ABSTRACT
All migration research, regardless of methodology, is comparative. An ethnographer, even one studying a specific group of people in a particular setting, constantly compares and contrasts observations. A researcher using data from a thousand survey respondents compares answers using statistical methods. An archival researcher might compare official accounts of a law’s passage to the private letters of those involved. The very identification of international migration as a field of study rests on a comparison: scholars assume that there is something unique and noteworthy in the experiences of those who migrate compared to those who do not. For the purposes of this chapter, “comparative migration research” entails the systematic
analysis of a relatively small number of cases. Instead of focusing on individuals as the primary comparison, self-consciously comparative projects are pinned to another unit of analysis: migrant groups, organizations, geographical areas, time periods and so forth. The goal of these studies is to examine how structures, cultures, norms, institutions or other processes affect outcomes through the combination and intersection of causal mechanisms. Comparison is a creative strategy of analytical elaboration using a particular research design.2
