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.

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.