Methodological nationalism
{{Use American English|date=January 2019}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2019}}
{{Short description|Use of nation-states as the basis of analysis in social science}}
In social science, methodological nationalism is an intellectual orientation and pattern in scholarly research that conceives of the nation-state as the sole unit of analysis or as a container for social processes. This concept has largely been developed by Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller, who specifically define it as "the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world".{{cite journal |last1=Wimmer |first1=Andreas |last2=Schiller |first2=Nina Glick |title=Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-state building, migration and the social sciences |journal=Global Networks |volume=2 |issue=4 |pages=301–334 |url=http://www.suz.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:1296e4ec-3ca6-4efe-b083-163b9b649bab/Text_13.pdf |doi=10.1111/1471-0374.00043 |year=2002 |access-date=May 14, 2017 |archive-date=November 27, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221127121200/https://www.suz.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:1296e4ec-3ca6-4efe-b083-163b9b649bab/Text_13.pdf |url-status=dead }} Methodological nationalism has been identified in many social science subfields, such as anthropology, sociology, and the interdisciplinary field of migration studies.{{cite journal |last1=Wimmer |first1=Andreas |last2=Schiller |first2=Nina Glick |title=Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology |journal=The International Migration Review |date=2003 |volume=37 |issue=2 |pages=576–610 |jstor=30037750 |doi=10.1111/j.1747-7379.2003.tb00151.x |s2cid=145186084}} Methodological Nationalism, as a practice within Social Science, has been further critiqued by scholars such as Saskia Sassen, who contends that the nation-state and its borders are an insufficient unit of analysis and that the national is at times the "terrains of the global".{{cite web |last1=Sassen |first1=Saskia |title=The global inside the national A research agenda for sociology |url=http://www.saskiasassen.com/pdfs/publications/the-global-inside-the-national.pdf}}
Three types of methodological nationalism
According to Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller, there are three types of methodological nationalism in social science scholarship: ignoring or disregarding the importance of nationalism for modern societies, naturalization, and confining studies to geopolitical boundaries of a particular nation-state. These types may co-occur or occur separately. When they co-occur, they may reinforce each other.{{cite journal |last1=Wimmer |first1=Andreas |last2=Schiller |first2=Nina Glick |title=Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology |journal=The International Migration Review |date=2003 |volume=37 |issue=2 |pages=576–610 |jstor=30037750 |doi=10.1111/j.1747-7379.2003.tb00151.x |s2cid=145186084}}
Speranta Dumitru distinguished between other three different versions of methodological nationalism: state-centrism (unjustified supremacy granted to the nation-state), territorialism (understanding space as divided in territories), and groupism (equating society with the nation-state’s society).Dumitru, Speranta (2014) "What is Methodological Nationalism? An Essay of Typology". Raisons politiques, Volume 54, Issue 2, Pages 9-22. https://doi.org/10.3917/rai.054.0009. She argued that methodological nationalism heavily biases the philosophy of migration.Dumitru, Speranta (2023) "The ethics of immigration: How biased is the field?", Migration Studies, Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2023, Pages 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnac042
Methodological nationalism and migration studies
Methodological nationalism and its conception of nation-states has been a component of both contemporary and historical methodologies in migration studies, insofar as certain studies have adhered to it or diverged from its theoretical foundations. This adherence has been acknowledged or otherwise criticized in numerous studies.{{cite book |last1=Mayall |first1=James |title=Nationalism and international society |url=https://archive.org/details/nationalisminter0000maya |url-access=registration |date=1993 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge [England] |isbn=978-0521389617 |edition=1. publ.}}{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Anthony D. |title=Nationalism and modernism : a critical survey of recent theories of nations and nationalism |date=2001 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |isbn=9780415063418 |edition=Reprinted.}} Moreover, the historical prevalence of methodological nationalism within social science has been explored by scholarship which argues that many turn-of-the-century writings on globalization have "conflated the necessary
conceptual critique of methodological nationalism with the empirical claim of the
nation-state’s diminishing relevance".{{cite journal |last1=Chernilo |first1=Daniel |title=The critique of methodological nationalism |journal=Thesis Eleven |date=August 2011 |volume=106 |issue=1 |pages=98–117 |doi=10.1177/0725513611415789 |s2cid=55346797 |url=https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/13291}}
On the other hand, research on transnationalism and transmigrants has contemporary examples of divergence and criticism of methodological nationalism as an enduring practice in scholarship. Recent studies in transnationalism have conceived of the nation-state as one agent in a complex relationship with many global actors.{{cite book |last1=Quayson |first1=Ato |last2=Daswani |first2=Girish |title=A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism |date=September 2013 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |isbn=978-1-4051-8826-5 |pages=600 |url=http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-140518826X.html}} Migration Studies that conceive of society as extending beyond national boundaries, then, sever this link between nation-state and society.
Research on transnational Latina motherhood has negotiated issues of the nation-state as well as transnationalism. The conceptual frameworks of power geometries, social location, and geographic scales is positioned to counteract the analytical tendency to fall back on methodological nationalism.{{Cite journal |last1=Pessar |first1=Patricia R. |last2=Mahler |first2=Sarah J. |date=2003 |title=Transnational Migration: Bringing Gender in |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30037758 |journal=The International Migration Review |volume=37 |issue=3 |pages=812–846 |doi=10.1111/j.1747-7379.2003.tb00159.x |jstor=30037758 |issn=0197-9183|url-access=subscription }}{{cite book |last1=Boehm |first1=Deborah |title="For My Children:" Constructing Family and Navigating the State in the U.S.-MexicoTransnation |date=Fall 2003 |publisher=George Washington University for Ethnographic Research}}
Other scholarly research has combined transnational migration studies and conceptual frameworks such as coloniality of power to avoid methodological nationalism and better account for the intersecting transnational phenomena that constitutes the experiences of transmigrants and better explains the processes of transnational migration.{{cite book |editor=Cervantes-Rodríguez, Margarita |last2=Grosfoguel |first2=Ramón |last1=Mielants |first1=Eric |title=Caribbean migration to Western Europe and the United States essays on incorporation, identity, and citizenship |date=2009 |publisher=Temple University Press |location=Philadelphia |isbn=9781592139569}}{{cite web |last1=Patel |first1=Sujata |title=Colonial Modernity and Methodological Nationalism in Sociology of India |url=http://vimeo.com/34815428}}