Storytelling in Research with Refugees: On the Promise and Politics of Audibility and Visibility in Participatory Research in Contexts of Forced Migration

Abstract

Researchers' methodological decisions have an impact on who gets to hear a refugees' story, the meaning a story conveys, and, consequently, the implications a story might have for forced migrants. What we as researchers, or aid workers, do with the stories gathered from forced migrants can contribute to their social and political invisibility, or our scholarship can be a tool to amplify refugee voices as forms of knowledge that are valid not only as testimony but as expertise to design research, programmes and policies. What potential do such methods have to disrupt the “established regimes” of what is audible, visible, or legible in society (Rancière, 2010)? In response to what is now widespread recognition of the “dual imperative” in forced migration research (Jacobsen and Landau 2003), action research has emerged as a common way to do research that is useful to the communities with which we engage. In this article we reflect on our efforts as researchers to address power imbalances by placing forced migrant stories at the forefront of our methods. We rely on two case studies to provide insights into and learn from critical narratives from the displaced themselves: 1) at the Thai-Burmese border, 2) with Somali refugee returnees in Kismayo. The two case studies reveal different ways of working with stories and strategies that can help address the inaudibility of refugee stories. We recognize that such work is necessarily partial and ongoing. To identify space for continued growth and learning, we point to moments where collaboration faltered and moments where our research inadvertently reproduced power inequities.

Precariousness and Hope: Digital Everyday Life of the Undocumented Migrants Explored Through Collaborative Photography

“…The photographic workshop provided a space for countering stereotypical representations as well as offering knowledge from experience through visual artwork and workshop reflections. Such a multidimensional approach opened the complexities and contradictions of lived experience in ways that can contribute to research more than the taken for granted idea of voice (Saltsman & Majidi, 2021).…”

“…The tradition of participatory photography draws on feminist theory, action research, Freire's critical pedagogy, and documentary photography (Pienimäki, 2020) with the aim of centring knowledge from experience and empowering participants through their own identification of the structures of oppression. Saltsman and Majidi (2021) identify increased interest in action research as a way to provide more collaborative framing for research and the ability to "give voice" to migrants. However, they note that too often in action research projects, voice is taken for granted and serves certain frames of suffering, tragedy, and vulnerability, possibly for advocacy purposes, rather than offering a view of the complexities and contradictions of lived experience.…”

“…Often in these projects, voices are nevertheless produced in unequal settings with substantial power in the hands of researchers, curators, governments, and funders. They emphasise the importance of integrating the value of experience-based knowledge into the research design (Saltsman & Majidi, 2021).…”

“…As argued by Collins (2016Collins ( , p. 1170, migrants remain invisible in terms of their daily lives "yet, at other moments, often associated with various crises, migrants become subject to excessive attention" (see also Nikunen, 2020). In a similar way Saltsman andMajidi (2021, p. 2523) argue that "forced migrants often find themselves in something of a contradiction: by becoming hyper-visible in ways that play into dominant narratives of tragedy, insecurity, or victimhood, they simultaneously experience invisibility and inaudibility in terms of their lived experience." Recent studies on migration in European context have also pointed out the gendered nature of hypervisibility where particularly young men are represented as a potential threat connected to sexual violence and terrorism, whereas women and children are represented more in terms of ideal victims (Mavelli, 2017;Nikunen, 2020).…”

“Mi Corazón se Partió en Dos”: Transnational Motherhood at the Intersection of Migration and Violence

“…In addition, researchers faced common impediments with recruiting, which were likely due to the social isolation and climate of fear experienced by undocumented and precariously documented immigrants, in addition to participant and resource constraints that did not allow for multiple interviews with each participant nor member-checking. There also exists potential bias related to participants’ prior engagement with legal immigration systems and having already told, constructed, or re-constructed their stories for a different audience [ 44 , 45 , 46 ]. Sampling and recruitment procedures may have also resulted in bias towards those who had sought services, which could have included those who had faced more intense experiences of violence or hardship.…”