Why Has Migration Research So Little Impact? Examining Knowledge Practices in Migration Policy Making and Migration Studies

Abstract

Scientific and expert knowledge on migration is often disregarded in policy making and plays only a minor role in public debates - despite the massive growth and institutionalization of migration research in recent years. This article interrogates the limited impact of migration research(ers) by examining knowledge practices in both policy making and academia. We first look “outwards” at migration policy making. Revisiting and integrating the hitherto separate scholarship on knowledge use and knowledge production, we identify the main mechanisms that characterize knowledge practices of policy actors, such as individual and institutional self-preservation, issue politicization, or unequal power dynamics. We then mobilize these insights to look “inwards” at our own knowledge practices in migration studies, showing that similar mechanisms shape how migration scholars produce and use knowledge. In particular, we identify a fragmentation of migration studies into ever-more fine-grained sub-fields, each with their own knowledge practices and impact strategies - and with little dialogue across them. In fact, rather than acknowledging their complementarity, these sub-fields tend to delegitimize each other's knowledge and efforts to achieve socio-political change. We argue that such “academic tribalism” creates a self-sabotaging dynamic that undermines the field's wider credibility and impact. Ultimately, we hope that this paper empowers migration researchers to act upon this diagnosis and inspires a collective discussion on how to foster more mutually-reinforcing knowledge practices that strengthen the field's role in political debates and public life.