The temporalities of international migration : implications for ethnographic research

Transformations in both time and space are central to theoretical understandings of modernity and globalization (see, for example, Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991; Harvey, 1999; Urry, 2000). This chapter is specifically concerned with understandings of time in terms of the empirical study of contemporary international migration processes and, in particular, in terms of ethnographic methodological approaches. I argue that, in the context of a complex and globalized modernity, temporalities of migration are increasingly recognized as heterogeneous and dynamic. While circular, temporary and staggered mobilities have always been a part of global migration circuits, modern transportation and communications technologies have facilitated increasing temporal heterogeneity, and new modes of temporariness are becoming institutionalized in new ways (Rajkumar et al., 2012). In particular, although Western Europe has an extensive history of guestworker-type temporary migration (see, for example, Castles et al., 1984), traditional ‘settler’ receiving societies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand have only recently begun to shift from the policies of permanent settlement that dominated postwar mass immigration schemes to more-temporary or ‘staggered’ migration programmes. In this chapter, I argue that traditional ethnographic methods of interviewing and participant observation, which often occur at fixed sites, at fixed moments and over fixed durations, often fail to engage with the complex questions emerging around international migration and time. Although ideas that methodology is ‘multi-sited’ or ‘de-nationalized’ have been explored in the international migration field (Amelina and Faist, 2012; Fitzgerald, 2006; Marcus, 1995), this chapter asks, in addition, how we ‘do’ ethnographic migration research that captures multiplicity in both the temporal and the spatial dimensions. I first establish some of the key ideas in contemporary theoretical and empirical discussions of migration and time. I also engage with some current debates around methodology in the field, and position the discussion of the temporalities of international migration within these debates. Next, I develop a conceptual framework of ‘time track’ (a temporal path of social behaviour) and ‘timescale’ (various scales of social and political temporal ordering), before identifying two keys areas of methodological concern around migration and temporality within this framework: time as a ‘boundary category’ in identifying and categorizing research subjects, and time as a form of discipline and control in the governance and regulation of migration. I then turn to a discussion of research practices within ethnography that may begin to address some of these issues, including how traditional ethnographic techniques can be reframed in a temporal approach, and how self-documentation and virtual or digital methods may also be employed. The chapter concludes with some overall remarks about the methodological challenges of ‘breaking in’ to the temporal dimension in ethnographies of international migration.