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Multi-sited research partnerships are integral to successful scholarship on trans-local and global processes. Nowhere is this more evident than explorations of human mobility in its varied forms. Partnerships promise multiple benefits – innovative insights, improved advocacy networks, and heightened opportunities for emerging scholarship – but when they span the ‘north-south’ divide, they also risk reinforcing power imbalances in ways that may ultimately compromise our scholarship and ethical policy engagements. Migration research partnerships have many of the same risks as those in other academic fields. However, funding structures and the ethical imperative many of us feel to address injustices associated with exploitation, human rights abuses, or generalised poverty add additional pitfalls.
Problems begin with funding for this type of research. Financing chiefly comes from governments and foundations in the global north, where political and social anxieties regarding movements from south to north have made available tens of millions of dollars, pounds and euros to migration researchers in and beyond the academy. Since individual researchers can only do so much on their own, funds are usually made available to support research networks and research teams, which typically bring together ‘principal investigators’ located in the global north with a series of ‘local partners’ located in the global south.
