Global Development-Migration Nexus and Methodological Nationalism

Global Development-Migration Nexus and Methodological Nationalism with Bridget Anderson and Nicola Piper

30 September 2019, 6-8PM, ARTS ONE LECTURE THEATRE, Queen Mary University of London

This event is part of a series “Mobility: peoples, things, words” organised by Queen Mary Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IHSS) and Queen Mary University of London Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholars (QMUL-LTDS). The series focuses on mobility not only as a geographic or historical movement but also social, political and cultural circulation of peoples, things and words.

Professors Bridget Anderson and Nicola Piper will lecture each for 30 minutes before a discussion chaired by Professor Engin Isin. A reception will follow.

Overcoming Methodological Nationalism

Professor Bridget Anderson, Bristol University. She is the Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship.

For decades the social sciences in general, and the study of migration in particular, have acknowledged the diagnosis of ‘methodological nationalism’. For research on migration this raises a particular ethical and epistemological question: how to research migration without making ‘the migrant’ into a problem? In this paper I bring together different strands in migration literature and outline a proposal for ‘methodological de-nationalism’, which recognises but does not reify state differentiation of ‘migrant’ and ‘citizen’. More particularly I argue for the importance of ‘migrantizing’ the citizen.

Empowering Migrants as “Global” Citizens

Professor Nicola Piper, The University of Sydney. She is Professor of International Migration Director, Sydney Asia Pacific Migration Centre (SAPMiC) and British Academy Global Professor, Queen Mary University of London.

The ‘circular’ or ‘temporary’ migration over the last decades has become a key legal pathway for worker mobility under a number of (formal and informal, official and unofficial) schemes. Generally framed as part of the migration-development nexus, this mobility, however, has produced a global migrant precariat. Against the backdrop of the recent efforts made to arrive at a global framework for governing migration, culminating in the Global Compact for Migration, I argue that a reframing of temporary migration has become necessary. This reframing must focus on greater emancipatory and empowering policies for migrants themselves. The shift from a focus on national sovereignty to people sovereignty is proposed in this paper as captured in the notion of ‘citizenship by proxy’.