“Seeing Across the Americas: Challenging Methodological Nationalism in the Study of Emergent Migration”

• In Event: 20862 - Section on International Migration Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: Borderlands

Abstract

This paper situates itself in a conceptual migratory field that spans the full length of the
Americas to ask, how can we reconceive of the Americas not as an assemblage of host and
home countries, but rather one interconnected space, albeit with uneven terrain? Since
2010, no single region has produced a greater increase in migration than Latin America.
The number of migrants living in the region has doubled from 8.3 million in 2010 to
16.3 million in 2022. A significant contributor to this migration is attributed to the ongoing
emigration crisis in Venezuela; 7.7 million Venezuelans have left their home country since 2014.
Other leading countries of origin are Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Cuba, and Haiti. However, there
is a widespread acknowledgement that this phenomenon is not contained to the Americas, as this
growth has been accompanied by an unprecedented boom in extracontinental migration, that is
persons of Asian or African origin moving to or transiting within the continent. The Migration
Policy Institute credits an emergent “hemispheric architecture between countries” for the
“dramatic shift” in which global migration has shifted to the Americas (2023).

The paper ties together two field sites with discordant migration regimes: the United
States and Uruguay. The project design is unique as the research subjects are comprised of both
Latin American and extracontinental migrants (from Asia and Africa) in Uruguay
who have community ties to migrants in the United States, as well as corresponding migrants in
Chicago who passed through Latin American countries onward to the United States. The
methodology presents an innovation against methodological nationalism by not choosing
research subjects based on nationality. Findings demonstrate an emergent practice in which migrants are engaging in a practice of “seeing” across the Americas to chart their migration journeys, showing the interconnected nature of the continent.

Author

• Asha Marie Kaur Sawhney, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign