Why Migrant Knowledge?

In a world characterized by migration, we need a fuller picture of the many logics behind how people, states, and NGOs deal with migration, flight, and heterogenous mobility and dwelling patterns within and beyond nation-states. Our focus is on how actors involved in migration processes—whether or not they are on the move themselves—understand and shape the world. We explore the rationalities and types of knowledge with which migrants and other relevant actors underpin their arguments and everyday decision-making. What conceptions of society or community do they embrace? What economic images or understandings of nature orient their actions? Our vantage point is decidedly historical, but the topic demands interdisciplinary perspectives.

Like many actor-centered approaches to social and cultural history, many of those employed in the history of knowledge seek to understand all social actors, not just those of a particular elite. Viewed this way, the history of knowledge aspires to understand what a child, a parent at home, an artisan, or a farmer knows just as much as what a scientist, a government leader, an intellectual, or a statistician does. It endeavors to do so in equal measure and with similar methods. The goal of parity or symmetry, however, does not mean we can ignore asymmetrical power effects. Specific types of knowledge are backed by specific sources of authority and enjoy unequal social and cultural currency. Thus, some bodies of knowledge can be intentionally ignored or inadvertently lost in translation with the passage of time or through the crossing of social, cultural, and geographical boundaries.