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Qualitative Methods in Migration Studies: A Critical Realist Perspective, by Theodoros Iosifides. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. 266pp. $114.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781409402220.
While addressing literature on migration and suggesting techniques and procedures for studying the topic, this book's most basic concern is with the critical realist (CR) approach to social research. According to the author, Theodoros Iosifides, "Critical realism is a philosophical movement aiming to guide substantive social science theorising and research practice and to offer a viable alterna- tive both to positivism-empiricism and to various versions of idealism/neo-idealism, relativism and linguistic and/or discursive reductionism . . ." (p. 45).
It terms of its actual application, the CR approach to social research shares many val- ues, goals, and techniques with other con- temporary formulations of qualitative meth- odology. These include the implementation of multiple methods, an emphasis on exam- ining social life on various levels, the use of ethnographic investigation for the develop- ment and refinement of theory, and a willing- ness to generalize from qualitative materials. Like other contemporary research methods, CR regards quantitative data, relativism, post-structuralism, life history research, and discourse analysis as useful but not self-sufficient means for conducting social research. They can contribute to a broader study but should not stand alone.
Accordingly, CR endorses methodological triangulation to collect inclusive and accu- rate information about society. Rejecting the strictly micro perspective that was formerly the bailiwick of qualitative social science, CR seeks to integrate quantitative and quali- tative methods, link structure, culture, and agency, and connect micro and macro forces. Rather than rejecting causality as a solely positivistic concern, CR seeks to...