Comparative Migration Studies (CMS) celebrated its 10th anniversary by taking the opportunity to take stock of the role our journal has played and can continue to play in shaping critical dialogues within migration studies, and to look ahead to the field’s future.
To this end, we curated a special anniversary issue titled “Critical Transitions in Migration Studies”, now fully available online:
👉 https://link.springer.com/collections/hdhceagafi
In early 2014, Sawitri Saharso and Peter Scholten founded the relaunched English version of the journal, with the ambition to strengthen theoretical development in migration studies through systematic comparative research. From the outset, the journal sought to move beyond methodological nationalism and challenge nationally bounded “container” perspectives that long dominated the field. CMS also deliberately positioned itself as a pioneer of open access publishing, grounded in the conviction that a thriving academic field depends on making knowledge as widely and freely accessible as possible.
A decade on, migration studies has evolved significantly, and CMS has grown into one of the leading journals in the field (2024 IF 3.7; five-year IF 6.0). With this position comes responsibility, particularly in light of the new and persistent challenges the field currently faces.
The anniversary issue maps key critical transitions in migration studies, including transformations in conceptualisation, theorisation, methods, and knowledge-production practices, and reflects on how CMS has responded to and helped shape these shifts through its editorial agenda, open access model, and methodological innovation. We showcased this by curating original and cutting edge articles published over the years by authors including Bridget Anderson, Miri Song, Russell King, Hein de Haas, Zeynep Sahin-Mencutek, N. Ela Gokalp-Aras, Lucia Nalbandian, Giovanna Astolfo and Harriett Allsopp.
We also invited the following scholars to contribute short, forward-looking commentaries on key themes shaping the field and CMS’s future direction:
- Bridget Anderson on the persistence of the nation as a marker of differentiation
- Janine Dahinden critically examining the category of migration itself
- Anna Triandafyllidou on migration governance in a globalising world
- Beatriz Padilla on decolonisation and the geopolitics of knowledge production
- Nir Cohen and Tatiana Fogelman on the discourse of crisis in human mobility
- Valentina Mazzucato and Joris Schapendonk on studying migration through a mobility lens
- Ilse van Liempt on space and place in migration research
- Hein de Haas calling for a new global migration paradigm
An editorial written by several CMS board members (Sanam Roohi, Peter Scholten, Martin Bak Jørgensen, Thaís França, Andreas Pott, Tabea Scharrer, and Zana Vathi) introduces the issue and outlines this agenda:
👉 https://rdcu.be/eQHIq
Our heartfelt thanks to all the contributors, including our entire editorial board (https://link.springer.com/journal/40878/editorial-board); the IMISCOE Research Network, with which CMS has been associated since 2017; and to our publisher Springer Nature.
We are grateful for the first decade of CMS and look forward to the next ten years of critical, comparative, and openly accessible migration scholarship.
Sanam and Peter
Editors-in-chief, CMS