On January 16th, Claire Bynner and I organized a workshop for Early Career Researchers at the University of Glasgow on New Directions in Research on Multiculturalism, Interculturality and Migration. The idea of the workshop came from a recent event that both of us attended in Santiago de Chile in October 2017, where we tackled similar themes at the international level. At the event in Chile, we were struck not so much by the theoretical frameworks that researchers were building on, but by the methodological range of tools and approaches currently applied in new contexts where migration flows take new turns and engage different groups of people and communities. From social cartography to arts-based methods, participatory and performance-based methods, autoethnography, latent growth curve analysis and World café method, we learned about the many directions research can take in contexts of migration and multiculturalism. The themes addressed in some of the projects included: health and well-being (e.g., mental health trajectories among migrant groups, migrant and indigenous women’s birthing patterns and rights), group dynamics (e.g., using sports for social inclusion), enacted ideologies (e.g. Islamophobia and multicultural education), migrant activism and linguistic discrimination. We were happy to meet colleagues from universities across the globe under the umbrella network of Universitas 21.
Claire and I gathered some of the themes we found interesting and challenging for the current research landscape and we presented them at the workshop for Early Career Researchers at the University of Glasgow that we organized. An expert group of practitioners from the Scottish Refugee Council, BEMIS, and Glasgow City Council joined us to share some of the latest research projects in which they are currently involved. Together with other researchers from our university, we identified themes and issues that currently need to be addressed in relation to various communities in Glasgow, Scotland and the UK. Practitioners advised us to move away from a focus on services and access to structures of support - both being areas that have been heavily investigated by researchers and policy makers. More importantly, future research would need to move beyond this level of analysis and explore the actual lives of people in various communities. Fewer research projects have looked, for instance, into the daily life dynamics of communities while taking into account what people actually do in their day-to-day activities, outside pre-set groups or organisations. Another important suggestion was related to the migrants’ need for independence. Instead of framing research based on models of “needs” and “lack,” emergent research would also have to turn towards migrants’ desire to be and act independently. Many other important topics, such as employment, national identity, skills and well-being emerged during our conversations. Taken together, all these issues seem to call for a potential shift in research that we may see in upcoming projects. Claire and I were happy to receive positive comments at the end of the workshop: practitioners and researchers had some very concrete and productive discussions about potential research projects. The event seemed to touch on a sensible chord as well: the need for more opportunities to engage early career researchers and practitioners in the first stages of project-development. Such brainstorming sessions align what researchers identify as significant areas of analysis with what practitioners experience in their own contexts of working with communities in different locales. Claire and I have a learned a lot by organising this event and we hope we will see more similar ones at our institution and elsewhere.
1 Comment
1/23/2018 12:56:20 pm
There is only one Human Being community in Glasgow, however a history of fragmentation and separation to support division often relating directly or indirectly to money rather than morality, it is not new. Exercising selective research wont reduce division it will support it. Shared experience of all human beings in Glasgow and the comparison of those various struggles together, and getting to together for joint equality and human rights and equal opportunity removes, divide and conquer platforms, which a lack of crosscutting comparisons support . In my lay person view.
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