Un-categorising ‘the migrant’ to interrogate the roles of migration in social mobility in four Asian cities

This article’s point of departure is that the categorisation of migrants and migration in research risks being overly rigid, leaving research participants feeling ‘boxed in’, while often both failing to accurately capture the realities of movement and stasis, and their significance in people’s lives. Acknowledging the limitations of common migrant categorisation, often de facto derived more from state categories than empirical realities or conceptual perspectives, we conducted a mixed-methods study, collecting survey data (n = 2016) and family history interviews among middle-class residents of Hanoi (Vietnam), Karachi (Pakistan), Manila (the Philippines) and Mumbai (India). We wanted to understand the roles of migration – if any – in upward social mobility into Asian middle classes. Therefore, we employed alternative approaches to gauge movement and stasis, thus un-categorising ‘the migrant’. First, we present the conceptual landscape of migrant categorisation in Asia. Next, we draw on our survey data and family history interview data collection experiences and analyse the potential and pitfalls of categorising and un-categorising ‘the migrant’ when exploring the roles of spatial mobility in social mobility. The concluding section offers a synthesis of our contribution on the value of un-categorising ‘the migrant’ and engaging with approaches to ‘de-centering’ the migrant in migration research, theorised from Asian vantage points.