In the social sciences methodology is almost taken to be a discipline, bordering on philosophy, whose function is to recommend and examine the methods, which should be used to produce valid knowledge. Methodology lays down procedures to be used in generation of valid knowledge and these procedures are justified or criticized by means of philosophical arguments. It is clear that methodology’s claim to prescribe correct procedures to social sciences presupposes a form of knowledge that is thought to be provided by philosophy. In this sense, methodology presupposes a particular kind of relationship between philosophy and the social sciences where judgment and validation of the claim to knowledge is possible. Different philosophies may conceive of that relationship in different terms and, to that extent, each discourse describes a different ‘regime of truth’; that is, the operation of criteria, norms and procedures for identifying or arguing about ‘true’ propositions in any given case.

Methodologies have hitherto been methodologies of truth either serving as a means of verifying our conjectures with truth claims or by producing it. The voluminous work of Walter Fernandes and his associates may serve as a case in point. They seek to subject all ‘official truths’ about forced migration – particularly the one induced by the commissioning of development projects – into scrutiny and verification. A new and unknown truth with much larger incidence and hugely disastrous consequences is discovered through the processes of scrutiny and verification. While the ‘Truth’ is assumed to be one with capital ‘T’ and researchers would do well to discover it as per the framework, a new awareness has developed and truth is now seen to have been produced at different sites. In other words, there is no single truth; instead there is a plurality of them and there is no way we can privilege one over another. A series of Partition Studies brought out by ‘Kali For Women’ particularly since the 1990s and other feminist publishing houses seek to retrieve truth from the hitherto silenced voices. But both these methodologies presuppose the ‘presence’ of the migrant – a presence that either establishes itself through a truth methodology or gives unto itself a metaphysic. While the former is geared to the understanding of the possibilities of knowledge, the latter flags its limits. Conventional methodologies of truth hardly help us understand the displaced who being displaced find it impossible to register her ‘presence’ and whose is always marked by the ‘presence of absence’ or ‘absence of presence’. Critical forced migration studies (CFMS) makes it imperative to move beyond these methodologies of truth. It calls for not just a shift in our methodology, but a shift in our understanding of methodology.

The new understanding of methodology calls for a certain reorientation of such concepts as space, state and sovereignty. At a time when large masses of population move and there are mixed and massive flows of population without any home to return, the earth ‘deterritorializes’ itself in a way that provides the migrants with a space. The state is unhinged from the sedentary metaphysic positing it with a centre – an apparatus of capture spreading out towards the border and finally sets up the borders. Forced migration in today’s world implies movement without possession of territory. Sovereign Power is least comfortable with this type of power that escapes it and keeps itself perpetually fluid.

At a more functional level, methodology is a set of practices. This term may be used to refer to practices which are widely used across an industry or a discipline, the techniques used in a particular research study, or the techniques used to accomplish a particular project. People may also use the term ‘methodology’ to refer to the study of such methods, rather than the methods themselves. In terms of research on migration, the orthodox school focuses on differentials in wages and employment conditions between countries and on migration costs; it generally conceives of movement as an individual decision for income maximization. The ‘new economics of migration,’ in contrast, considers conditions in a variety of markets, not just labour markets. It views migration as a household decision taken to minimize risks to family income or to overcome capital constraints on family production activities. Dual labour market theory and world systems theory generally ignore such micro-level decision processes, focusing instead on forces operating at much higher levels of aggregation. The former links immigration to the structural requirements of modern industrial economies, while the latter sees immigration as a natural consequence of economic globalization and market penetration across national boundary. The growing concern about forced migration within the genre of migration studies disturbs all these orthodox theoretical models.

‘Forced migration’ as a problematic demands a critical epistemology. It believes in value-determined nature of inquiry, unlike positivism and post-positivism which are interested in verification and explanation. Further, it wants inquiry to critique with an intention to transform social, political, economic, and ethnic and gender structures, which constrain and exploit woman and man. The inquirer becomes an instigator, a ‘transformative intellectual’ confronting ignorance and misconceptions. The basic assumptions central to this critique can be briefly stated as: (i) commonsense knowledge of social structures, including individual bias, cannot be discounted in favour of the misplaced hope of achieving an objective knowledge; (ii) Statistical logic and experimental methods are not always appropriate for the study of this inter-subjective world and it might require newer models such as analysis through oral narratives; (iii) In an inter-subjective world, policy interventions based on a stimulus-response model of change can neither be analytically nor politically acceptable. Also, in these situations quantitative method and qualitative method a la positivism are ruefully ineffective. By contrast, new understanding of methodology involves use and collection of a variety of empirical material— case studies, personal experience narratives, introspective accounts, life stories, interviews, and observational, historical, interactional and visual texts — that describes routine and problematic moments and the life she lives against the impossible odds with resilience preventing her extinction. A researcher thus becomes committed to the displaced as subject – not a victim – a special subject who has the resilience to withstand and survive. This type of critical methodology that is embedded on an ethic of resilience is suitable for migration studies.

Along with all these, this module will also help to understand how feminist methodology can influence research on forced migration. By adding women as a separate category, the scholars have begun to recover and re-appropriate women’s work. However, the question may arise: Is it the best way to eliminate sexism and andro-centrism? Should we study women as victims of male dominance? These are few questions, besides the fundamental methodological issues, that this module intends to raise while dealing with research methodology in forced migration studies. This module will also discuss CRG’s own work on mapping IDP voices in South Asia.