The Migration Intersections Grid (MIG): An organizing framework for migration research in and through the 21st century

Invited and prepared for the upcoming special issue honoring the 60th anniversary of the International Migration Review, we use this paper to develop and provide a comprehensive organizing framework to inform and guide migration research in and through the remainder of the 21st century. We start by inventorying and examining efforts to summarize and synthesize directions of travel in migration research over the years, decades, and beyond via six types of primary vehicles. From these summaries and syntheses, we then identify and describe ten components that constitute our proposed organizing framework for migration research, which we call the Migration Intersections Grid (MIG). A key hallmark of the MIG is the need to simultaneously consider these ten components and their intersections to ensure that migration research—including not just what is researched, but also how and why—in and through the 21st century is inclusive, rigorous, and impactful.