(Re)placing migrants' mobility: A multi-method approach to integrating space and mobility in the study of migration

In recent years, studies of migration have given greater attention to spatiality, yet its influence on migrants' identities and forms of attachment remain underexplored. Drawing on research conducted with migrants in Chinese cities, this paper proposes a new methodological strategy to explore migrants' everyday spatial experiences. The strategy combines cognitive mapping, walking interviews, and self-photography, bringing together three interrelated fields of qualitative inquiry-the visual, the verbal, and the representative. The multi-method approach seeks to capture the growing complexity ofmigration-related spatial references, and the growing heterogeneity of the migrant population and the environments they encounter. This combination also provides access to elements of spatial experience previously missing, subdued, or socially internalized within traditional narratives; while the inherent mobility of the methods highlight meanings, representations, and identities that are themselvesmobile and dynamic. The under-standings of migration that result better incorporate migrants' spatial practices and challenge the omnipresent categorization of migrants and the places associated with migration in dominant development discourse and policies.