“Finding Home- Migration, Exile, and Diaspora in Our Lives” Introduction

Abstract

Migration studies is a complex field that seeks to understand the emotional and social effects on individuals and communities as well as the broader economic, political, and cultural impacts of migration and exile. It studies migrants, countries that the individuals migrate to, and the countries and cultures they come from, creating an incredibly complicated and ever-evolving field. According to Peter Scholten et al., “It is an inherently pluralistic field, bringing often fundamentally different theoretical perspectives on key topics” (4). The methods they use range from “ethnographic f ieldwork with specific migrant communities to large-n quantitative analyses of the relation between economics and migration” (4). These different—and often contradictory—perspectives create a field of study that is very diverse and complicated. It has been extensively developed in a variety of disciplines including, but not limited to: sociology, political science, anthropology, geography, and law and economics.