Dr. James Hollifield, Academic Director of the Tower Center, wrote about how the emergence of a new research field or area of study in the social sciences always is fraught with controversy, fits and starts, theoretical, methodological, and even epistemological debates. Migration studies is no different, but some things are relatively unique about this ‘new’ field of study, while others are more conventional. The article on the ‘rise of migration studies’ by the ‘cross-migration’ team, (Levy et al. 2020), “Between Fragmentation and Institutionalization” under consideration here captures some of the controversies in migration studies, and poses some interesting questions about the direction of the field. Building on the ‘bibliometric analysis’ of journal articles by the cross-migration group, what is unique about migration studies and what is conventional? Read more here.