Ethnographers’ long-standing interest in migration has taken on new significance as researchers grapple with ‘globalization’ on the ground. Drawing on the insights of the transnationalism literature while rejecting its ahistorical tendencie s, I explore how recent appeals to use local archival work and revisits to achieve historical depth can be applied fruitfully to ethnographies of migration. I argue for multi- sited fieldwork in countries of origin and destination and the removal of nationa l blinders so that both domestic and international migrations are brought into the same frame for comparison. Finally, I amend the extended case method by arguing for the engagement of case studies with research programs in several ways that attend to the representativeness of the case. The utility of these strategies is demonstrated with examples from the migration literature and five years of ethnographic fieldwork among Mexican migrants.

Since the 1990s, stories have spread through Mexico of the ‘coyote saint’ helping migrants cross the U.S. border illegally. In one version, three migrants lost in the desert are saved by a man who offers them a ride in his pickup truck. When the migrants later visit his home village of Santa Ana in the state of Jalisco to thank him, they see his photograph and realize their rescuer was Saint Toribio Romo, who died in 1928. More than 5000 pilgrims now clog the village on a typical weekend.