ABSTRACT
This chapter discuses some of the potential advantages of a realist reorientation of qualitative methods in social sciences and highlight the productiveness of such an approach to explore phenomena related to contemporary migration. Critical realism is not a set of analytic methodological procedures or specific methods and techniques for the collection or analysis of empirical data, but rather a philosophy of social sciences concerned mainly with ontological and epistemological questions. The relevance of ethical stances and choices is extremely significant for every methodological strategy, either qualitative or quantitative, but this subsection concerns some central aspects regarding the role of ethics in realist, qualitative migration research. Critical realism places qualitative-intensive methods of social research at the heart of social scientific endeavour towards causally explaining reality. Maxwell distinguishes between variance and process approaches or, in other words, between regularity/variable and case-oriented approaches to causal explanation, with the former corresponding mainly to quantitative methods and the latter to qualitative.
