Research Committees

Established in 2016. Last edition: 2025.

These awards are made on the basis of scholarly merit – in particular, the insight offered in the work and the potential of the work to influence other migration scholars’ future research on related topics.

Awards made at the ISA Forum, July 2025
Best book co-winner: Phi Hong Su (2022), The Border Within: Vietnamese Migrants Transforming Ethnic Nationalism in Berlin. Stanford University Press. 
Best book co-winner: Sharon M. Quinsaat (2024), Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora. University of Chicago Press. 
Honorable mention for best book: Zai Liang (2023), From Chinatown to Everytown: How Chinese Immigrants Have Expanded the Restaurant Business in the United States. University of California Press. 
Best article co-winner: Nikielska-Sekula, K. (2023), Embodied Transnational Belonging. International Migration Review, 1-27.
Best article co-winner: Del Real, D. (2024), Gradations of Migrant Legality: The Impact of States’ Legal Structures and Bureaucracies on Immigrant Legalization and Livelihoods. International Migration Review, 1-31. 

Awards made at the ISA World Congress, June 2023
Best book: Luca Queirolo Palmas & Federico Rahola (2022), Underground Europe: Along migrant routes. Palgrave MacMillan.
Best article: Ken Chih-Yan Sun & Nazli Kibria (2022), The Micro-politics of Recognition and Care: How Adult Children in Urban China Negotiate Relationships with Emigrant Siblings. Social Problems, 69(4), 952–967.
(Honorable mention: Elena Ambrosetti, Giulia Bettin, Eralba Cela, & Angela Paparusso (2023), Subjective well-being and school outcomes among children of immigrants and natives in Italy. Population, Space and Place, 29(4).

Awards made at the ISA Forum, February 2021
Best book: Martina Cvajner (2019), Soviet Signoras: Personal and Collective Transformations in Eastern European Migration. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
(Honourable mention: Milena Belloni (2019), The Big Gamble: The Migration of Eritreans to Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Best article: Deisy Del Real (2019), Toxic Ties: The Reproduction of Legal Violence within Mixed-Status Intimate Partners, Relatives, and Friends. International Migration Review 53(2): 548–570.

Awards made at the ISA Congress, July 2018
Best book: Susanne YP Choi and Yinni Peng (2016), Masculine Compromise: Migration, Family, and Gender in China. Oakland: University of California Press.
Best article: Matthew R. Sanderson (2016), To the Richest Go the Spoils? Immigration, Development, and the North-South Divide, 1970-2005. Sociology of Development 2(3): 273–292.

Awards made at the ISA Forum, July 2016
Best book: Christof Van Mol (2014), Intra-European Student Mobility in International Higher Education Circuits: Europe on the Move. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Best article: Paolo Boccagni (2015), Burden, blessing or both? On the mixed role of transnational ties in migrant informal social support. International Sociology 30(3): 250–268.
(Honourable mention: Martijn Hendriks (2015), The happiness of international migrants: A review of research findings. Migration Studies 3(3): 343–369.)