JOBNAME: No Job Name PAGE: 1 SESS: 18 OUTPUT: Tue Jun 12 18:46:24 2012 /v2501/blackwell/A_journals/area_v0_i0/area_1113 Editorial introduction Migration methodologies: emerging subjects, registers and spatialities of migration in Asia Francis Leo Collins* and Shirlena Huang** *School of Environment, University of Auckland, Auckland 1026, New Zealand Email: f.collins@auckland.ac.nz **Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117570 Revised manuscript received 1 June 2012 Contemporary scholarship on the processes, institutions, practices and experiences of international migration draws on a wide range of research methodologies, reflect- ing the multi-disciplinary character of the field, the diverse sites and subjects of migration, and the varied concepts and theories that underpin this area of study (King 2012). Indeed, while the core of a more traditional study of migration may be centred on policy-relevant quantitative analysis of international population flows (Samers 2010), many scholars now also incorporate a diverse range of qualitative techniques (e.g. Findlay and Li 1997; Longhurst et al. 2008; Pascual-de-Sans 2004;Tolia- Kelly 2004), while others also seek to work through the often overlapping zones of quantitative and qualitative approaches by employing mixed methodologies (e.g. Bea- verstock and Boardwell 2000; Findlay et al. 2012; Kwan and Ding 2008; Mountz et al. 2003). The benefits of this methodological variety in migra- tion research are apparent in a number of contempo- rary foci within the field. Geographic understandings of international migration have been enlivened by increas- ingly sophisticated understandings of population move- ment and circulation (Connell and Conway 2000); migrant stories and experiences have been captured through in-depth and narrative interviews (Lawson 2000); the workings of institutions and civil society groups have been understood through detailed ethnographies (McHugh 2000); and notions of home, community and diaspora elicited through methods that incorporate the visual and the material (Tolia-Kelly 2006).The conceptual palimpsest of migration scholarship would be noticeably weaker without these methodologies: understandings of ‘transnationalism’ (Collins 2009), ‘diaspora’ (Tolia-Kelly 2008), ‘(im)mobility’ (Silvey 2004), ‘return migration’ (Ley and Kobayashi 2005), ‘integration’ and ‘assimilation’ (Ehrkamp 2005) have all been enhanced or interrogated anew through findings from a diverse range of method- ological approaches. The increasingly complex conceptual and methodologi- cal treatment of migration in geography in particular has been fundamental in expanding the subjects, registers and spatialities of migration research – unbinding these con- cepts from overly delimited terminology (Collins 2009) and providing a platform to critically interrogate the ‘pos- sibilities, politics and costs’ of increasing mobility (Yeoh 2005, 413). Indeed, research now includes subjects well beyond the binary of poor third-world and wealthy first- world migrants (Conradson and Latham 2005); engages with sophisticated understandings of embodied, emo- tional, affective, identity and performative registers of daily life (Conradson and McKay 2007); and offers insight into the variegated spatialities of migratory processes and the wider influence of cross-border lives (Jackson et al. 2004). Yet, in spite of all this methodological development, innovation and cross-fertilisation, there is very little dis- cussion within the field of migration studies generally and few accounts within geography specifically about the relative value of different research methods, or the chal- lenges of designing, executing and analysing different methodological approaches; neither has there been much reflection on the ethical and conceptual implications of these choices. This absence of explicit methodological debates in the geographies of migration raises questions about the myriad of subjects, registers and spatialities that have emerged in recent research. Do new research tech- niques really provide deeper insight than traditional methods into the different migrant subjects that now fill the pages of geographical journals and books? How can we deepen our understandings of the different registers of migration and migrant lives, which despite our finest Area (2012) doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2012.01113.x Area 2012 ISSN 0004-0894 © 2012 The Authors. Area © 2012 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)