Introduction: The Sociology of Migration in Switzerland: Past, Present and Future

Author(s) : Milena Chimienti, Claudio Bolzman, Didier Ruedin

Source : https://doi.org/10.2478/sjs-2021-0004

“After 50 years of research and two major research programmes on migration in Switzerland – the NRP 39 Migration and Intercultural Relations and the NCCR on the move – this special issue reflects on the knowledge production, mainly in Switzerland, in this important domain of sociology. What type of research has been produced by sociologists in this field? According to which epistemologies? What public and political impact has this research had? What open questions remain, and in what direction is the sociology of migration likely to move in the future? At a time when funding sources encourage interdisciplinary research in order to provide a better understanding of social phenomena, it might seem irrelevant to address migration from a single disciplinary angle. We argue, however, that the focus on interdisciplinary research in large research programmes on migration often prevents us from identifying the specificities of sociological research. This might also be a result of the absence of chairs in the sociology of migration in Swiss universities: unlike gender studies, the sociology of migration (and its related fields of citizenship, mobility, diversity, ethnicity and racial studies) remains institutionally marginal in Swiss universities. Yet, as the contributions to this special issue demonstrate, socio-logical research on migration is thriving in different places.“