Migration as the object of the anthropological inquiry: conceptualizations and policies

Abstract

Although the first anthropological studies were the result of colonial conquests and encounters with new and different cultures, the study of migrations as a phenomenon worth of the attention for itself came to the anthropology much later. There are several reasons for this. Some arise from the conceptual-theoretical limitations that followed from the dominant scientific paradigms, others belong to the domain of research policies, which in turn are dependent on wider social and political movements, while the last are "ontological", i.e, they are contained in what anthropology is, and they are primarily related to its object and method. In this text, I am presenting the dynamics of the changes of paradigms through which the anthropologists dealt with the study of migrations and discussing some of the problems of classification and knowledge production.

Keywords

• anthropology
• migrations
• paradigms
• classifications
• knowledge production