Im.magine · Mapping Immigrant Imaginations: Comparing North Africans in Montréal and Marseille
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-10-01 → 2024-09-30
- EU contribution
- €244,385
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
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Results in brief
Mapping Immigrant Imaginations: Comparing North Africans in Montréal and Marseille
The Im.magine project studies the imaginative worlds of international migrants, from the perspective of their relationships to place and space, their understandings of their own migration and settlement trajectories, and the meanings they draw from complex biographies of dislocation. The project strives to shed light on the often neglected symbolic lifeworlds of international migrants, by offering theoretical and empirical insight into the complex cognitive and emotional processes that underpin migrant social subjectivity. Such an approach is particularly relevant in a global social and political context in which international migrants and the act of migration are depicted in increasingly alarmist terms, at times leading to the dehumanization of migrating actors. A primary objective of the Im.magine project is thus to offer a window onto the complex and varied emotions, mental processes and social and spatial perceptions that constitute the "less visible" - but existentially important - building-blocks of migrant subjectivity. Im.magine particularly applies this approach to the case of contemporary North African (Algerian, Moroccon, Tunisian) migration in two different urban contexts: the metropolitan areas of Montréal (Canada) and Marseille (France). First, it develops a theoretical stance on dualities and reflexivity inherent to migrant subjectivity, drawing on the concept of the imagination in the humanities and social sciences. Second, it considers this theoretical framework in light of comparative case-studies of North African migration to Montréal and Marseille. Third, by means of triangulated oral, spatial and visual ethnographic methods applied to biographical interviewing with North African migrants in each city, it looks for evidence of how these migratory imaginations are articulated in individual migration narratives. The conclusions of the action include: -applying theories of the imagination explored in the philosophical and anthropolgoical work of Cornelius Castoriadis and Benedict Anderson to person-centred migration narratives, thus enhanhcing the empirical applicability of abstract conceptualisations of the imagination in case studies of migration; -offering more conceptual rigour and clarity to the imagination concept as it pertains to the symbolic lifeworlds and concrete experiences of international migrants; -challenging "narrative" approaches to interview-based qualitative research and creating more avenues for more "lyrical" stances, both in fieldwork instruments, data analysis, and writing on international migration topics.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Migration scholars are increasingly attentive to human agency in global mobility processes, leading to a growing interest in ‘migratory imaginations’. There is an unfortunate tendency in the discipline, however, to emphasise the perceptual dimension of the imagination at the expense of its action-oriented one. This hinders the imagination's conceptual and empirical potentials, not least where the particularly ‘active’ imaginations of immigrants are concerned. We know, for instance, that migrants are likely to develop multiple place affiliations and cultural identifications by virtue of their exposure to several environments. Yet little is known about the sociocognitive frameworks that foster these multipolar orientations. Im.magine addresses this gap by treating international migration experience as an ‘extreme life event’ that expands the imagination through combined material and symbolic processes. On a theoretical level, Im.magine underscores the crucial elements of relational and reflexive thinking, which are visible in foundational sociological and geographical conceptions of the imagination, yet frequently overlooked in research on migration-related imaginations. It offers an empirical application of reflexive imaginations by means of comparative case studies of North Africans living in Montréal, Canada, and Marseille, France. Through a triangulated use of official and literary discourse as well as first-person oral, visual, sensory, and digital migration narratives, it will help open up the ‘black box’ of immigrant imaginations. Specifically, by casting migrant biographies onto multiscalar and inter-connected spatio-temporal frames, the project will advance our understanding of complex place affiliations and identifications, thus illuminating the very real impacts of the imagination on mobility processes.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
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Data: CORDIS, © European Union