MoVE (Methods: Visual: Explore): Marginalized Migrant Populations and the Use of Visual and Narrative Methodologies in South Africa

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.