As we recently announced, SC Reflexivities in Migration Studies just launched a new weekly blog series titled Visions for migration. The editing team – Sorina Carstea, Iva Dodevska, Stefan Manser-Egli and Anna-Lisa Müller – curated a collection of powerful blog posts answering the burning question: How does who we are shape how we do migration research, and what kind of world do we hope our research can contribute towards?
In anticipation of the first single-authored blog post, we would like to open the series with a short compilation of stories that make one a migration researcher.
We asked several researchers on how their life stories brought them to this work, and what they hope to change with their research. We want to open this blog series with a collection of their brief interventions (some of which are anonymous). What these interventions show us, above all, is how personal this research field is for many of us – and as second wave feminists taught us in the 1970s, the personal is political. These stories reaffirm not only that as migration scholars we are well aware of our role in co-constructing the politics of governing human movement, but that we want to be in this position. We claim this position because we have visions of what we want the field to look like, but these visions reflect also what we want the world to look like. Such visions are often blurry, messy, riddled with doubt, threatened by fear and pessimism. But they also reflect hope, resilience, a vivid social imagination. They are there to drive us – in our work and in our lives.
Stories of how one's lived experience shapes the ways we do research
“Many descendants of migrant families have portrayed – through fiction, research, activism and art – the tensions between immigrant workers from the South and the East and their ‘European’ children. From Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) to Igiaba Scego’s Oltre Babilonia (2008), the themes of becoming and belonging alongside (or despite) family expectations about education, careers, sexuality and faith are central. These works are usually welcomed in the mainstream when they bring to light experiences of ‘successful integration’ and ‘modernity’, less so when they point to the persisting and intersecting xenophobia, misogynism, queerphobia and anti-Muslim hatred in late-capitalist societies. In my time abroad as a teenager, I faced similar dilemmas. My mother was my role model and yet terrifying in her fury when confronted with my ‘pansexual sluttiness’ – in her mind a consequence of having left our home country. The conflicts with my parents were painful on a myriad of levels. Their unwillingness to accept my lack of conformism put them in the category of ‘traditional migrants’ for the outside world, something they definitely were not. How to contest such simplistic prejudices while claiming my space?
Decades later, I’m investigating belonging and affective landscapes of mothers and daughters with biographies of mobility in Switzerland. The fundamental concern remains proceeding extremely gently and ethically when focusing on over-researched topics like migration. Autoethnographic and self-reflective writing/journaling accompanies the process, alongside collaborative work at the intersection of academic research, community-building and the arts. Will this sensory, participatory approach lead to a more nuanced ethnography and to narratives that I would have approved of as a teenager? Will I manage to meet my own high expectations for migration research that fosters inclusivity and symmetry among all actors involved, while respecting the ‘right to invisibility and to be forgotten’ of our interlocutors (Fernando 2014)?”
Nadia Bellardi, PhD candidate at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Basel, Switzerland
“My engagement with migration research grew from a deeply personal sense of movement, belonging and ethical questioning. Born in Bhagalpur, an Indian city scarred by episodes of communal violence and raised across multiple cities due to my father’s transferable job, I learned early on that mobility could be both ordinary and consequential. These formative experiences shaped my sensitivity to questions of rootedness, aspiration and circumstance that organise everyday life. Later, a training in peacebuilding, followed by a fellowship in Tibetan refugee settlements across South Asia, transformed this awareness into an anthropological inquiry. Migration, I came to see, was not only a political or economic act but also a moral and affective project — one entangled with ethical concerns and aspirations for a good life (Laidlaw 2014; Robbins 2013). Over time, my research in Dharamshala revealed itself to be a moral practice — a pursuit of meaningful life that shapes the questions we ask and the stories we tell. When seen through this lens, migration studies is not simply an interrogation of a crisis or strategy at hand, but an ethical practice of world-making –– a continual negotiation of where we and those we work with belong and what kinds of worlds we seek to inhabit.”
Anando Ghosh, PhD candidate in Development Studies at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU) and the Institute of Education (IOE) at University College London (UCL)
“As a social psychology researcher who gets her research inspiration from simply experiencing society, and as an immigrant from a “European periphery” to the Western-prototypical Germany, I find my migration-related research is shaped by both my professional and personal backgrounds. I focus on receiving societies and explaining why there are immigration-sceptic attitudes, focusing on perceptions of threat by immigrants. My work explores how these perceptions are influenced by intersecting factors such as racialization, gendering, securitization narratives etc. I am guided by decolonial perspectives, which are particularly close to heart when one comes from an othered background - after all, I come from a region whose name was appropriated as a description of backward and hostile. This process is not unique to the Balkans, but rather embedded in dominant (Western-)European narratives (and practices) concerning deservingness and the assimilation potential of (prospective) migrants and refugees. My vision for migration studies entails incorporating more decolonial and feminist approaches to not only understand, but help transform the damaging hegemonic narratives, stop gatekeeping inclusion and belonging, and ensure a just, humane and fair process of migration.”
Dr Tijana Karić, a research fellow at Philipps University Marburg
“Choosing migration as the central focus of my research is deeply rooted in my own biographical journey rather than being a matter of academic coincidence. As a Romanian woman who migrated to Spain in 2005, I experienced firsthand the challenges of adaptation, the precarity of employment, and the emotional and social transformations that accompany migration. These experiences profoundly shaped my worldview and academic interests, guiding me to explore the labour integration of Romanian immigrant women in Spain. Between moments of uncertainty, resilience, and reinvention, I came to understand migration not merely as a socioeconomic phenomenon, but as a deeply human process that intertwines identity, belonging, and dignity. My return to Romania between 2010 and 2014, and subsequent re-migration to Spain, further reinforced my awareness of the complexities of transnational lives and the blurred boundaries between departure and return. As a researcher, I approach the field not as an external observer, but as someone who shares the experiences, hopes, and struggles of the women I study. This doctoral research is thus both an academic endeavour and a personal act of recognition, aiming to dignify migrant women’s trajectories and contribute to more inclusive understandings of labour, gender, and mobility.”
Ioana-Felicia Marin, PhD Student in Social Sciences (Migration, mobility and social change), University of Valencia
“Partial belonging: Is all of me welcome? This is the question I carry as an Iranian scholar living in diaspora, and the one that drives my research into the lives of skilled professionals navigating unfamiliar labour markets. Through my work, I examine how inclusion often feels conditional, almost like a transactional deal: ‘we are valued and included for our competencies and labour, yet we remain sidelined in our cultural identity and heritage’. This duality, in the most subtle forms, renders belonging into a conditional, compartmentalised state, a reality that a person cannot totally digest. It begs the questions: who is at fault for this fragmentation? What parts of our being are we permitted to show the world, and what parts must we keep in exile?”
Afra
“Being a former migrant domestic worker in Indonesia and researching them, I often find myself hesitating between listening and analysing, between feeling and rigour. My immediacy to the field continually challenges the boundaries between researcher and participant. Each narrative I encounter echoes with memories and affective intensities. Reflexivity, often described as methodological awareness, here becomes an ethical and emotional dilemma. How can I listen without reliving? How can I analyse without detaching?
My research explores reflexivity as both a struggle and an academic requirement. Drawing on my engagement with former migrant domestic workers through community work in Yogyakarta and reflections on my own migration journey, I examine how the personal experience of a former migrant turned researcher can shape knowledge but also unsettle conventional understandings of rigour. What I see is that feeling emerges from personal border-crossing experiences; it inevitably carries bias, yet also acts as a method, a way of knowing rooted not only in labour migration but in individual experience and shared history. Reflexivity, in this sense, becomes both the site and the tool of knowledge production: an act of going to the field and to oneself.”
Nur Hasanah, a researcher and community worker based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
“Raised in a right-leaning Christian background in Lebanon, I grew up viewing Syrian and Palestinian refugees through a lens of fear and exclusion. Refugees were often portrayed as a demographic and political burden, a threat to identity and stability, rather than individuals seeking protection and dignity. Over time, however, this perception transformed profoundly. Years of reading, research, and direct engagement with displaced communities challenged my inherited assumptions and revealed the injustices that sustain displacement. Through countless encounters, I began to see refugees not as outsiders but as mirrors reflecting our shared vulnerability and humanity.
This transformation deepened when my own daughters migrated, facing many of the same uncertainties and prejudices that refugees endure. Their experiences made migration personal, collapsing the distance between “us” and “them.” What began as a change in perception evolved into an ethical commitment to research, teach, and act with empathy and reflexivity. This transformation now informs my current research on displacement, governance, and citizenship, and continues to shape how I think, write, and teach about migration. My journey illustrates how lived experience, dialogue, and generational change can dismantle rigid notions of belonging and open space for more humane and inclusive understandings of migration and citizenship.”
Claude Samaha, a conflict analyst and researcher with expertise in documenting displacement, human rights violations, and migration policy across the Middle East
Read the introduction to the blog series "Visions for migration" here.