Accounting for migration: An inquiry into a research conversation in the margins

• An ethnographic literature review (“litnography”) of previous research on accounting and migration. • The identification of a limited and sprawling research conversation. • Highlighting of central arguments and contributions. • Pointing to paths for future research on accounting for migration. This article provides an assessment of previous research on the nexus between accounting and migration. Despite ideas of accounting and migration interlinking in many ways, and with migration as one of the most important global challenges, the research conversation is limited and sprawling. Four different streams are discerned in the nexus between accounting and migration: i) historizing the migrant, ii) controlling migrants at the border, iii) constructing the employable migrant, and iv) listening to the voices of migrants. Based on a cross-stream analysis, five interrelated roles of accounting in the making of migrants and migration are highlighted, roles that also serve as springboards to suggestions for future research.