1st Edition
Migrant Scholars Researching Migration Reflexivity, Subjectivity and Biography in Research
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.
Dedication
List of figures
Acknowledgments
Notes on contributors
Foreword
CECILIA MENJÍVAR
Foreword
KENNETH J. GERGEN
Theoretical Introduction: Subjectivity, Reflexivity, and Affectivity as Research Processes
MARCO GEMIGNANI, YOLANDA HERNÁNDEZ-ALBÚJAR, AND JANA SLÁDKOVÁ
Introduction
MARCO GEMIGNANI, YOLANDA HERNÁNDEZ-ALBÚJAR, AND JANA SLÁDKOVÁ
PART I
Entanglements of Memories as Research
1. When we migrate
ANDREEA DECIU RITIVOI
2. My poncho is a flamenco kimono
FERNANDO IWASAKI
3. Wesearch: A Lao research scholar’s experience learning about and with her Southeast Asian American community
PHITSAMAY S. UY
4. The process of becoming: An intimate and retrospective look at a 30-year journey of searching for a home
VERONICA MONTES
5. Looking for home: Reflections on an artistic process
PAVEL ROMANIKO
PART II
Negotiating belonging and identities in research
- On not seeing oneself in the migration scholarship: Race and the struggle for belonging in the Indian diaspora
SUNIL BHATIA
- In-between places: Negotiating (dis)advantage across national contexts
NIDA BIKMEN
- Going from student to immigrant to citizen
ERNESTO CASTAÑEDA
- Migration, narratives, and languages: Between life and work
ANNA DE FINA
- Being a transnational language teacher educator and researcher: Borderlands, ideologies, and liminal identities
BEDRETTIN YAZAN
- A transatlantic teacher educator: My life and career across two countries and languages
JOHANNA M. TIGERT
- The research memoir of an intra-EU migrant who has become a guest in a settler colonial state
ANNA TRIANDAFYLLIDOU
PART III
Tensions of power in knowledge production
- Bewilderment and illumination: Language as a tool to understand the migrant experience
LUKA LUCIĆ
- Developing new approaches, stepping beyond categories: transnationalism and youth mobility trajectories in migration research
VALENTINA MAZZUCATO
- From the “field” to the stage: A migration story
CAROLINA ALONSO BEJARANO
- Can Black girls be transnational?
NAFEESAH ALLEN
- From “second-generation immigrant” to sociologist of migration
MARCO MARTINIELLO
- Keeping the struggle alive: A methodologically disobedient essay
ALI KONYALI
Conclusions: Towards New Ways of Knowing
MARCO GEMIGNANI, YOLANDA HERNÁNDEZ-ALBÚJAR, AND JANA SLÁDKOVÁ
Index
Biography
Marco Gemignani is Associate Professor/Reader in the Psychology Department at Universidad Loyola in Seville, Spain, where he specializes in qualitative methodologies, clinical community psychology, and cultural psychology. He is a former president of the Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology and actively collaborates with numerous qualitative journals, associations, and research centers in psychology. His interests are in innovative critical methodologies and narrativeconstructivist psychotherapies, which he applies mostly in the field of migration studies. His most recent research projects concern transnational families, collective traumatic memories, and the psychosocial dimensions of the irregularization of migration.
Yolanda Hernández-Albújar works at Universidad Loyola Andalucía, in Seville, where she teaches courses in Cultural Anthropology, Migration, and Gender. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh and a master´s degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Florida. She explores, from a cultural perspective, issues of identity, migration, and gender. She specializes in qualitative and visual methodologies and collaborates with various journals and associations. She is now the principal investigator in two projects regarding migrants in Latin America.
Jana Sládková is an Associate Professor of critical social psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, USA. She is a qualitative researcher with expertise in narrative inquiry. Her focus of inquiry is on migration issues of unauthorized migrants, and racial/ethnic diversity and inclusion in higher education in the United States. She is the author of Journeys of Undocumented Honduran Migrants to the United States and numerous peer-reviewed articles. Her latest projects include Participatory Action Research with adult immigrant English learners in Massachusetts and celebrating Latinx communities in New England, USA.
