Critical transitions in migration studies: Comparative migration studies’ 10th anniversary issue

Abstract

In the past decade, dynamic geopolitical events have led to major migration movements worldwide. The launching of Comparative Migration Studies (CMS) in 2013 to promote comparative research in the field of migration studies (Saharso and Scholten, 2013) coincided with some of these major migration developments. The journal emerged at a time when the field was undergoing rapid transformation, incorporating newer methods, geographies and theories to study migration. The comparative approach was becoming increasingly more prominent, outgrowing the national paradigms that had been the norm in the field (Thränhardt and Bommes, 2010; Favell, 2001). As the academic field of migration studies broadened to reflect the emergent diversities, CMS also underwent a rapid expansion during this period, becoming not only more international but also more interdisciplinary and multi-method in its orientation (see Pisarevskaya et al., 2020; Levy et al. 2020).