ABSTRACT
In number and complexity, the processes and other variables involved in human migration are so vast that one is soon overwhelmed when one attempts to consider more than a relatively few at a time. Further, migration is an event that can be, and is, studied by many disciplines—each one focusing on a particular aspect of the event, each one using its own distinct methodology and epistemology. Thus, migration research is simultaneously the province of demography, public policy, sociology, psychology, education, anthropology, public health, and many more specialized fields of study, each one able to illuminate only a part of the event. This characteristic makes migration an ideal focus for encouraging multidisciplinary research and interdisciplinary collaboration. 1 To this end, comprehensive conceptual models, such as the one I have elsewhere (Laosa, 1990b; see also Rogler, 1994) proposed for the study of human development in the context of intercultural migration, are best thought of as just that, conceptual models rather than hypothetical or analytic models. In this sense, the function of a conceptual model is to help identify and stimulate thinking about relevant domains of variables and about the plausible ways in which they may be interrelated and organized. Used in this way, a comprehensive conceptual model becomes a powerful multidisciplinary heuristic device. The process is reminiscent of how widely people differ from each other in what they perceive in a Rorschach inkblot. Thus, developmental psychologists think of migration in a manner radically different from—but complementary to—that of, say, social demographers or economists regarding the same model. Indeed, they diverge profoundly with respect to the aspects of migration they consider interesting and significant, the research questions or hypotheses they deem relevant, the variables that attract and hold their attention, the units and levels of analysis on which they concentrate, and the manner in which they analyze and interpret data. For the individual researcher, this fact is both a blessing and a daunting complication—the former because of the attendant enrichment of the topic, the latter because few people are trained in more than one discipline or specialty.
