Visual Methodology in Migration Studies

This open access book explores the use of visual methods in migration studies through a combination of theoretical analyses and empirical studies. The first section looks at how various visual methods, including photography, film, and mental maps, may be used to analyse the spatial presence of migrants. The second section addresses the processual building of narratives around migration, thereby using formats such as film and visual essay, and reflecting upon the ways they become carriers and mediators of both story and theory within the subject of migration. Section three focuses on vulnerable communities and discusses how visual methods can empower these communities, thereby also focusing on the theoretical and ethical implications of migration. The fourth section addresses the issue of migrant representation in visual discourses. Based on these contributions, a concluding methodological chapter systematizes the use of visual methods in migration studies across disciplines, with regard to their empirical, theoretical, and ethical implications.  Multidisciplinary in character, this book is an interesting read for students and migration scholars who engage with visual methodologies, as well as practitioners, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, curators of exhibitions who address the topic of migration visually.

Chapter 1. Introduction Amandine Desille and Karolina Nikielska-Sekula.- Chapter 2. “Have you just taken a picture of me?”: Theoretical and ethical implications of the use of researcher-produced photography in studying migrant minorities.- Chapter 3. Migrants’ mental maps: unpacking inhabitants’ practical knowledges in Lisbon.- Chapter 4. On the Use of Visual Methods to Understand Local Immigration Politics.- Chapter 5. Conclusions Touching and being touched – experience and ethical relations.- Chapter 6. Ethnocinematographic theory. How to develop migration theory through ethnographic filmmaking.- Chapter 7. Migrant Cine-Eye: Storytelling in Documentary and Participatory Filmmaking.- Chapter 8. Story-making and Photography: The Visual Essay and Migration.- Chapter 9. Conclusions Migrants through images.- Chapter 10. Combining participatory and audiovisual methods with young Roma “affected by mobility”.- Chapter 11. Photovoice as a research tool of the ‘game’ along the ‘Balkan Route’.- Chapter 12. Crafting an event, an event on craft Working together to represent migration experiences.- Chapter 13. Conclusions Participating as power? The possibilities and politics of participation Céline Cantat.- Chapter 14. Chant Down the Walls: Exploring the Potential of Video Methods in the Study of Immigrant Politics and Social Movements.- Chapter 15. In the eye of the beholder? Minority representation and the politics of culture.- Chapter 16. The Researcher’s Nightworkshop: A Methodology of Bodily and Cyber-ethnographic Representations in Migration Studies.- Chapter 17. Conclusions  “Ways of representation”: Is a reflexive representation possible?.- Chapter 18. Afterword Visual Research in Migration. (In)Visibilities, participation, discourses.