The temporalities of international migration : implications for ethnographic research

Contemporary processes of international migration are often heterogeneous, circular and varied in terms of stages and durations, with the boundaries between permanent and temporary mobility becoming increasingly porous and contingent. These processes are driven by systems of governance that privilege ‘just-in-time’ immigration and gradations of partial and temporary membership over full citizenship. In light of this tension, there is emerging theoretical and empirical interest in the temporalities of international migration. Yet, methodologies that continue to work under assumptions of migration as temporally linear and spatially unidirectional movements from home to host country fail to capture much of the complexity of these processes. This paper addresses some of the implications of this complexity, focussing in particular on the temporalities of migration in the context of ethnographic research methods. It argues that traditional ethnographic approaches, such as interviews and participant observation, are limited in their ability to capture the dynamic temporalities of international migration. Using a conceptual framework of ‘time tracks’ (temporal paths of social behaviour) and ‘timescales’ (scales of social and political temporal ordering), the paper then discusses some of the core methodological issues around the temporal dimensions of contemporary migration. It also suggests some alternative ethnographic research practices which could engage more fully with these temporal dimensions.