Category: Research

Led by Nicola Mai, the SEXHUM (Sexual Humanitarianism: Migration, Sex Work and Trafficking) project studies the correlation between migration, sex work, and trafficking in the global sex industry, as well as the impact of anti-trafficking and other humanitarian and social interventions targeting migrant sex workers in strategic urban settings in Australia, France and the United States. SEXHUM’s aim is to analyse migrants’ experiences of agency and exploitation, as well as producing new data reflecting the perspectives of migrants working in the global sex industry. The project seeks to ensure that more efficient and ethical policies and social interventions are developed to address sex workers’ needs. The methodology for this research draws upon several qualitative methods, particularly art-science ethnographic filmmaking. Research participants partake in the ethnographic film making to narrate their realities and to address the relational and performative dimensions of their experiences. This methodological approach was adopted to ensure that all intersubjective dimensions of the individual were covered by the research team. Furthermore, ethnographic film-making has been used to explore how the sex workers’ understandings of agency and exploitation have emerged and evolved along the migration experience.

The MoVE project was founded in 2013 by Elsa Oliveira and Jo Vearey at the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. MoVe is a repository for innovative visual and narrative research showcasing the subjective realities of migrants in southern Africa. MoVE’s approach seeks to incorporate social action and research by engaging migrant participants, local social movements and students in participatory work through photography, narrative writing, participatory theatre, and collages to produce research on migration. These participatory approaches encourage the narration of migrants’ lived experiences whereby the recording of each storytelling becomes an ‘artefact’ that can be shared with diverse audiences through MoVE. MoVE specifically includes innovative research that can facilitate increased insight into the complex lived experiences of migrants and communities and actively promotes partnerships created with inter-represented migrant communities. MoVE believes in the importance of participatory research to inform advocacy projects.

The Last Country is an immersive 50-minute theatrical production. The script was created using 30 oral histories collected by migrant women fieldworkers in the city of Durban, South Africa. The oral histories consist of 10 stories from women requesting asylum seekers permits, 10 from women who have obtained various kinds of entry visas, and 10 stories from South African women who have come from surrounding rural areas to live one of the “hostels” in the city centre. Sitting in a circle with the actors the audience intimately listens to experiences of leaving home and arriving in Durban, where the women find various strategies in which to make the city a place something like home. The script carefully weaves together experiences of struggle, pain, humour, hope and resilience in ways that explore the complexities, commonalities and differences of migrant women in the city. The play was performed around the city for both city officials and at public venues. The Last Country is part of a broader research and advocacy project, funded by the Cities Alliance, titled Migration and the Inclusive City. This project is a collaborative partnership between two civil society organisations, the Democracy Development Program and the African Solidarity Network, and the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology. The research produced creative public engagement outputs, such as The Last Country, as well as a strategic research reportfor the city on inclusion, gender and migration in Durban.

Researchers: Kira Erwin (Durban University of Technology), Nomkhosi Gama (Durban University of Technology), Jeremy Grest (Transformation Journal); Theatre practitioners: Mpume Mthombeni and Neil Coppen; Partners: Democracy Development Program and the African Solidarity Network

IM²MEDIATE is a research project investigating the dynamic interplay between media representations of recent non-EU immigrants in the EU, with specific emphasis on the situation of refugees and the governmental and societal (re)actionsto it. Within this large project funded by Belspo, our study engages with the experiences of refugees. Taking a voice-centered approach, we have worked with 44 participants of Syrian, Afghan, and Iraqi descent, who came to Belgium after 2015. The study included ethnographic conversations, focus group interviews, and visual workshops with photo elicitation and photovoice exercises. These different methods were used to elicit participants’ stories about their journeys and experiences, but also to explore their responses to mainstream visual representations of migration and refugees. Our analysis included an inquiry into negotiations of victimization in everyday life contexts, the meanings and difficulties of visual representations of suffering, and critiques of the Western gaze in media representations of migration. During a part of our study, we presented participants with a representative sample of mainstream representations of refugees and asked them to “give voice” to one or more of the persons being depicted. Some participants used this exercise to problematize the way in which refugees are portrayed and used this opportunity to address “all Belgians” or politicians. The images thus functioned as a helpful springboard to address broader issues related to migration, politics, and culture.

Researchers: Kevin Smets (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Jacinthe Mazzocchetti (Université catholique de Louvain), Lorraine Gerstmans (Université catholique de Louvain), Lien Mostmans (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Leen d’Haenens (KU Leuven)

The subjective realities of migrants are at the centre of Maggie O’Neill’s approach which is articulated through the practice of walking. As part of her Leverhulme Research Fellowship with a specific focus on borders, risk and belonging, the project aims to explore migrants’ journeys, mapping out their pathways to becoming long-term residents of the area. In this project, walking is a platform for sensing the surrounding environment and being in touch with personal emotions and memories. The performative act of walking in space and time is relational and plays a role in the definition of belonging to a place, which is particularly important in the definition of migrants’ identities. Walking is a useful methodology when studying borders, risk, and belonging, as it can involve physically crossing borders, going into areas perceived as ‘risky,’ or, literally walking on a border. The project makes use of participatory action research (PAR) and arts practice (ethno-mimesis) when investigating the sense of belonging negotiated by migrants. Arts practice can include performance and public displays such as maps, whilst ethno-mimesis focuses on imitating the representations of the reality of migrants. The intention of the research is to produce a web resource including maps from the walks, images and sound files.

Researcher: Maggie O’Neill (University of York)

The Verbatim Formula is a participatory performance-based research project which works with young people in the social care system including a high proportion of refugee children, unaccompanied minor, and young asylum-seeking migrants. This project is carried out in partnership with the Greater London Authority Peer Outreach Team, and has been primarily created by Maggie Inchley, Sylvan Baker, and Sadhvi Dar, in collaboration with Mita Pujara (Artist/Evaluator) and is produced by People’s Palace Projects. Using an earpiece, performers relay the exact words of a previously conducted interview to the audience. In this portable testimony service, listening is made visible through a performance illustrating sections of interviews which have been edited together into an audio file. These performances help people to listen, create open and meaningful dialogue, as well as share and take action. The Verbatim Formula allows participants to be co-researchers on the project and places their voices at the centre of the research; the young people ask the questions, gather data by interviewing, and disseminate the findings through performance.This research aims to create an environment where a diverse number of children and young people can express themselves freely and anonymously, giving those working in social care an insight into the lived experiences of the system, the concerns children may have, and their overall livelihood in the care system. This participatory project illustrates the different experiences of migrant children in social care, as well as ethnic and gender differences where worldviews of participants are examined, then shared through drama performance. Drama allows for a diverse interpretation of life in social care from individuals who experience the system in diverse ways.

Researchers: Maggie Inchley (Queen Mary, University of London), Sylvan Baker (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London), and Sadhvi Dar (Queen Mary, University of London), in collaboration with Mita Pujara (Artist/Evaluator)

Atlas of Transitions – New Geographies for a Cross-Cultural Europe is one of the 15 large-scale projects of the 2017 Creative Europe programme (2017-2020). It promotes cross-cultural dialogue between European citizens and newcomers – migrants, refugees, asylum seekers – by bringing local communities closer together through culture and performing arts. The project looks at the potentialities arising from the contemporary migration phenomenon and seeks new ways of experiencing public space and cohabitation through art. Its aim is to counter radicalism and anxiety towards migration within society by developing strategies of co-creation and interaction between citizens and migrants, with the participation of people with diverse cultural backgrounds in traditional as well as non-conventional public spaces such as squares, neighbourhoods, and suburbs. To achieve this result, Atlas of Transitions promotes workshops, creative productions, festivals and academic research, thanks to the collaborations of cultural institutions and universities in seven European countries: Italy, Albania, Belgium, Poland, France, Greece, and Sweden. Together with national and local theatres and associations and artists from Europe and abroad, Atlas of Transitions supports academic research to promote strategies of emancipation and participatory knowledge and practice by involving universities and scholars from its seven partner countries. Researchers’ findings will be disseminated on our website in the Action Research section, where they can be downloaded without restrictions. To boost the practical knowledge that academic research will put together during this three-year project, in the last semester of Atlas of Transitions, a Summer School will host and provide training opportunities for scholars, social workers, and artists who perform in cross-cultural and migration-related contexts. Here, artists’ knowledge and experience will be shared and creative forms of active participation for social cohesion will be practiced together to teach and disseminate their potentialities in daily work and life.

In the first iteration of what aims to be a wider research project on the elicitation of culturally diverse memes through the use of digital technologies, Alda Terracciano focused on the rich cultural heritage of Moroccan communities in West London. In the course of her work with members of the Al-Hasaniya Moroccan Women’s Centre and Making Communities Work and Grow, Alda further developed the ‘Memory Session’ practice research methodology, which collectively connects sensory experiences of migrant community members to their own cultural heritage and makes it accessible to the wider public. This unique approach is the outcome of previous memory sessions with 70 members of migrant communities in London, where participants were asked to share feelings, thoughts and memories through video elicitation. This approach led participants to share traditions, daily rituals, urban life, as well as personal notions of home and cultural identity (Terracciano 2016). The Moroccan Intangible Heritage project saw the collaboration of a HCI designer and two olfactory engineers to develop a multisensory digital interface in the field of critical heritage studies and urban planning (Terracciano et al. 2017).  Collective curatorial experiences and democratization of decision making in urban planning are at the centre of this creative and participatory inquiry. The ensuing community-curated digital interactive interface is able to mobilise the senses to uncover the embodied experiences of both the communities represented in the interface and the wider public when using the sensory audio-visual installation. This work highlights the importance of supporting autonomy, identity and ownership when engaging migrant communities. In addition to this, the inclusion of local authorities in the design of the multisensory interface contributed to create a space where technologies can support a bottom-up and community-led civic engagement.

Researcher: Alda Terracciano (independent researcher and artist)

In 2017 sociologist Elena Vacchelli and Digital Storytelling facilitator Tricia Jenkins conducted a pilot study with the Portuguese-speaking community in Stockwell. The workshop deployed the creative and collaborative method of Digital Storytelling (DS) to look at the life experiences of the Portuguese speaking community in gentrifying Stockwell and see how they connect to broader issues identified in Stockwell. A recent report by Nogueira, Porteous and Guerreiro (2015) suggests that the roughly 35,000 Portuguese speaking migrants in Stockwell (South London) span across different generations of migration and across different continents including Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. The report identified key areas of concern affecting the Portuguese speaking community ranging from immigration status for extra-European Portuguese speaking migrants; poor English; unsuitable housing; isolated elderly people and mental health; substance misuse; domestic violence. Whilst the community remains concentrated in and around the area known as Little Portugal in Stockwell, where we held the DS workshop, both the census and the growing number of cafes and bars ran by Portuguese Speakers indicate that members of the community now live throughout the borough. The Stockwell Partnership played a major role in facilitating the recruitment of the research participants for this pilot project.

The ‘social encounter’ of the DS workshop encourages participants to reflect on and share personal narratives which are borne out of a dialogical relationship amongst the group. DS aims for the realisation of a two to five minutes audio-visual clip whose imaginary is built on the recording of the workshop participants’ voice reading the story s/he wrote. The resulting clip is a combination of principally still images complementing the recording of the participant’s voice telling the story that s/he has developed through a series of creative writing type of activities. Digital Storytelling is achieved through a dynamic rapport of mutual support and co-production during the workshop aimed at helping participants to find their voice and tell a story which is important to them. Participants are also supported in transforming their story into an audio-visual clip that can be shared with the immediate group and disseminated further.

Researchers: Elena Vacchelli (University of Greenwich) and Tricia Jenkins (Goldsmiths, University of London)

In 2012 and 2016, Cigdem Esin and Corinne Squire, together with a number of colleagues, ran two interconnected projects in East London and Calais refugee camp using multimodal narrative methodology. The aim of these projects was to facilitate the creation of visual, written, verbal and process narratives of participants’ lives, to open up a space for storytellers to explore the interrelations between personal and cultural resources. Similar methods were used in both projects but the processes differentiated in response to the context and group of participants.

The first study was conducted in 2012 with a small group of young British Muslim women in a community school in East London. The study team ran weekly workshops over a few months in which the participants were asked to create visual images about any aspect of their lives. Participants were provided with a range of image making resources such as acrylic paint, coloured pencils, crayons and craft material. The study team facilitated the workshops by engaging in conversations with the group about various aspects of everyday life such as life at school/university, families and friends. The participants were then interviewed about their images, their participation in the workshops and their interaction with other workshop participants/study team. An article by Cigdem Esin analyzing some of the narratives from this study could be viewed here.

The second project was carried out in 2016 with the residents of Calais refugee camp as an impact project. The aim was to use multimodal narrative methodology in order to constitute a space for refugee storytellers to tell their individual and collective life stories with links to their past, to their membership in refugee communities and to broader socio-cultural contexts in which their stories were circulated for various purposes. The project involved visual storytelling workshops in which participants were asked to create visual stories about themselves, their journey or their life in the refugee camp. These were one-off workshops due to the material conditions of the camp. The project team was engaged in conversations with the participants and asked them to produce short narratives about their images where possible. Some of the images from one of the visual storytelling workshops in the camp can be viewed here.

Researchers: Cigdem Esin and Corinne Squire, University of East London, Centre for Narrative Research