About the Book

How can migration studies respond to the decolonial challenge? International and interdisciplinary, this timely book directly confronts issues of ongoing colonialism and a re-evaluation of migration studies’ epistemic, institutional and intellectual foundations. The book proposes postcolonial frameworks for conceptualising and researching migration while considering the scope and potential for decolonisation of the field.

Contributors highlight the deep and enduring links between migration studies and colonialism, confronting the spectres of enslavement, Indigenous dispossession and worldwide indenture. They address the field’s relationship with borders and governance, outlining critical issues such as power dynamics, the concept of othering and territoriality, alongside a nuanced examination of the notions of the migrant and the refugee. The book ultimately emphasises the transformative influence of emerging critical and radical traditions within contemporary migration studies.

This is a valuable resource for scholars and students of migration studies across the social sciences and addresses the state of the field in a time of intellectual decolonisation.

Table of Contents:
Contents 1 Introduction to Migration Studies and the Decolonial Challenge 1 Sin Yee Koh, Francis L. Collins and Brenda S. A. Yeoh PART I Epistemological Challenges 2 Producing borders: migration control and the colonial present 21 Radhika Mongia 3 Enduring and emergent challenges to post/decolonising migration studies 38 Sin Yee Koh 4 Onto-epistemic resistance: on the materiality of decolonizing migration studies 56 Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez 5 Are we not also scholars! An African perspective on decolonial migration studies 74 Kudakwashe Vanyoro 6 Decolonizing migration studies = abolishing nation-states and their borders 90 Nandita Sharma 7 A Māori migration studies must come from below! 113 Simon Barber (Kāi Tahu) and Gabriella Brayne (Ngāti Maniapoto Sāmoa 8 ‘Don’t want to be called a climate refugee’: Indigenising climate mobilities 133 Carol Farbotko and Taukiei Kitara 9 Decolonizing refugee discourses: freedom to escape and freedom to remain 151 Sedef Arat-Koç PART II Political and Methodological Challenges 10 Whiteness in migration and its study 169 Sarah Kunz 11 Intellectual versus institutional decolonisation in the study of gender in Asian women’s migrations 186 Anju Mary Paul 12 Integration and migration: Singapore as a de-colonizing lens 201 Junjia Ye 13 De-centring epistemic coloniality at the research-policy interface: migration studies and the migration state 216 Francis L. Collins 14 Making sense of colonial legacies: methods for linking past and present in migration studies 235 Lucy Mayblinand Joe Turner 15 Post-socialist coloniality? How to address the decolonial challenge in migration studies under the post-socialist condition 252 Anna Amelinaand Friz M. Trzeciak 16 Beyond the ‘victim gaze’: reflections on methodological challenges in researching un/freedom and labour migration 271 Sallie Yea 17 Decolonizing the figure of the “migrant”: non-binary categorizations and intra-Asian mobilities 286 Laavanya Kathiravelu 18 Decentring migration scholars, centring paradoxes: autoethnography as resistance 305 Sylvia Ang