Through reflections on the importance of the connection between biography and research, this book considers the influence of scholars experiences of migration on their careers, highlighting the importance of reflexivity and subjectivity as assets, and positioning the researchers experience at the centre of the process of enquiry.
Is it possible or even desirable for scholars to try to extricate the personal and subjective from their research agenda? Might something be lost from research in pursuit of objectivity? If objectivity is so important, why do many scholars study something that is dear or familiar to them? This book acknowledges the ways in which personal experience affects research and how the process of doing research sheds light on personal histories. Offering a collection of multi-layered reflections on the importance that the connection between biography and research can hold for developing meaningful knowledge and new methodologies, it considers the influence of scholars experiences of migration on their careers. With attention to the ways in which personal biographies have been instrumental in developing the research and methodological sensitivity of accomplished migration scholars across a variety of disciplines, it sheds light on the importance of reflexivity and subjectivity as assets in research rather than obstacles. Positioning the researchers experiences at the centre of the process of enquiry, Migrant Scholars Researching Migration will appeal not only to scholars of migration and diaspora studies, but to those with interests in research methodology and biographical research.
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 MENJĶVAR
Foreword
KENNETH J. GERGEN
Introduction
MARCO GEMIGNANI, YOLANDA HERNĮNDEZ-ALBŚJAR, AND JANA SLĮDKOVĮ
Theoretical Introduction: Subjectivity, Reflexivity, and Affectivity as
Research Processes
MARCO GEMIGNANI, YOLANDA HERNĮNDEZ-ALBŚJAR, AND JANA SLĮDKOVĮ
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 scholars 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 CASTAŃEDA
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 TIGERT
The research memoir of an intra-EU migrant who has become a guest in a
settler colonial state
ANNA TRIANDAFFYLIDOU
PART III
Tensions of power in knowledge production
Bewilderment and illumination: Language as a tool to understand the migrant
experience
LUKA LUCI
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 HERNĮNDEZ-ALBŚJAR, AND JANA SLĮDKOVĮ
Index
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 Hernįndez-Albśjar works at Universidad Loyola Andalucķa, 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 Slįdkovį 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.
