In Parvati Nair and Tendayi Bloom, eds., (2015) Migration Across Boundaries. Linking Research to Practice and Experience. Ashgate.

This chapter focuses on the challenging debates surrounding questions of definitions in the interdisciplinary area of study of International Migrations, particularly focusing on the concepts of ‘transnationalism’ and ‘diaspora’. it claims that, especially for interdisciplinary studies, these disputes around the concepts do not facilitate analysis of the complex questions often posed by migratory issues, because often the different background of scholars instead of being melted into innovative approaches and resolutions of old disputes, are used to engage in struggle over what is the best approach to address a question theoretically. Instead, what is needed is a flexible approach able to investigate complex questions at the borders of different disciplinary domains. The chapter, through an analysis of the literature, identifies that it is probably for this reason that those works that present case studies and field research do not engage in questions over definitions. A positive example, instead, of bringing together different disciplinary knowledge is offered by the ‘Constructivist Turn in Terrorism Studies’, which was able to solve differently the dispute over the much debated concept of ‘terrorism’ and thus offers an innovative approach to the study of terrorism, by identifying why and how the securitization of migration has led in some case to the demonization of migration in public discourses.