Participatory & Mobile Methods in research with migrant communities

1. Participatory & Mobile Methods in research with migrant communities 7h July 2016 NCRM ESRC METHODS FESTIVAL Walking Stories and Participatory Theatre: Mobile Methods Performing Migrants’ citizenship Maggie O’Neil & Tracey Reynolds Universities of York and Greenwich

2. Walking Stories and Participatory Theatre: Mobile Methods PerformingMigrants’ citizenship Jan 2016-Dec 2017 • Research team: Umut Erel (PI) Tracey Reynolds (Co-I) Maggie O’Neill (Co-I) Erene Kaptani (Research Fellow). • Advisory Group includes Counterpoints Arts • Builds upon previous research • The research combines walking methods and participatory theatre to create a space for exploring, sharing and documenting phenomenological processes of belonging and place making that are crucial to understanding and 'enacting citizenship' • Uses participatory, performative and mobile methods • Launched with a week long training programme in playback/forum theatre – PhD students, practitioners, researchers attended • Research currently in progress – first phase of fieldwork undertaken with migrant mothers and girls in London.

3. Participatory & Mobile Methods in research with migrant communities - In this part of the session we will… • Discuss creative, participatory and biographical methodologies-and their importance /impact in facilitating space for voices often mediated by others or spoken for. How can creative, participatory methods engage marginalized groups? • Share our respective research on mobile / walking and mapping methods with migrant communities • Provide brief examples from Maggie’s Leverhulme research fellowship on Walking Methods in social science research and Tracey’s work with young people 18-21 Youth Matters • Share Impact, Issues and Challenges

4. Why participatory, MAPPING and MOBILE / WALKING METHODS • Both share a commitment to PAR inclusion, participation, valuing all voices • Rooted in a long and diverse genealogy, importance of sharing and facilitating space for stories and voices to be heard. We lead ‘storied lives’ (Phoenix, Roberts,Reissman) • Use of mapping and arts based walking methods - sensory and phenomenological; deeply relational and performative (O’Neill 2001 calls this ethno-mimesis)

5. Walking as arts based method • Useful to explore the importance of being-in-place among trans national group, dialogue, biographical remembering, relational, embodied engagement –a collective story-collaborative knowledge production –empathic witnessing.

7. Mobile Methods: borders, risk and belonging LEVERHULME fellowship • www.walkingborders.com • Methods on the Move: experiencing and imagining borders, risk & belonging builds upon and consolidates  a long history of using walking as a method for doing social research and a long history of  doing participatory research  with artists and communities on  asylum, migration and  marginalisation. • The intention of the  Leverhulme research fellowship is to: • explore  walking as a method for conducting research on borders, risk and belonging; • conduct walking research with participants/co-walkers  to access their  experience and reflections on border places and spaces; • advance innovations in biographical  & visual/performative methods; • reflect on the impact of the collaborative research findings and walking as a method across an interdisciplinary terrain-particularly  for the arts and ss • Twitter account: @maggieoneill9

8. Walks have been conducted to date in: Belfast, Vancouver, Greece – Lesvos and Chios, Manchester, Cork, York , Durham. Walking in Manchester Walking in Souda camp, Chios

9. The Maps: spaces and places of community

12. Arts based MAPPING & MOBILE methods • Create space for voices/narratives/images of women • Counters exclusionary processes and practices through a focus on inclusion, participation, valuing local voices +praxis- a radical democratic imaginary • Supports principles of social justice, recognition – struggle for recognition – migrant trajectories – stories of suffering, resistance and resilience • A potential space for transformative possibilities – dialogic–challenge myths and stereotypes –arts based walking methods as embodied, relational, sensory, multi-modal – access/say the unsayable; • Is not without its challenges, ethical issues and dilemmas • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjT5lENga_M

13. Youth matters • Arts-based participatory project (pilot study funded by University of Greenwich 2016-160 • Emerged out of • ESRC funded seminar series, ‘Diasporic and Transnational Youth Identities in the U.K: exploring conceptual themes and future research agendas. (with Dr Elisabetta Zontini, Univ of Nottingham) • Translate, embed and develop key findings and discussion

14. Youth Matters • building the capacity of young people to co-produce knowledge on • identity making • Navigating inherent gender, ethnic/racial, class age, division/inequalities withinin their locales (family/home, workplace, public spaces) • Policy discourses: eg multiculturalism, immigration and social cohesion in their local communities; changing Higher Education sector • engage policy makers, practitioners and wider community members on these key societal issues. • Toolkit based on maps, creative methods and performances by young people • Youth Summit – September 21st 2016 at University of Greenwich

15. Arts based MAPPING & Forum Theatre methods • As social intervention tool – issues of trust and identity; reflect on changes to and within family and community relationships. • Empowerment method - making claims as a citizens subject, participation and belonging • Investigative approach – creative PAR (eg Forum theatre and methods) and sociology complement each other

16. How mapping used • as a research process with young people – themes: • Map thoughts and reflections on way identity, belonging and lived experiences in communities (local neighbourhood, educational, ethnic/racial) are embodied, sensory • Relationship between local and transnational networks and relationships • as public and community engagement with young people • as a means of raising social and policy awareness of issues affecting young people, specifically from BME and marginalised communities.

17. Workshops • 11 young people age 18-21 years old at University of Greenwich; (6 women and 5 men, 6 BME/migrant; 1 EU/Norwegian and 4 white UK) • Weekly 3 hour workshops January-April 2016 • Facilitated by dramatherapist and researcher (Erene Kaptani) • Each session • Video-recorded • Reflection with young people through maps • Reflections between research team • 1-2-1 interviews with young people

18. Key Themes • through maps and forum theatre • Natural Elements (embodied and expressed through mapping) • Talking to the panel • Family images • Transnational family images • Public images: Mall • Public images: Restaurant

19. FROM LONDON TO NROWAY HOME

20. MOVING ON AND OUT

21. STRATFORD: THEM AND US

22. MAPPING ELEMENTS

23. ROUTES AND ROOTS

24. MANGO OF UNITY

25. BALI DREAMS

26. BALI DREAMS

27. NO. 34 MY FRONT DOOR

28. Video mapping • https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mo0lhag3unqngbh/AAAXn1TE8ykfrCraS5lNlH01a?dl=0&preview=Maps+01.mov

29. Video of mapping

30. References Some references from our research: Reynolds, T. (forthcoming) Routes to Roots: Family Lives and Social Ties of Caribbean Young People in the UK, Oxford: (Berg Hahn Books) Reynolds, T and Zontini, E (2015) Transnational and diasporic youth identities: exploring conceptual themes and future research agendas, Identities; Global Studies in Power and Culture, DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2015.1024129 http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/fZJg4ZkYhKWWsajbZKV6/fullErel, U and Reynolds T (2014) Black Feminist Theory for Participatory Theatre with Migrant Mothers, Feminist Review Special Issue on Black British Feminism, issue 108 pp 106-111 Reynolds, T and Zontini, E, (2014) 'Transnational Families: Migrant Youths 'Doing' Families across Proximities and Distances', Families and Relationships Families Relationships and Societies, 3(2) 251-268 Reynolds, T. (2013) "Them and Us": 'Black Neighbourhoods' as a Social Capital Resource among Black Youths Living in Inner-City London, U.K., in Journal of Urban Studies, 50 (3): 484 - 498 • O’Neill, M and Perivolaris, J. (2015) A sense of Belonging: walking with Thaer through migration, memories and space in Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture Volume 5 Numbers 2 & 3 pp327-338. • Haaken, J. and O’Neill, M. (2014) Moving images: Psychoanalytically-informed visual methods in documenting the lives of women migrants and asylum-seekers in Journal of Health Psychology 19(1): 79-89 • O’Neill, M. (2012) Making Connections: art, affect and emotional agency in Svasek, M [ed] Moving Subjects, Moving Objects: Transnationalism, Cultural Production and Emotions Oxford: Berghahn • Pearce, L. and O’Neill, M. (2011) A Special Edition of the journal Crossings: Migration and Culture on ‘The Arts of Migration’ Volume 2.ISSN: 20404344 http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-issue,id=2044/ • O’Neill, M. and Hubbard, P. (2010) ‘Walking, Sensing, Belonging: ethno-mimesis as performative praxis’ in Visual Studies Vol,25, No1 • O'Neill, M. (2008) Transnational Refugees: The Transformative Role of Art? Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9(2), Art. 59, http://nbnresolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0802590