This working paper is a systematic literature review of the term “local turn” in the field of human migration.
It reviews 36 journal articles to answer the following questions: what are the subjects of the local turn? What is the stimulus behind the local turn? And what are its characteristics?
The study analyses the literature by conducting a thematic analysis, both inductively and deductively. After presenting a manifest account of the characteristics of the local turn in migration, the paper discusses the validity and the consequences of using such a term. Instead of a single local turn, the paper finds that there is a multiplicity of local turns in migration. Moreover,
the paper argues that the emergence and the development of this term take place almost exclusively within Europe and should therefore be perceived accordingly.
