Migrant Scholars Researching Migration


Book Description

How can biography and reflexivity become integral processes of an inquiry? How do we apply these processes to our research and to our accounts of ourselves? Presenting studies by migration scholars who are migrants themselves, Migrant Scholars Researching Migration illustrates the creative and affective function of embedding one's research in subjectivity, reflexivity, and personal biography. The book shows that linking personal experiences and biographies with research practices and agendas can be instrumental to the development of knowledges and new methodologies. The authors demonstrate, for instance, how their migration backgrounds have affected what kind of research they ‘should’ conduct. They also describe how their research findings have changed their understanding of their personal positionings as migrants and scholars. This book debunks the dogma of separating the researcher from their investigation by placing the researchers' experiences and multi-layered reflections at the center of their scholarly work. It sheds light on the importance of reflexivity and subjectivity as processes and assets in research rather than obstacles. Migrant Scholars Researching Migration will appeal to researchers and students interested in methodology, biographical research, theories of knowledge, and scholars of migration and diaspora studies. Chapters: Chapter 14 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.




Visual Methodology in Migration Studies


Book Description

This open access book explores the use of visual methods in migration studies through a combination of theoretical analyses and empirical studies. The first section looks at how various visual methods, including photography, film, and mental maps, may be used to analyse the spatial presence of migrants. The second section addresses the processual building of narratives around migration, thereby using formats such as film and visual essay, and reflecting upon the ways they become carriers and mediators of both story and theory within the subject of migration. Section three focuses on vulnerable communities and discusses how visual methods can empower these communities, thereby also focusing on the theoretical and ethical implications of migration. The fourth section addresses the issue of migrant representation in visual discourses. Based on these contributions, a concluding methodological chapter systematizes the use of visual methods in migration studies across disciplines, with regard to their empirical, theoretical, and ethical implications. Multidisciplinary in character, this book is an interesting read for students and migration scholars who engage with visual methodologies, as well as practitioners, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, curators of exhibitions who address the topic of migration visually.




Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies


Book Description

This open access book covers the main issues, challenges and techniques concerning the application of qualitative methodologies to the study of migration. It discusses theoretical, epistemological and empirical questions that must be considered before, during, and after undertaking qualitative research in migration studies. It also covers recent innovative developments and addresses the key issues and major challenges that qualitative migration research may face at different stages i.e. crafting the research questions, defining approaches, developing concepts and theoretical frameworks, mapping categories, selecting cases, dealing with concerns of self-reflection, collecting and processing empirical evidence through various techniques, including visual data, dealing with ethical issues, and developing policy-research dialogues. Each chapter discusses relative strengths and limitations of qualitative research. The chapters also identify the main drivers for qualitative research development in migration studies. It is a unique volume as it brings together a multidisciplinary perspective as well as illustrations of different issues derived from the research experience of the recognized authors. One additional value of this book is its geographic focus on Europe. It seeks to explore theoretical and methodological issues that are raised by distinctive features of the European context. This volume will be a useful reference source for scholars and professionals in migration studies and in social sciences as well. The publication is also addressed to graduate and post-graduate students and, more generally, to those who embark on the task of doing qualitative research for the first time in the field of migration.




The Invisibility Bargain


Book Description

Migrants fleeing economic hardship or violence are entitled to a range of protections and rights under domestic and international law, yet they are often denied such protections in practice. In an era of mass migration and restrictive responses, migrant acceptance is often contingent on the expectation that they contribute economically to the host country while remaining politically and socially invisible. These unwritten expectations, which Jeffrey D. Pugh calls the "invisibility bargain", produce a precarious status in which migrants' visible differences or overt political demands on the state may be met with hostile backlash from the host society. In this context, governance networks of state and non-state actors form an institutional web that can provide indirect access to rights, resources, and protection, but simultaneously help migrants avoid negative backlash against visible political activism. The Invisibility Bargain seeks to understand how migrants negotiate their place in receiving societies and adapt innovative strategies to integrate, participate, and access protection. Specifically, the book examines Ecuador, the largest recipient of refugees in Latin America, and assesses how it achieved migrant human security gains despite weak state presence in peripheral areas. Pugh deploys evidence from 15 months of fieldwork spanning ten years in Ecuador, including 170 interviews, an original survey of Colombian migrants in six provinces, network analysis, and discourse analysis of hundreds of presidential speeches and news media articles. He argues that localities with more dense networks composed of more diverse actors tend to produce greater human security for migrants and their neighbors. The book challenges the conventional understanding of migration and security, providing a new approach to the negotiation of authority between state and society. By examining the informal pathways to human security, Pugh dismantles the false dichotomy between international and national politics, and exposes the micro politics of institutional innovation.




The SAGE Handbook of Media and Migration


Book Description

Migration moves people, ideas and things. Migration shakes up political scenes and instigates new social movements. It redraws emotional landscapes and reshapes social networks, with traditional and digital media enabling, representing, and shaping the processes, relationships and people on the move. The deep entanglement of media and migration expands across the fields of political, cultural and social life. For example, migration is increasingly digitally tracked and surveilled, and national and international policy-making draws on data on migrant movement, anticipated movement, and biometrics to maintain a sense of control over the mobilities of humans and things. Also, social imaginaries are constituted in highly mediated environments where information and emotions on migration are constantly shared on social and traditional media. Both, those migrating and those receiving them, turn to media and communicative practices to learn how to make sense of migration and to manage fears and desires associated with cross-border mobility in an increasingly porous but also controlled and divided world. The SAGE Handbook of Media and Migration offers a comprehensive overview of media and migration through new research, as well as a review of present scholarship in this expanding and promising field. It explores key interdisciplinary concepts and methodologies, and how these are challenged by new realities and the links between contemporary migration patterns and its use of mediated processes. Although primarily grounded in media and communication studies, the Handbook builds on research in the fields of sociology, anthropology, political science, urban studies, science and technology studies, human rights, development studies, and gender and sexuality studies, to bring to the forefront key theories, concepts and methodological approaches to the study of the movement of people. In seven parts, the Handbook dissects important areas of cross-disciplinary and generational discourse for graduate students, early career researcher, migration management practitioners, and academics in the fields of media and migration studies, international development, communication studies, and the wider social science discipline. Part One: Keywords and Legacies Part Two: Methodologies Part Three: Communities Part Four: Representations Part Five: Borders and Rights Part Six: Spatialities Part Seven: Conflicts




Migration and Inequality


Book Description

In a world of increasingly heated political debates on migration, relentlessly caught up in questions of security, humanitarian crisis, and cultural “problems,” this book radically shifts the focus to address migration through the lens of inequality. Taking an innovative approach, Mirna Safi offers a fresh perspective on how migration is embedded in the elementary mechanisms that shape the landscape of inequality. She sketches out three distinct channels which lead to unequal outcomes for different migrating and non-migrating groups: the global division of labor; the production of legal and administrative categories; and the reconfiguration of symbolic ethnoracial groups. Respectively, these channels categorize migrants as “type of workers,” “type of citizens,” and “type of humans.” Examining this intersection across the U.S. and Europe, she shows how studying international migration together with inequality can challenge nationally established paradigms of social justice. This timely book will be essential reading for all students and researchers interested in the sociology and politics of migration, ethnic and racial studies, and social inequality and stratification.




Immigration, Integration and Education


Book Description

Winner of the 2023 Globalisation and Education SIG Best Book Award at CIES 2023! Immigration, Integration and Education offers a unique comparative analysis of the views and experiences of children of immigrants in school in France and England. It showcases how the theorization of children’s narratives can offer new methodological tools and insights in comparative education and help understand the different role of educational systems and discourses around issues of immigration, integration, race, language and religion. Presenting an in-depth analysis of children’s own narratives, this book offers a close comparative examination of the French and English educational systems, and the ways in which they impact on the experiences and identities of children of immigrants. The narratives of the children reveal the multiple forms of othering, discrimination and exclusion that shape their experiences in school, but also the multiple strategies they deploy to navigate these complex educational landscapes. It stresses that beyond national ideologies and philosophies of integration, structural and cultural aspects need to be explored to understand the role played by schools in the inclusion of immigrant populations. This book is an essential resource for academics, researchers and graduate students in the fields of sociology of education, migration studies, intercultural education, educational policy and comparative and international education. It will also appeal to those who are committed to addressing inequalities and discrimination in education.




Migration and the Search for Home


Book Description

This book explores the impact of transnational migration on the views, feelings, and practices of home among migrants. Home is usually perceived as what placidly lies in the background of everyday life, yet migrants’ experience tells a different story: what happens to the notion of home, once migrants move far away from their “natural” bases and search for new ones, often under marginalized living conditions? The author analyzes in how far migrants’ sense of home relies on a dwelling place, intimate relationships, memories of the past, and aspirations for the future–and what difference these factors make in practice. Analyzing their claims, conflicts, and dilemmas, this book showcases how in the migrants’ case, the sense of home turns from an apparently intimate and domestic concern into a major public question.




Studying Diversity, Migration and Urban Multiculture


Book Description

Anti-migrant populism is on the rise across Europe, and diversity and multiculturalism are increasingly presented as threats to social cohesion. Yet diversity is also a mundane social reality in urban neighbourhoods. With this in mind, Studying Diversity, Migration and Urban Multiculture explores how we can live together with and in difference. What is needed for conviviality to emerge and what role can research play? This volume demonstrates how collaboration between scholars, civil society and practitioners can help to answer these questions. Drawing on a range of innovative and participatory methods, each chapter examines conviviality in different cities across the UK. The contributors ask how the research process itself can be made more convivial, and show how power relations between researchers, those researched, and research users can be reconfigured – in the process producing much needed new knowledge and understanding about urban diversity, multiculturalism and conviviality. Examples include embroidery workshops with diverse faith communities, arts work with child language brokers in schools, and life story and walking methods with refugees. Studying Diversity, Migration and Urban Multiculture is interdisciplinary in scope and includes contributions from sociologists, anthropologists and social psychologists, as well as chapters by practitioners and activists. It provides fresh perspectives on methodological debates in qualitative social research, and will be of interest to scholars, students, practitioners, activists, and policymakers who work on migration, urban diversity, conviviality and conflict, and integration and cohesion.




Refuge in a Moving World


Book Description

Refuge in a Moving World draws together more than thirty contributions from multiple disciplines and fields of research and practice to discuss different ways of engaging with, and responding to, migration and displacement. The volume combines critical reflections on the complexities of conceptualizing processes and experiences of (forced) migration, with detailed analyses of these experiences in contemporary and historical settings from around the world. Through interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies – including participatory research, poetic and spatial interventions, ethnography, theatre, discourse analysis and visual methods – the volume documents the complexities of refugees’ and migrants’ journeys. This includes a particular focus on how people inhabit and negotiate everyday life in cities, towns, camps and informal settlements across the Middle East and North Africa, Southern and Eastern Africa, and Europe.