Migration Multiple? Big Data, Knowledge Practices and the Governability of Migration

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter explores the big-data-based production of knowledge on migration. Following Mol (2002) and Scheel et al. (2019), it is analysed how migration and migrants are enacted through big-data-based research papers. The emerging sub-discipline of big-data-based migration research enacts migration and migrants in multiple ways that open up possibilities to rethink migration. However, this multiplicity of migration is held together by reference to three migration narratives—demography, integration and humanitarianism—which stand in stark contrast to these alternative enactments, as they all frame migration as something that needs to be governed. As the research papers aim at contributing to these research fields, they inscribe themselves into these migration narratives and thereby adopt the assumption of migration as an object of government.