Placing the Migrant

Abstract

This article presents a review of geographic research literature on migration locations and theoretical conceptions of migrants. This focus reveals important continuities in themes of migration theories of development identity and culture and illustrates the options for exploring new issues. The literature indicates a broad range of research methods that have benefited understanding over time. A more critical perspective on development as a discourse has evolved that focuses on migrants as agents negotiating the material and discursive dimensions of development. New questions are being raised about power dynamics of migrants within places and related to race class gender sexuality and nationality. Feminist and post-structural theories reveal more differences than continuities but new theories offer contributions to the literature rather than replacements of the literature. This analysis explores points of overlap and addresses longstanding debates in geography over the relationship between theoretical and empirical research exogenous and endogenous factors reality and abstraction and general and concrete processes. It is argued that methodological distinctions between quantitative modeling and qualitative and ethnographic research are very misleading.