What is a flow? Unpacking fluid metaphors and the work they do in migration research

Keywords: Metaphors, Migration, Mobility, Politics of knowledge production
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 46

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on the usage of fluid metaphors in scholarship on migration, mobility, and migrants. A significant body of literature has addressed how journalists, politicians, and others have used metaphors such as “flood of migrants”, “flow of refugees”, and “anchor baby” to describe issues surrounding migration or migrants themselves. This literature has demonstrated how the use of fluid metaphors is not a mere rhetorical frill, but rather helps to construct migrants and migration as hostile, threatening, or dangerous. While the use of metaphors outside the academy has been examined, little research has systematically explored how scholars employ metaphors to describe and conceptualize migrants and migration patterns. Our analysis of five academic journals over ten years details the prominence of fluid metaphors (waves, streams, flows, influx, etc.) in contemporary migration scholarship: Fluid metaphors are a common way to describe migration and migration trends – a ready-made linguistic tool that, when used uncritically, (re)produces a specific and often dehumanizing set of geographical imaginations of migration, mobility, migrants, nation states, borders, and territory. In response, we suggest that critical scholarship on migration must carefully consider the work that metaphors perform when they are used to describe movements of people. Building on existing debates about the role that metaphors play in the construction of geographic knowledge, we conclude this paper by discussing the utility of metaphor in academic writing and suggest some different alternatives to the use of fluid metaphors.