Mixing methods and crossing boundaries in the study of international migration

Abstract

"Building on the transnationalism literature, I argue for multi-sited fieldwork in countries of migrants’ origin and destination and the removal of national blinders so that both domestic and international migrations are brought into the same frame for comparison. Such an approach can move beyond description alone by amending the extended case method to engage theoretical research programs in ways that attend to the representativeness of a case study. The analytical fruit of these strategies is demonstrated with examples from the migration literature and ten years of ethnographic and survey fieldwork among Mexican migrants." (author's abstract)