of glocalization: commonality and diversity’, ART-eFACT: Strategies of Resistance 4 (Zaghreb: ART-e-FACT) http://arte-fact.mi2.hr/_a04/lang_en/theory_robertson_en.htm, accessed 13 May 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salzbrunn, M. (2011) ‘Rescaling processes in two “global” cities: festive events as pathways of migrant incorporation’, in Click Schiller, N. and Çağlar, A. (eds) Locating Migration: Rescaling Cities and Migrants (New York: Cornell University Press) 166–89.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sassen, S. (2001) The Global City (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, M. P. (2001) Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization (Oxford: Blackwell).

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, M. P. (2005). ‘Transnational urbanism revisited’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31:2, 235–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, M. P. (2011) ‘Translocality: a critical reflection’, in Brickell, K. and Datta, A. (eds) Translocal Geographies: Spaces, Places, Connections (Farnham: Ashgate) 181–98.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, N. (1993) ‘Homeless/global: scaling places’, in Bird, J., Curtis, B., Putnam, T. and Tickner, L. (eds) Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change (London and New York: Routledge) 87–120.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, N. (ed.) (2000) Dictionary of Human Geography, 4th edition (Oxford: Blackwell).

    Google Scholar 

  • Soja, E. (2005) ‘On the concept of global city regions’, ART-eFACT: Strategies of Resistance 4 (Zaghreb: ART-e-FACT). http://artefact.mi2.hr/_a04/lang_en/theory_latour_en.htm, accessed 13 May 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vasta, E. (2013) ‘Do we need social cohesion in the 21st century? Multiple languages of belonging in the metropolis’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34:2, 196–213.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wimmer, A. and Click Schiller, N. (2002) ‘Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-state building, migration and the social sciences’, Global Networks, 2:4, 301–34.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wimmer, A. and Click Schiller, N. (2003) ‘Methodological nationalism, the social sciences, and the study of migration: an essay in historical epistemology’, International Migration Review, 37:3, 576–610.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xiang, B. (2013) ‘Multi-scalar ethnography: an approach for critical engagement with migration and social change’, Ethnography, 14:3, 282–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Rebecca Williamson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sydney, Australia

    Stephen Castles (Research Chair in Sociology), Derya Ozkul  & Magdalena Arias Cubas (Research Chair in Sociology),  & 

Copyright information

© 2015 Rebecca Williamson

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Williamson, R. (2015). Towards a Multi-scalar Methodology: The Challenges of Studying Social Transformation and International Migration. In: Castles, S., Ozkul, D., Cubas, M.A. (eds) Social Transformation and Migration. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137474957_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation