Migration and the burden of methodological nationalism

(dis)Locating individuals ‘on the move’ within the logics of migration studies

By now, it should be clear that the notions of migrant/immigrant fail to account for the variety of contemporary forms of human (and non-human) mobilities. Traditionally, migration has been narrated as a tale that has a single point of origin and a single destination — a tale in which an individual moves from a ‘poor’ country to a ‘rich’ one, or escapes a ‘dangerous’ country for a ‘safe’ one. Migration has historically been theorised from within the framework of European modernity and mostly understood as a consequence of the flows and dynamics (i.e. connections and disruptions) resulting from colonialism and post-coloniality. In this way, human movement has routinely been framed within the binary logics of centre-periphery and origin-arrival.These logics are best exemplified by: individuals moving from thecolony, or former colony (a periphery), to the metropolis (a centre), or to other more affluent colonies of the same former metropolis (e.g. Indians to England or other parts of the Commonwealth); and individuals from the economic or cultural periphery moving to the economic or cultural centre (e.g. Mexicans to the United States, Chinese to Australia, or Southeast Asians to Hong Kong or the Arabian Peninsula). Migration, in these cases, is construed as a move from a less developed country/place to a more developed one — from a periphery to a centre.

I contend, however, that explanations of human movement informed by these logics, which frame human movement as a response to experiences of hardship or a dream of finding El Dorado (logics which inform traditional push-pull theories) are no longer enough (Salazar, 2011).They fail to capture the multi-directionality, and the ‘turbulence’ (Papastergiadis, 2000), that characterise contemporary human movement. The case study of Africans in Guangzhou is a testimonial to how the aforementioned ways of explicating human movement have lost currency. Not only do the territorial, linguistic, and cultural discontinuities between Africa and China suggest that human movement between the two is an atypical phenomenon, but China is certainly not a ‘centre’ to which Africa is a ‘periphery’ (it may be in the process of becoming, but that is another discussion). Moreover, Africans in China do not fit into the logics of the international division of labour (bodies moving from the ‘Global South’ to the ‘Global North’), so widely alluded to as a description of the mechanisms behind human mobilities. As I have highlighted throughout this book, most Africans in China are not necessarily victims of the push-pull economistic mechanisms that researchers in migration studies tend to identify as the crucial determinant in the movement of people across borders. Furthermore, the patterns of (and rationales for) movement that I have described here indicate that individuals on the move are not necessarily seeking to settle in a ‘promised land’.

As Wimmer and Schiller (2003) note, a great majority of theorisation around migrant subjectivity emerges from paradigmatic centres and case studies (i.e. Western universities and research centres looking at immigration from/to specific places). As such, these theorisations tend to respond to research agendas sanctioned by ‘receiving states’, and are often organised around the notion of settlement; thus producing particular types of knowledge about individuals on the move. As mentioned earlier, these theorisations tend to assume human movement is a consequence of ruptures and displacements (that threaten both sending and receiving societies) and remain conceptually focused on forms of permanent settlement, thus paying little attention to transient modes of mobility (Collins, 2011). While focusing on settlement may be an accurate way to tackle issues associated with transnational mobilities in Europe and North America, when these theoretical frameworks are expanded, and uncritically imposed upon cases of mobility in different contexts, they become problematic (as I noted at the beginning of this chapter). Indeed, contemporary approaches to human movement emerging from Western paradigmatic centres not only privilege the perspective of settlement, but they are profoundly shaped by methodological nationalism.

Methodological nationalism is the (social) scientific tendency to equate society with the nation-state, and to assume that states are ‘natural’ units of analysis and comparison (Beck, 2003;Wimmer & Schiller, 2003). Forms of analysis based within

Embedded transnationality 169 this methodological orientation tend to confine the study of social, cultural, and political processes within the geographic boundaries of a state, and to draw all sorts of‘natural’ comparisons. Indeed, the epistemic structures of social sciences have been historically aligned with the experiences of modern nation-state building (Wimmer & Schiller, 2003). In this way, while different phases of nation-state formation have influenced the ways in which people on the move have been conceptualised, as Wimmer and Schiller (2003) indicate, perspectives informed by methodological nationalism have been resilient and have remained deeply embedded in the way knowledge about people on the move has been produced in social sciences. Methodological nationalism, for instance, has been crucial in establishing the view that each territorially based state has its own stable population, and then contrasting the notion of these stable populations with individuals on the move (portrayed as marginal individuals uprooted from one society and dumped in another) (Wimmer & Schiller, 2013). Unsurprisingly, methodological nationalism has been a determinant in the emergence of modern migration studies, and influenced both research design and output in the field.

While I argue that methodological nationalism tends to thwart the understanding of the dynamics informing the multiplicity of contemporary forms of mobility, and that by avoiding the use of the nation-state as a ‘natural’ unit of analysis results in a deeper understanding of the movement of individuals across space (Basch et al., 1994; Kivisto, 2003), methodological nationalism is not only a perspective or an obstacle (as it is sometimes portrayed) that can be easily removed. Indeed, it is a complex historical formation that touches on multiple disciplines and, as such, it is difficult to overcome. Rather than doing away with this methodological orientation, the task at hand is to identify the extent to which its reductions are helpful (as explanations) and to avoid those that tend to flatten out the diversity of experiences and voices (Wimmer & Schiller, 2003). While it is important to overcome the shortsightedness of methodological nationalism, it is equally important to bear in mind that nation-states are still crucial formations that, while not central, have to be accounted for when discussing transnational mobility. Indeed, as Beck (2003) suggests, the critique of methodological nationalism should not be mistaken for the thesis of the end/decline of the nation-state.

So, while it is possible for frameworks informed by methodological nationalism to accurately explicate certain patterns of movement in particular contexts, it should not be assumed that these frames, as discursive tools, have the power to explain all types of human movement. In the case of Africans in Guangzhou, for instance, a methodological nationalism-oriented approach would suggest a focus on how members of a particular nationality organise and negotiate their presence in China. However, as I have shown, in this case study, national distinctions do not have much currency when collectively negotiating everyday life on the ground. Likewise, but from another perspective, the methodological distinction between internal (domestic) and foreign ‘migrants’ (see Chapter 3), for instance, portrays the experiences of Africans as unique. However, removing the methodological nationalism lens shows how the history of China is a history of mobilities and that foreign and internal individuals on the move occupy similarly precarious emplacements. Certainly, focusing on the nation-state, and on nationality as anabsolute force organising different types of migrant experiences obfuscates the understanding of migrant flows (Papastergiadis, 2000).

Before proceeding, I want to make it clear that I am not trying to make a case against the notion of the ‘migrant’, or against decades of tradition in migration studies. I am not claiming that the simultaneous and multiple transnational/translocal attachments and commitments generated by the intensification of interactions in contemporary global human movement mean that we now live in a ‘post-migration world’. However, I do endeavour to highlight the need to problematise what could be termed ‘methodological immigrationism’ — the need to locate all those (predominantly non-‘Western’ subjects) whose life journeys have taken them in and out of their countries within the frameworks of (im)migration, assimilation, and settlement (a practice rife in traditional streams of migration studies). In the context of transnational mobilities, for instance, methodological immigrationism tends to represent non-“Western’ subjects as immigrants (associating them with labels such as: ‘from below’ or ‘low-end’ (see Smith & Guarnizo, 1998; and, Mathews et al., 2014)) while characterising ‘Western’ subjects as expats or transnationals.¹ In short, should we keep talking about ‘immigrants’ considering there is little evidence to suggest that ‘settlement’ (arrival) is still a central feature in geographies of transnational mobility, as Papastergiadis (2000) contends? A critique of methodological immigrationism would entail a redefinition of what an ‘(im)migrant’ is (it would ask what relationships of power are embedded in the discursive production of this label), and to what extent is this notion still valid to denominate all those on the move. To assume that most Africans in Guangzhou (or China), for instance, are (or desire to become) ‘immigrants’ is not only a point of resentment among some Africans living in Guangzhou, but, more importantly, a legacy of sedentaristic, methodological approaches that assume settlement is normal, but distance, change, instability, and placelessness are abnormal (Sheller & Urry 2006, p. 208). In a way, this legacy evinces how the experiences of‘others’ (non-‘Western’ subjects) have long posed virtually insurmountable difficulties to the Western philosophical and political tradition (Mbembe, 2001).

Finally, not only are new routes being established, but the multiplicity of contexts through which individuals now journey has resulted in the emergence of new modalities of movement. These new modalities and their interplay with diverse contexts (beyond the Euro-American imaginary) compel researchers to think of creative ways to generate new (situated, localised, and historically specific) theoretical frameworks to more accurately explain mobility from outside the theoretical heartland of the paradigmatic centres of knowledge production in immigrant receiving societies (Collins, 2011).