Migration and Identity through Creative Writing: StOries: Strangers to Ourselves

Alka Kumar · Anna Triandafyllidou

2023 urr. · Springer Nature

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This open access book brings together storytelling and self-narrative, creative writing and narrative enquiry to explore a variety of topics in migration from an experiential lens. The volume is hybrid and multi-genre as it contains both scholarly chapters grounded in academic perspectives, as well as personal essays and creative non-fiction. In addition to critical reflections on key migration topics and concepts – like, identity and diversity, integration and agency, transnationalism and return – the scholarly chapters also propose a particular methodology for ‘workshopping’ migration narratives, and writing about (personal) lived experiences through iterations of scientific reflection, narrative enquiry, and creative imagination. The book explores the potential of a new conceptual paradigm and methodological process to learn more, and also `differently,’ about the migration experience. Finally, this volume asks a bigger question too – how do we define the boundaries of research; is it possible to entirely separate the spatial, temporal and methodological parameters in which projects are developed and pursued; and how can the specifics of these multiple contexts contribute to shaping the knowledge being produced?

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Alka Kumar is a Mitacs Elevate Postdoctoral Fellow at Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto, Canada. She also works in the community based and not-for-profit sector, in Toronto and in Winnipeg. With lived experience of migration of her own, Alka has been working at the intersection of migration research and practice in Canada for 15 years. Living in Toronto for several years now, Alka continues to work with immigrants, newcomers, and women in skill development, career transition counseling, and capacity-building; she contributes in a research and advisory role to national and international projects with the Coalition for Manitoba Cultural Communities for Families (CMCCF), developing and implementing projects that focus on creating dialogue, and leadership development for well-being, and peace for families in cultural communities; and participating in developing educational resources for newcomer youth mental health. She freelances as an independent consultant, conducting research and workshop facilitation, teaching, writing blogs and op-eds, mentoring, and doing anti-racism and equity focused work.

Anna Triandafyllidou holds the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration, at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). Prior to joining TMU in August 2019, she held a Robert Schuman Chair at the Global Governance Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence, Italy. She is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies. In April 2022 the TMU team led by Anna was awarded a $98.4 million research funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund for a new interdisciplinary program on Migration Integration in the 21st Century: Bridging Divides. A sociologist by training, her research interests include the broader area of migration and asylum governance, as well as national identity and cultural and religious diversity in comparative perspective. In 2021, the University of Liège awarded Triandafyllidou a doctorate honoris causa in recognition of her contribution to migration scholarship. Her recent authored books include What is Europe (with R. Gropas, 2nd edition, Routledge, 2022); and Rethinking Migration and Return in Southeastern Europe (with E. Gemi, Routledge, 2021). Her recent journal articles have appeared in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2022), Environment and Planning A: Economy and Society (2022), Ethnicities (2022), Comparative Migration Studies (2021, 2022), International Migration (2021) and Nations and Nationalism (2020).