Risk Society and Going Beyond Methodological Nationalism in Migration Research

Risk is a significant concept for grasping the nature of modernity and the modernization process. It was Ulrich Beck who first associated the ‘risk’ concept with modern choices, preferences, and decisions in his risk society theory, arguing that modern societies are in a transformation process and shifting from first to second modernity due to unintended side-effects of irresponsible modernization. Considering that understanding the background of current ecological, political, and financial crises, namely ‘manufactured risks’, requires looking beyond national boundaries, capacities, and discourses, Beck deconstructs the basic premises of the modernity project and questions the validity of methodological nationalism of first modernity, which takes the state as the primary unit of analysis and approaches issues through the lens of interests of the nation-state. This becomes more critical when exploring the nature of a multifaceted issue such as migration. Methodological nationalism in scholarly research and subsequent politics based on nation-state priorities assume that individuals forced to migrate due to humanitarian catastrophes, environmental disasters, or violent conflicts should bear all responsibility for their destiny for which they cannot be held fully accountable. They tend to ignore the role of the failures of modern institutions in inducing those crises, disregard the interdependence to cope with risks in second modernity, and more notably, externalize ‘individuals’ from their problems and needs by not taking them as the unit of analysis. Hence, this paper will discuss the necessity for an inclusive cosmopolitan outlook while studying the migration issue beyond the constraints of methodological nationalism and examine the role of immigrants in 'involuntarily emerging cosmopolitanization' through the conceptual framework of Beck’s risk society theory.