Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on the status of movement and migration in anthropological research. Making the role of movement and migration within multi-sited fieldwork explicit can have important methodological advantages as it helps clarify the comparative dimensions of ethnographic practice.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the paradoxical role of movement and migration in anthropological practice. On the one hand, travel appears central to the discipline's methodology in the sense that fieldwork presupposes spatial movement to our field sites. Yet, the discipline's methodical arsenal remains wedded to notions of sedentary epistemologies: the "field" and participant observation require anthropologists to "be there", thereby privileging bounded Malinowskian slowness. At the same time, anthropological practice is also thought of as a comparative method which necessitates juxtaposing spatially dispersed social worlds. Hence, moving between cultural and social milieus enables anthropology's comparative method. However, comparative analysis typically either takes the form of contrasting textual material, or vacillating between "the field" and the production of texts "at home". This leaves the value of movement and migration ambiguous in terms of their methodological profit within ethnographic work. Drawing on my research on cross-border migration and migration governance this paper reflects on the vague and ambiguous status of movement and migration in anthropological research and the methodological possibilities and constraints they pose for our discipline. The paper suggests that making the role of movement and migration within multi-sited fieldwork explicit can have important methodological advantages as it helps clarify the comparative dimensions of ethnographic practice.