How Does Migration Scholarship Contribute to Public Discourse?

The way scholars describe and write about immigrants merits close attention. Immigrants are often stigmatized and even demonised; many migration scholars aim to resist those tendencies. It then becomes important to consider how various components of our research contribute to that aim (or, alternatively, might sometimes undermine it). Among other things, we can pay attention to the terms we use (immigrants? aliens? foreigners?). We can practice (Weberian) objectivity in connection to our findings while also considering how to communicate our research in line with our underlying aims.

For this session, then, we invite papers that reflect on the way migration scholarship contributes to public discourse about immigrants. Papers might consider how earlier research has been used by politicians and other actors in the public sphere. Or, they might draw on experiences where scholars have set out deliberately to communicate in particular ways, intended to achieve specific results in public discourse. An engagement with unintended consequences could be productive. In the context of ISA, a consideration of cross-national differences is also welcome.