Ethnography in migration studies: an everlasting love?

The chapter looks at ethnographic literature and the author’s own experiences to provide an introductory understanding of the actual (and potential) uses of ethnography in migration studies. Beginning with the Chicago School tradition, the chapter then moves on to elaborate a more recent body of literature that offers possible ways to deal with ethnography in migration studies research. The potentialities of multi-sited ethnography - particularly if carried out with attention to justifying the choice of sites - and the new recording possibilities opened up by technological developments - are highlighted. The chapter explores how the ethnographic tradition in migration studies, moreover, has grown in diversity, exploring a variety of ethnographic projects that are (and have been) carried out to study human mobility in all its forms.