In the past months, we wrapped up with season 5! The latest episodes of the IMISCOE Migration Podcast explore three timely themes in migration research: digital disinformation, schools as integration spaces, and reflexivity in ethnographic work.
Episode 8 – False narratives, real consequences
This guest episode from the Borders and Belonging Podcast examines how social media amplifies misleading narratives about migrants and refugees. With insights from Katie Paul, Anatoliy Gruzd, and Mattias Ekman, the discussion highlights how digital disinformation shapes public opinion and is increasingly mobilized for political purposes. The episode underlines the need to take online narratives seriously as drivers of migration debates, public opinion and policy responses.
Episode 9 – Schools as sites of migrant integration
This episode turns to schools as key institutions where integration unfolds in everyday practice. Irene Landini and Jacob Garrett discuss how educational settings foster social participation and engagement among students and parents. They reveal how schools adapt in different ways to intercultural and multi-lingual realities and how they can be key places of civic engagement for not only for students, but also for parents.
Episode 10 – Power, positionality, and ethnography
In episode 10, Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot and Herbary Cheung, winners of the 2025 IMISCOE’s Standing Committee on Gender and Sexuality in Migration Studies Best Paper Award, reflexively talk about researcher-participant relations in their ethnographic work and how they overcome challenges of doing and writing about comparative ethnography. Their conversation reveals how researchers’ positionalities shift across time, participant relationships, and institutional contexts, offering a nuanced perspective on power in ethnographic research on minority migrant women.
Behind the microphone: Training for Season 6
In February, the IMISCOE Migration Podcast interview team took part in an online training led by professional podcast producer Kevin Caners. The sessions focused on strengthening journalistic interviewing skills, which are quite distinct from academic qualitative interviewing style.
Podcast interviews require clarity, pace and conversational style: making academic research insights accessible, engaging to the listeners, and personal. Across two sessions, interviewers explored practical techniques, common pitfalls, and the art of balancing preparation for the interviews with spontaneity of interactions during recording. Participants then conducted practice interviews with each other and submitted recordings for feedback.
The final session provided detailed reflections on these exercises and opened discussion on how to refine interviewing styles for future episodes. Supported by IMISCOE structural funding, this training equips the team with new skills as they prepare for Season 6 — with more to come! Stay tuned.