The aim of the article was to analyse the changing motives for migration of selected collocutors throughout their life-courses. Regarding family migration it was found, for example, that statistical models of migration fail to take into account the diversification of contemporary family life and problematically link the rights of a migrant spouse to his/her partner. Furthermore, so-called 'economic migrants' were found to have various motives for migration that were often not framed in economic terms. It could be that such migration is a response to increasing restrictiveness of contemporary migration policies contributing to increasing insecurity and vulnerability of third-country nationals in the EU. It was argued that official statistical categorisations of migration render invisible migrants' actual lived experience.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32167981
In contemporary social science research, researchers largely perceive ethnic groups as a result of a process of boundary making rather than a taken for granted part of our world. However, in methodological terms, researchers often still see ethnicity as imposed on the research process rather than as constructed throughout it. Using personal experience from several research projects, the author first presents the role of ethnic belonging in her research. She then identifies other factors as crucial in negotiating insider/outsider status in the ‘field’. The author shows that the researcher’s insider/outsider status is not a fixed category, but is rather negotiated in the research process, depending on the researcher’s multiple and shifting positionalities. Drawing on the critique of methodological nationalism and on the theories of transnationalism in the social sciences and the humanities, she discusses the recent transformations of research designs in qualitative migration research and argues for more de-ethnicised research on migration. On this basis, she calls for migration research beyond locally bounded research sites.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33346861
The starting point of the theoretical part of the monograph is the exploration of the role of gender for the understanding of migration processes and their different classifications. By analysing established approaches within migration and related studies, the author shows that the definition of the term migrant is a process that includes processes of inclusion as well as exclusion. By analysing migrants' life stories the author attempts to reveal the wider social context of migration which is still, despite a rise in qualitative studies of migration, a weakness of established approaches. The advantage of the research is its emphasis on the experiences and perspectives of female migrants themselves. By joining theoretical as well as epistemological elements of both migration and gender studies the text contributes to new knowledge in both fields.
COBISS.SI-ID: 249803008
This essay discusses the concept of intercultural dialogue as it is defined in the European and Slovenian documents, which refer to the campaign of the European year of intercultural dialogue in 2008, in view of some findings of the international research The Needs for Female Immigrants and Their Integration in Ageing Societies. The essay seeks to explain, whether the intercultural dialogue is a »moral compass« of the future image of the EU, or a running practice of an already effective exchange of views between the holders and/or participators of groups with various socio-cultural backgrounds.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30870573