The End of Migration Studies

The discipline of Migration Studies should be dismantled. Migration Studies has made major achievements in explaining why people move across borders and how societies and states adapt and respond to the movement and settlement of people. However, the discipline possesses a deeply problematic and irreparable ontology. Its focus on the 'migrant' and 'migration' as objects of study necessarily predispose the discipline to statist and anti-migrant forms of study. Many previous works have diagnosed this problem and posed conceptual and methodological means of resolving them. This paper explains why these solutions have not works. Migration Studies' ontology continues to be reinforced by the disciplinary apparatus of Migration Studies institutions and associations. Hence, the paper calls for the dismantling of these institutions and associations and proposes ways in which research on human mobility, state power and territory might develop in less politically problematic ways.