International Migration Research: Constructions, Omissions and the Promises of Interdisciplinarity
First published 2005 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright 2005 Michael Bommes and Ewa Morawska
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
International migration research : constructions, omissions
and the promises of interdisciplinarity. - (Research in
migration and ethnic relations series)
1.Emigration and immigration - Research 2.Interdisciplinary
research
I.Bommes, Michael II.Morawska, Ewa T.
304.8'2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
International migration research : constructions, omissions, and the promises of interdisciplinarity / [edited] by Michael Bommes and Ewa Morawska.
p. cm. - (Research in migration and ethnic relations series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-4219-0
1. Emigration and immigration-Research. I. Bommes, Michael. II. Morawska, EwaT. III. Series.
JV6013.5.157 2004
304.8'072--dc22
2004022601
Transferred to Digital Printing in 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7546-4219-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-3519-2671-3 (ebk)
CONTENTS
PART I Theoretical Concepts and Interpretations in Migration Research
1 Migration and Population in German Historical Thought: Some Critical Reflections
PART II Migration Research in Different Disciplines
PART III Issues and Dilemmas of Interdisciplinarity
PART 4 Interdependence of Migration Research and its Sociopolitical Contexts
Series Editor: Maykel Verkuyten, ERCOMER Utrecht University
The Research in Migration and Ethnic Relations Series is published in association with the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER), Utrecht University, but draws contributions from international scholars in the field. Books in the series will be of interest to students and scholars of migration, nationalism, racism and ethnic relations. The series aims in particular to publish volumes with a comparative European focus, or those nationally-based studies which have a broader relevance to international issues of migration and ethnic relations.
Other titles in the series
Nationalism and Exclusion of Migrants: Cross-National Comparisons
Edited by Mrove Gijsberts, Louk Hagendoorn and Peer Scheepers
ISBN 07546 3993 2
Transnational Social Spaces: Agents, Networks and Institutions
Edited by Thomas Faist and Eyp zveren
ISBN 07546 3291 1
Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe: Modernity, Race, Space and Exclusion
Angus Bancroft
ISBN 07546 39215
Roland Bank, Chief Legal Adviser, Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (compensation programme for National Socialist injustice), Berlin, Germany
Michael Bommes, Prof, of Sociology/Methodology of Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Migration Research, University of Osnabrck, Germany
Josef Ehmer, Prof, of Modern History, University of Salzburg, Austria
Adrian Favell, Prof, of Sociology, University of Califormia, Los Angeles, USA
Gary P. Freeman, Prof, of Political Science, University of Texas, Austin, USA
Andrew Geddes, Prof, of Political Science, University of Sheffield, UK
Jost Halfmann, Prof, of Sociology, Technical University of Dresden, Germany
Michael Kearney, Prof, of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, CA
Sandra Lavenex, Assistant Prof, of Political Science, University of Bern, CH
Dirk Lehmkuhl, Senior Research Fellow in Political Science, University of Zurich, CH
Utz Maas, Prof, of Linguistics, University of Osnabrck, Germany
Leslie Page Moch, Prof, of European History, Michigan State University, USA
Ewa Morawska, Prof, of Sociology, University of Essex, UK
Introduction
Michael Bommes
Ewa Morawska
The enormous expansion of international population flows since the 1980s has been a constitutive component of accelerated globalization processes connecting different regions of the world through trade and labor exchange, international laws and organizations, and rapidly advancing transportation and communication technologies. These swelling international migrations and their diverse consequences for both sender and receiver societies have prompted governments and international organizations to find ways to control these flows either by constraining them (receiver states) or by facilitating the movement (human rights organizations and many sender governments with vested interests in immigrants remittances and their economic investments at home). Increased public concern in Western receiver countries with the influx of immigrants from remote regions of the world and its apparent relationship to globalization have been articulated recently in Huntingtons (1991) vision of a clash of civilisations, Brimelows (1995) prediction of immigration disaster, or Enzenbergers (1994) fears concerning Die groe Wanderung (the big migration).
The recognition of international population flows as the integral component of the globalization processes rather than as a temporary phenomenon has also raised the status of (im)migration research in scholarly disciplines, which has brought new opportunities for funding, employment, and publications, and an increasing number of young scholars interested in pursuing this field of study. This elevation of interest in international migration as an important phenomenon shaping contemporary societal processes has occurred not only in the academic fields that have traditionally focused some (sub-)disciplinary attention on international migration, such as history, sociology, linguistics, or economics, but also in the specializations that have only recently claimed the study of transnational migration as a new field of research, such as the political sciences, anthropology, psychology, medicine and public health. In the United States, a classical immigration society with a longstanding melting-pot ideology, this turn has been a renaissance of the established (if long marginalized) tradition of research on immigration; in Europe and other regions of the world it represents a novel scholarly concern and a quickly growing area of study. (See Kritz et al., 1981; Hui, Bun, and Beng, 1995; Bade and Weiner, 1997; Massey et al., 1994, 1998; Castles and Miller, 2003.)
