Art as a method. Exploring the subversive power (and risks) of creative methodologies in migration research

In recent decades, the use of creative methodologies and arts-based research in exploring migration and mobility has gradually grown. The introduction of these methods responds to the need to study the various aspects of migration as a complex phenomenon with new tools and interpretative frameworks. This need for new and creative methodologies also intersects with recent trends to overcome disciplinary boundaries and create new possibilities for engaging with a “world on the move.” Creative methodologies can thus be framed as research and inquiry tools that complement the reflexive turn in migration research. Participatory audio-visual ethnographies and documentaries, graphic novels, bottom-up mappings, collective sound recordings, and performances are only some examples of how social sciences can explore empirical and theoretical issues linked to the complexity of contemporary migrations.
Moreover, such methodologies signify a major shift in reflecting on knowledge production both within and outside academia. They help to re-envisage the relations between research, action, and social change, while trying to answer specific contemporary challenges as new forms of racism and social injustice are emerging. These approaches open space for different speakers and various forms of knowledge, and encourage experimental, interdisciplinary, and collaborative work through artistic methods. They can be conceived as collective procedures and spaces where participants aim to understand and improve specific mobility practices, by expanding the community of inquiry and interpretation and intervening in contexts of social injustice and exclusion. They can even encourage new forms of socialities and support critical reflections by the participants. Through direct engagement with artists and activists, creative methodologies also allow the production of new knowledge, enabling the participation of various stakeholders in the academic field and of academics in diverse social spaces. They favour the cross-fertilisation between methods, competencies, and disciplines, and redefine the scope of research’s impacts and outcomes.
Drawing on these premises, this workshop focuses on the methodological challenges of various research projects which have engaged with art as a method. It aims to explore how creative approaches reveal conflicting values, power relations, subjectivities, and meaning-making practices that reflect contingency and multiplicity of mobile practices and experiences. In the form of an interactive pitch, the participants of the workshop will talk about how they experimented with new methods in social research on migration, the methodological challenges they faced, and the empirical approaches they adopted to create a collaborative and caring research environment.