Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology

TLDR

Methodological nationalism, the tendency to naturalize nation‑states, has historically shaped the social sciences and hindered migration research for over a century. The study aims to navigate migration research between extreme fluidism and nationalist constraints. Transnational studies, linked to intense globalization, reveal contradictions that can reintroduce methodological nationalism in new forms.

Abstract

The article examines methodological nationalism, a conceptual tendency that was central to the development of the social sciences and undermined more than a century of migration studies. Methodological nationalism is the naturalization of the global regime of nation-states by the social sciences. Transnational studies, we argue, including the study of transnational migration, is linked to periods of intense globalization such as the turn of the twenty-first century. Yet transnational studies have their own contradictions that may reintroduce methodological nationalism in other guises. In studying migration, the challenge is to avoid both extreme fluidism and the bounds of nationalist thought.