Community-based participatory research

Research Migration Student Group

Migration is a phenomenon as old as human existence. In recent years, there has been a rise in migration towards Europe. According to the IOM (2022), Europe hosts 87.6 million migrants, constituting 31 percent of the world’s migrants. The resulting diversification of cultural backgrounds underscores the importance of peaceful coexistence, inclusion, and the well-being of communities. Nevertheless, people who have managed to survive Europe’s deadly borders are oftentimes confronted with a reality different from what they envisioned. Power and resources continue being unequally distributed, leaving migrants marked by marginalization in challenging positions of misrecognition and/or discrimination while searching for stability in foreign nations. They find themselves in never-ending moments of liminality. Psychological research on migration tends to ignore the political context and the epistemic responsibility that comes with studying marginalized groups. There is a need for more research that emphasizes migrants’ perspectives, autonomy, and resources. To enable such research, we created a research group bringing together master’s students, postgraduate researchers, and professors. We foster a “co-learning” space to intersect and exchange different perspectives. Our understanding of migration is shaped by our different migratory experiences, and thus epistemic trajectories, of having grown up in Italy, Germany, Ecuador, the United Kingdom, Iran, and Vietnam and, after various in-between stops, now residing in Padova, Italy. Our research approach is firmly grounded in qualitative methodology, starting from the theoretical lenses of semiotic cultural psychology, liminality theory, and concepts of borders. We aim to cultivate a power-critical psychological perspective, engage in interdisciplinary dialogues, and put special emphasis on our epistemological as well as social responsibility and positioning. Each of us will create our own research project, according to our individual backgrounds, interests, and expertise. Through a diversity of perspectives, critical inquiry, and mutual collaboration, we aim to construct a fruitful research environment for the investigation of such a multifaceted phenomenon as migration. We strive to generate impactful theoretical as well as practical contributions to the topic.

Research group members:

Phuong Nhi Nguyen
Sarah Mae Harrison
Yavar Fadavi Asghari
Hanna Reisch
María Emilia Montaño Córdova
Paula Victoria Cramer

For more information about the research group members: clic here.