Border Conceptualisation in Environmental Migration: Anthropological questions, political concerns

The presentation considered the methodological challenges that will come from pitting the micro local understanding of borders against the macro institutions. It will discuss the potential theoretical collisions of anthropological discourses of notions of space, nature, and identity with policy literature on geo-political borders and the nation state. The limitations of quantitative studies in more complex and mixed motivations tied to cultural notions as well as the limitations of ethnographic studies in scaling up results to show more generalized tendencies. The argument will be made for a mixed methods approach that cover ethnographic case studies, policy literature, historical analogs, and individual surveys from a sampled population.