News from Members

12^th IMISCOE Conference, Geneva, 25-27 June 2015

Call for papers for the panel: The methodological challenges of conducting research with children of migrants (including teenagers and young adults) within (transnational) families

The title and abstract of no more than 250 words, as well as name, institutional affiliation and email contact needs to be submitted by 9^th January 2015 to:  Dr Joaquin Eguren- This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; Dr Martha Montero-Sieburth - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and Dr Rosa Mas Giralt - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

An increasing number of studies seek to consider the experiences and perspectives of migrants and their children (including teenagers and young adults) within the relational and intergenerational context of the transnational family. These studies present a range of research challenges in relation to accessing and recruiting participants; negotiating with ‘gatekeepers’ (i.e. parents or guardians); securing informed consent from both adults and children; and managing age, gender and other power dynamics within families. Researchers in these areas need to employ a reflexive practice in relation to procedural, ethical and methodological issues.

This type of research requires the design of methods which can better capture the individual and collective perspectives of families and their members, analysing sets of relational data and writing about findings in ways which continue to respect the confidentiality of all participants (e.g. not revealing any information not known to other participant members of the family) while still gathering insightful individual and relational accounts.   

For this panel, we invite abstracts which address any of the ethical and methodological challenges of conducting research with migrants and their descendants (children to young adults) within the context of (transnational) families. We are hoping to receive papers which consider approaches or strategies to overcome the challenges related to accessing and recruiting families (adult and young participants), designing and undertaking this type of research and the approaches to ethical and methodological reflexivity required by researchers. 

Presenters will be notified by the beginning of January whether their proposals have been accepted. Please note that the panel proposal (with papers abstracts) will then have to go through the acceptance process of the conference. Notification of the acceptance of panel proposals is expected by the 15^th February.