This chapter on methodology goes behind the scenes to tell the story of the book project that led the way to this edited collection. As mentioned in the introductory chapter, a call was sent out and a competitive recruitment process employed, to invite current and recently graduated Canadian students to participate in the StOries Project: Strangers to Ourselves. Not only does this chapter make quite explicit the raw and messy process of ‘workshopping’ that helped the contributors in processing and birthing their stories to produce this edited collection, it also explores our raison d’être for doing so. Starting then, with early ideas and a core vision to help us understand the lived experience dimensions of often complex personal and intergenerational migration stories, we used a scientific and rigorous approach to grasp what it meant for this cohort of authors-a group of academics, in most cases first time creative writers- to be so positioned; and how we explored the challenges of claiming our selfhood (and our stories), using the medium of creative writing. While the project and its contributors being situated in the contemporary Canadian context of racial diversity and multiculturalism was an important aspect of this initiative, the epistemological and methodological implications have a global reach, and the migration themes we explore are likely to have resonance for readers in other parts of the world. Given this (virtual) project came into being and went through all stages of its implementation during COVID-19 times, the current pandemic is a critical component of its backdrop.

1 Our Process, and Our Objectives …

We employed a pedagogical format similar to the graduate seminar to implement our vision and our objectives, but we also challenged it through re-making it. In line with how Giroux (2021) describes pedagogy, as a ‘ moral and political practice… that presupposes discourses of critique and possibility as a part of a broader democratic project deeply implicated in addressing matters of economic and social justice and the grounds upon which life is lived and experienced,’ we too wanted, through this project, to deliberately rethink the ‘how-to’ of creating a teaching-learning environment where we could influence the production of knowledge and subjectivities, situated as they always are within a variety of sets of social relations. Among other strategies to achieve this-with the objective of democratising by not prioritising academic knowledge alone; and for the teaching component of this process, we included a range of educational resources that anyone situated in mainstream and popular culture contexts would also find intellectually engaging and emotionally stimulating, as well as easy to access. Among mandatory course-work readings then, in addition to academic essays, news and feature stories from a variety of media sources were included, including from social media; as well as audio-visual materials like Ted Talks, podcasts, and relevant YouTube discussions, especially interviews and panels with writers who work with personal writing forms like memoir and creative non-fiction, as well as with editors. We employed these materials to initiate brainstorm sessions, respond to writing prompts, and to create momentum for collective reflections, generating ideas and creative writing tasks in a virtual classroom setting.

More detailed discussion on some relevant specifics follows in this chapter and in others as some of the methodological approaches we used are described, and we show how our approaches emerged from the pedagogical ideology we pursued. The discussions we had were instrumental in creating a respectful environment for engaged and difficult personal conversations about migration that we had aspired to start in a group setting. This outcome, which in turn helped surface and initiate several stories in this collection, was closely aligned with our proposed research methodology, grounded as it was in narrative inquiry, personal storytelling and self-narrative. For instance, activities like collective reflection emerged from the need to use the theoretical lens and methodological approach of reflexive practice, collaboration and peer-to-peer learning (see, for instance, Lake (2015) and Weatherall (2019). Employing such strategies created space for participants to explore techniques like sensory memory, and pursue the potential of multi-generational storytelling to surface missing moments from their past, to finally tell many of their concealed family stories. This was done by some contributors using research-based conversations with family members, or visual methods like photography or documentary filmmaking, and through utilising other arts-based strategies; including seeking out archival family materials, journal entries, and meaningful personal artefacts to excavate their own past; and using storytelling to re-visit their relationships with loved ones and with homes left behind. Several stories that emerged from these experiences are part of this collection, while some of these raw experiences that contributors went through, while processing their thoughts and emotions, are part of the reflections included in Chap. 23, ‘Becoming through Story.’

Our intention was to explore the potential of the above conceptual paradigm and methodological process to learn more, and also ‘differently,’ about the migration experience. As the process we followed was innovative and experimental, we did not know at the start, what this experience would feel like, or where such a method of creating knowledge about migration would lead us, but the objective was to centre lived experience and narrative inquiry, creative writing and autoethnography as ways for amplifying bottom-up discourses and personal voice.

2 Centering Methodology, Connecting the Dots Through Story

This chapter is, in a sense, the centerpiece of the anthology based on three significant factors: One: our objective in this discussion is to articulate the ‘how’ this anthology came to be, namely, the ‘storying’ of the vision we started with, leading to the process, and the actual journey that was instrumental in bringing forth this book. As we discovered during this trajectory of moving through these life stages, acts of ‘storying’ are hardly straightforward as competing realities can emerge for story owners as narrative anchors to the story that wants to be told. This is especially true where memory-work is concerned, and as Gubrium (Gubrium & Holstein, 2001) observe when describing the relationship between experience and narrative, that the local spheres of meaning become an important part of the specific mediating conditions that shape the story.

The chapters in this collection point then to the milestones that we encountered, starting with the collective experience of the StOries Project initiative that all contributors to this volume participated in. For a detailed discussion on this collaborative experience, see below. The other significant aspect was the one-on-one mentoring, including in many cases, peer-feedback that was given and received mutually; and these learning and writing strategies supported the authors in finalising their stories. Another important milestone on this journey was the day-long workshop where the internationally acclaimed Canadian writer M G Vassanji joined this group to share his writing journey, process and his insights on migration experiences and topics- to engage project participants, now authors, who have contributed their stories to this edited collection. Other milestones came about serendipitously as an outcome of our process that we had no way of anticipating; and these were the relationships that developed among and between project members that led to the creation of an environment that the group experienced as safe, and where difficult reciprocal conversations could take place. For many contributors, this led to therapeutic healing when they experienced loss of loved ones, parents and other family members, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic or otherwise. It was indeed a generative work in progress, and new ideas emerged for topics that we saw as aligned that later have become additional chapters in the collection. Together, all these became stepping stones that lighted the way forward, leading us to achieving not only the objectives we had envisioned, but also others we had not imagined. Many of these unexpected outcomes of our process could be categorised as its relational elements and they contributed to our understanding of this process as one that helped create spaces where emotional safety led to fostering of trusting relationships and community building among contributors, leading to healing-in many cases, from deeply embedded migration traumas. Chapter 23, a kind of conclusion to this collection, discusses some of these outcomes while also teasing out the tensions and intellectual dilemmas this gave rise to, given this project was initiated and pursued in a context where we were also bridging academic and non-academic divides.

Two, it makes an argument for the rationale- for our ‘why’-so, why, in the first place, did we feel the compulsion to explore topics like the lived experience of race and multiculturalism, intersectionality and solidarity (and others) in the context of living in Canada today. What current methodological gaps did we perceive in the migration field that led us to define our overall purpose, pushing us to pursue and implement such a hands-on teaching-training-writing project; and what did we, in our role as interdisciplinary academics and researchers, aim to contribute to the migration field by pursuing such a journey?

Three, we ask and we explore, how this workshopping process of the pilot StOries project, as well as all the discussions and stories that have emanated from it, help us see more clearly the potential of exploring alternative methodological approaches in qualitative enquiry to study migration: focusing it as we have, on lived experience and narrative practice, creative writing and autoethnography? Shifting between the voice of the researcher and the protagonist, we seek to deepen our self-reflexivity, offering the perspective of both the observer and the observed (see also Kaplani’s sociologist and novelist gaze on his short border handbook (Kaplani, 2009). Our own ‘lived experience’ of participating in this project and contributing our stories to it, both verbally and in literary and creative genres, has demonstrated that such engaged approaches in migration research have great potential locked in them. Our experience also makes evident that these approaches, and processes that emerge from such perspectives, are indeed resonant, innovative and value-added, and should be expanded. Not only do these alternative theoretical and methodological frameworks help us build knowledge ‘differently,’ but they also provide bottom-up ways to tell and begin hearing silent and missing migration stories.

Finally, as the stories in this collection demonstrate, if such experimental projects in migration garner interest from students, early-stage researchers and academics searching for new areas and methods of exploration in this field, pioneering work in cross disciplinary fields could be brought in conversation with each other, and insights from such contributions would help bring new ways of seeing and thinking to migration studies; and of ‘knowing’ about the migration journey more from the perspective of individuals who have experienced it. For instance, what Khosravi (2007) describes is pertinent here; in what he terms as his border biography-an autoethnographic narrative of the time when, after finishing high school, he was called on to military service during the Iran-Iraq war. In line with the way Reed-Danahay (1997) describes self-narrative as a form that places the self within a social context; or as Pratt (1992) terms it, as an alternative form of meaning different from the dominant discourse, in Khosravi’s words, he shares his journey of the night he became ‘illegal,’ but this is not just his personal story but also ‘a narrative of the polysemic nature of borders, border politics, rituals and performances of border-crossing…(the story of the) 909 kilometre border with Pakistan and the 936 kilometre border with Afghanistan, as one of the most profitable (place) for smugglers, traffickers, and corrupt border guards in the world (322).’

3 Blurring a Few Lines, Exploring New Approaches for ‘Knowing’

Our experience also made evident that pedagogical initiatives similar to the StOries Project could pave the way for creating learning, research and training environments in the field that focus on exploring alternative ways of knowledge production. Further, this manner of blurring the lines between research, teaching, and practice in migration highlights, in a way, that the feedback loop is much needed, between these forms and processes of producing and disseminating knowledge. Based on our collective experiential learning experience in the last few months, we argue that new possibilities can emerge through de-silo-ing these so far segregated entities- teaching, research and practice- as they relate to migration, to create a reconceptualising framework for ‘knowing’ more about the lived experience of migration transitions.

Murris (2021), and other contributors-among them, Taylor and Kuby- in an exploration of feminist, new materialist, posthumanist and postqualitative (FNMPHPQ) approaches, explore ideas and forms of ‘knowing’ in multiple disciplinary contexts; in their discussions, they reimagine how such re-conceptualizations enable the rethinking of ontologies, epistemologies and ethics. They ask how such a project, of grounding forms of ‘knowledge-making’ in FNMPHPQ approaches, is aimed at, (or can achieve) ‘paradigiming,’ i.e., disrupting ways of thinking of paradigms as we usually do, as tidy separate boxes that we need to fit into, but rather exploring how the tensions between paradigms can produce new ways of thinking, knowing and doing. They also ask why these new approaches matter, and in what ways these rearticulations have the potential to lead to new implications for re-tooling methodology, methods, research design, and researcher positionality.

In the case of migration studies, this is even more resonant (and needed), given a majority of individuals who work in the field- taking on roles as researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and in other support capacities- are motivated to select this field professionally due to their personal experience of mobility and migration transitions; they believe, quite rightly, that they understand in-depth the challenges and issues immigrants, refugees and newcomers face. Also, this work for many comes from a personal place of passion and commitment, advocacy and social justice ideologies; arising from the desire for making a difference, and for impacting transformative change. Besides, we know well that, both in Canada and globally too, not everyone who studies migration has interest or aspirations to work in the academic or research sectors. It is important to also add a side note here that for many individuals aspiring to situate their work in the academic sector, lack of opportunities and other complex structural barriers exist. These challenges often lead them to experience these spaces as inaccessible, precarious, or low-paying, and this causes many to change sectors or leave the field completely to seek other more sustainable areas of work (although the context is not exactly the same, there are significant similarities between the above discussion and employment conditions prevalent in the settlement sector; and it is a well-known fact that access to permanent status in academia is even more difficult. For aligned discussions about precarity, uncertainty and lack of career mobility for employees who work in settlement and integration [often immigrants and newcomers, refugees and women of colour], see Turegun (2013), and Bauder and Jayaraman (2014).

Exploratory projects in migration, similar to the StOries Project, could then be a practical and engaged way to bridge the so far silo-ed worlds of teaching, research and practice in this field. This would also help disrupt power dynamics that create hierarchies between academics, researchers and practitioners, leading to democratising and leveling the playing field through expanding partnerships that value collaboration and co-creation between diverse stakeholders who work across sectors in the fields of migration, settlement, and integration. Given the global numbers of migratory populations currently on the move, and growing, based on international scenarios-from refugee movements to environmental disaster-related mobility and the consistent flow of economic migrants, and international students-the importance of this sector cannot be underestimated. As per the latest available statistics (MPI, 2022), if the number of global migrants-280.6 million in 2020, representing close to 4 percent of the world’s 7.8 billion people- were to form their own country, it would be the fourth most populous country in the world in 2020, after China, India, and the United States. Hence, new, innovative and additional ways to understand these experiences and stories of movements, as well as the needs, challenges, and opportunities that arise on account of such unprecedented transnational mobility, will add more depth to our understanding of migration.

4 Workshopping a Book Project, Using a Research Lens

Although this is not a conventional research project leading to a book; but looking back, and wearing (my) researcher hat, I do retrospectively see a series of research questions that guided us in the envisioning, planning and developing the project, and this collection. I would frame these as follows: how can research methods grounded in lived experience and storytelling- that consider narrative practice, creative writing, and autoethnography as alternative methods of qualitative enquiry- shine a light on the migration experience? How might we articulate the raison d’être for putting these methods front and centre in migration practice, for producing knowledge about the (migration) experience?

Further, as the project proceeded, the following sub-questions began to also emerge: is such an approach a methodological gap in migration studies so far, and if such perspectives and frameworks were used more widely, what additional insights might they contribute to the study of migration? Following from this pilot project, viewing it as a case study and a model, what might the potential be of strategies involving ‘workshopping’ and storytelling in the migration field as an ‘alternative research process’ to address current absences and silences that are too complex to reach using conventional research methods? How does this approach, and a process that stems from it, contribute ‘differently’ to knowledge production in migration?

Finally, we also ask a bigger question in presenting this innovative and experimental approach-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? For instance, as Sjöberg and D’Onofrio (2020) note regarding the conditions under which anthropological research is being done in the present, the research field has ceased to be a geographically contained and a temporally bounded space in the strict sense. Accelerations in this way of thinking about research have been ongoing pre-COVID-19, but the pandemic has further accentuated many experiential realities, including helping us to reimagine a completely new dynamics within the relational. As Barad (2007, p. 466) expresses it, (cited in Murris, p. 14), naming the pandemic not an “abstraction” but rather “an entangled state that reworks notions of contiguity and identity… (not just touching) us here and there, or just offering us individual moments of reflection, but rather (getting) inside our skin and (reworking ontologically) who we are.” Is it then not logical that these seismic shifts that compel us to live and ‘ be’ different in a hyper mobile transnational world will lead us to pursue ‘different’ heuristic processes, and these will shape insights about migration that are more fluid, emergent and ongoing? Certainly, the above discussion is rooted in approaches that centre resistance and theoretical frameworks that go against the grain, using counter-storytelling to disrupt dominant narratives.

5 Exploring Some in-Between Spaces, the Shape of Things to Come

As previously noted, in the StOries Project, the participants-all researchers who share a common positionality through being graduate students (or recently graduated) at a Canadian university-turn the lens upon themselves. They use the standpoint of self-representation and storytelling, to examine- authentically and deeply- the (selfie) picture that emerges from such a self-construction and self-configuration of their selves, shining a light on their understanding of their own experiences of migration, be they personal and immediate; or deeply buried in the histories, psyches, and stories of their families and of their past homes where these multigenerational narratives originated.

Given the interest and stakes civil society actors at large have in migration related contexts and issues- from all perspectives, economic, sociological, and political- the hybrid nature of this collection has the potential to appeal to a range of players in the migration field. Emigrants and immigrants, as well as individuals who work in settlement agencies and community organizations, the educational sector, employers and businesses, as well as policy makers are likely to find the ‘lived experience’ lens in this collection not only innovative and refreshing but also intellectually engaging and emotionally resonant. Further, we hope that readers across the spectrum will also find the experiential narratives showcased here as relevant in contributing new insights in relation to the overall experience of migration and settlement, integration and return (and other migration tropes); and that they will add new dimensions and nuances to our current understanding of migration trajectories, themes, and motifs.

Although all stories in the collection are authored by writers who currently reside in Canada, their backgrounds and their profiles vary greatly; and the personal experiences they recount in their stories are transnational, often being inter-generational too. They communicate a kaleidoscopic sense of the migration experience with a feel that is both international and multi-layered. This is obvious when we note that the personal narratives that live between the covers of this collection-to be found in chapters three to twenty-two are situated in spatial contexts that range from Iran to Brazil, Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica, to many countries in Asia- like China, Taiwan, India- to Turkey and Italy, and of course Canada. Avoiding though the trap of ‘methodological nationalism,’ we do not want to present these stories as ‘an Italian origin Canadian’ or a ‘Brazilian migrant in Ontario’. We rather emphasise their complex trajectories and biographies and seek to highlight the ways in which these emerge through their own narratives and from workshop-writing.

Memory, involving travels into landscapes of the mind, the heart, and the past are some common denominators several stories share. Some essays and stories are analytical, others meditative and reflective; above all, mostly they are told from personal standpoints but they go beyond being the story of the individual alone, becoming often starting points to explore their relationships and their interconnections with the societal and the ideological, the political and the historical. In doing so, these narratives inhabit the creative spaces between autobiography and autoethnography, and some of the nitty gritty of these approaches will be discussed in later sections of this chapter.

In terms of the temporal realms these stories inhabit, the author-protagonists often seamlessly travel between generations and histories of homes past and present; and they use sensory memory as one of the important tools to re-visit (and re-construct) their relationships with loved ones, and with their ‘homeland.’ The idea of home, in some shape or form, is a powerful and pervasive presence in most stories; and these writings also re-create-using rich description-emotional states of loss, belonging, and un-belonging through navigating an individual’s own intersectional identity sites, as located not only in their deep longings, but also shaped by their complex everyday environments. This makes it easier to see how belonging is located simultaneously both in the past and the present.

What follows in the second section of this introduction are some insights about more recently developed migration tropes gleaned from research studies found relevant in the context of substantive migration themes the stories in this collection highlight. The studies cited below are grounded in a narrative inquiry framework. They also align with methods and strategies we used to develop and present our experiences and our standpoints in our stories, using creative writing formats to amplify our voices. Our objective was to employ expressive and literary writing genres to tell personal stories of migration, giving voice to dilemmas and contradictions, often leading to highlighting complex societal issues, relevant in Canada and globally. The concluding section of the introduction uses the takeaways, both from the project process and also from the stories in the collection, to show the relevance of these emergent methodological directions as a way to decentre and decolonise migration research and practice.

6 Setting the Methodological Stage, Using a Storying Approach

Using a critical pedagogy approach, based in radical educational politics and pioneered by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) and subsequently, into the 1970s, we used teaching-facilitation practices grounded in reflexive practice and peer learning for the birthing of this edited collection. Strategies were employed that encouraged experimental and iterative processes for co-creation of personal and family stories rooted in self-representation. For example, using the metaphor of a ‘braided river,’ Comer (2015) writes about the personal essay (in migration) as a literary form that communicates the experiential elements within migration as an interweaving of the external worlds that need to be (simultaneously) navigated by a migrant while they journey into the innermost recesses of themselves and their identities. Aligned with Comer, and using reflection and analysis, the authors and their stories in this collection also probe complex spaces that lie between ‘inner and outer, home and journey, experience and meaning-abstractions intrinsic to our sense of self and world’(vii). Further, from a research perspective, our objective was to explore the potential of self-narrative and storytelling to oppose dominant migrant narratives presented by researchers and media depictions.

Following on Freire who argued for education to think critically about power structures, and who encouraged educators to interrogate established practices with the objective of promoting freedom, democracy and social justice; in the process that went into creating this collection, we too valued principles of relationality and equality rather than maintaining classroom status quo hierarchies. Freire’s framework of critical pedagogy was rooted in intervention; and to do this through conceptualising education never as neutral but as always taking a stand, either on the part of dominant culture or actively critiquing it. Our working sessions alternated between being instructor led, and others being organized and led by project participants-the contributing authors of this collection. This reduced the sense of pressure and top-down power dynamics that are (often) normative in academic environments; and members felt ownership of the big group dynamics and the free-flow process, feeling engaged to create intimate spaces through group interactions with peers in their own small group, or across groups. They led sessions, and they initiated and accessed collaborative thinking, participating in other activities involving group-think and collective reflection, collaborative journaling and peer mentoring. We kept an online collaborative journal too. Weekly teaching-learning sessions- modeled on the graduate seminar format of discussion-ran over nearly six months, culminating in a writing seminar and workshop with a renowned Canadian writer of international fame, MG Vassanji.

7 Challenging Mainstream Narratives, Focusing on Self-Representation to Impact Action

Methodologically speaking, from the first stages of envisioning the StOries Project, to its implementation, and finally, to its culmination in this book, a few elements have remained constant; and these are also the core principles of this project. One of these is the impulse for counter-storytelling. The very first brainstorm session we met for, made it clear that the only way participants could tell their stories in their own words was by asserting personal voice, through using a process of contradicting many of the story versions about them that had been forever in mainstream circulation. As an example-and similar stories were reiterated by many participants- if, as a racialized female-identifying individual, someone carried an Arabic-sounding name, it was quickly assumed by ‘others,’ that they were a practising Muslim. Further, for those who perceived them so, these few external and visible signs were enough reasons to stereotype them as immigrants from certain parts of the world (even if Canada had been their only home for most of their lives); and it was assumed that these individuals followed certain cultural practices, consumed (or would not consume) specific foods and drinks.

Many upon whom these categories were imposed found such assumptions problematic as they believed them to be not only one-dimensional, but also stereotypical and offensive. They felt misunderstood and restricted by these categories thrust upon them, especially as in many cases they believed these descriptions about them were simply inaccurate; and nobody had bothered to ask them how they self-identified, or what their real story was. In fact, in the academic environment, and although they were often in a researcher role themselves, there was neither context nor safe spaces where they might narrate or lay claim on their own counter-story.

Moreover, the authors in this anthology believed that dualities, multiplicities, and paradoxes were the stuff upon which their own constructions and articulations of self would begin; and they wanted to tell their own story from a nuanced perspective that encapsulated these differentiated aspects of ‘who they are.’ See Vassanji’s What you are: Stories (Vassanji, 2021), a collection that uses story-ing to enter into complex intersectional worlds of identity constructions and representations, with the ‘immigrant’ individual or the family always at the centre.

As an example, and making a similar case for self-representation in a bid to challenge dominant media portrayals of migrants and refugees-with the objective of changing the grand narrative- Ruzic (2021) proposes a counter-visual approach where fragmented, subjective, and personal migrant stories are foregrounded. The rationale provided for this is the need to challenge media narratives about refugees that present a complex and unsettling paradox; their depictions in popular culture, on the one hand, ‘giving’ visibility to their struggles in an en masse kind of way that is stereotypical and monolithic, for instance, refugees making unsafe passages across the oceans-hungry and desperate, appearing threatening or a burden to host societies, and being queue jumpers. On the other hand, as these mass images fail to individualise and personalize-even when they shape a response that is humanitarian and human rights based-Ruzic argues that their impact can dissipate without creating real affect. In a similar vien, Slovic (2007) observes too, “If I look at the mass, I will never act: Psychic numbing and genocide present us with research and statistics on human emotional response…(and) as the psychophysical research indicates, constant increases in the magnitude of a stimulus typically evoke smaller and smaller changes in response.”

The point then is that such homogenising representations about refugees as a broad category-including pervasive visual images that are often faceless- can then end up creating stereotypical grand narratives that de-personalise rather than humanize them as individuals, thus carrying the danger of rendering a generalised population of individuals invisible.

The multiplicity of voices that expand the reader’s understanding of complicated grey areas in the migration experience- with the spaces and cracks in-between – are easier to access through creative practice and literary writing because the experiential canvas has more possibility to become vast and luminous in such a medium. Intersectionality theory, as developed by Crenshaw (1989; 2017) -who in turn drew upon black feminist and legal theorists’ discussions of multi-layered oppressions to come up with it- was one of the key theoretical frameworks we used for our discussions. While being extremely useful as a feminist theoretical approach relevant for academic discussion, we found it applicable not only for understanding our lived experiences of marginalisation, social exclusion, and discrimination but rather more for individuals to use as an ‘agentic’ tool to see how it felt ‘being boxed’ by pre-assigned categorisations. It also became a way to collectively share experiences of how such perceptions (on the part of others) had negatively impacted the self-perceptions of most individuals in the group (and in many cases, their self-esteem). It was in fact, from such a place of courageous determination that as story-owners, authors contributing to this collection decided to tell the ‘actual’ ‘what you are’ story from their own perspectives; and their personal voice became for them a political tool of resistance. Their telling of their own stories also became a pathway to own their counter-stories, and claim such self-constructions as a way to push back against any labels that had been assigned to us by others.

In the academic study of migration, since the predominant approaches have been sociological, (or situated primarily in social science oriented disciplinary contexts), there has so far been little interaction with literary studies, or with migration literatures, diasporic and immigrant writing; and with postcolonial critical approaches. King et al. (1995) note that while there are commonalities between academic literature in migration studies and literary writing on migration, when it comes to exploration of themes, motifs and tropes-in the case of the former, the focus is more on societal forces and underlying structures that impact immigrant movements, like political, economic, social-rather than the individual as an entity, or their experiential realities.

As the review and analysis of literary writing on migration by Burge (2020) demonstrates, this significant absence can be addressed by literature, given literary accounts centre individual experience and its expression; King et al. arguing that “literary accounts focus in a very direct and penetrating way on issues such as place perception, landscape symbolism, senses of displacement and transformation, communities lost and created afresh, exploitation, nostalgia, attitudes towards return, family relationships, self-denial and self-discovery, and many more.” (x).

Further, postcolonial critical approaches have directly delved into issues of critique in relation to dominant narratives, especially in the context of representations of refugees and asylum seekers. While this is a diverse and fertile field of ongoing cross disciplinary inquiry, Edward Said, a leading literary critic, and father of postcolonial and post-structuralist thought, in Orientalism (1978), theorised the relationship between power and knowledge, deconstructing the assumed supremacy of the west over an orient seen as (italics mine) inferior. Other postcolonial theorists, Homi Bhaba, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak among many others, have since created well-established frameworks for resistance, for ‘writing back to the (colonial) empire,’ while also shaping pathways in the discourse that construct an ‘us and them’ binary that (constructs) and excludes ‘the other.’

8 Inversions and Disruptions in Our Experiential Journey, Leading to Paradigm Shifts

Creating inversions and causing disruptions was part of the process of the making of this edited collection. We focused on making the private public; and this was one of the inversions that helped many of us in surfacing our memories, leading us to excavate challenging moments from the past, to claim space in the present moment but on our own terms. This also meant making somewhat explicit the messiness that is the raw material and the underside of whatever looks outwardly shiny and finished, through recording and documenting the incremental journey of this project that has led us to this stage of culmination. One of the ways to achieve this is to share the feel of the experiential journey we, its participants, walked on together, as well as the nitty gritty of processes we employed to create conversation hubs every week where we could hold space for each other, and feel empowered and free to speak our truth.

For instance, during the six months of workshopping substantive migration-focused themes, as a group we also navigated topics related to the craft of writing as well as the purposes and objectives we wanted to achieve through employing self-narrative techniques to tell our untold stories. Such a ‘storytelling’ focus in the methods employed, that helped contributors in the journey to get to our final chapters, was relevant as these stories were often those most important to us, maybe also the most challenging to tell. We collaboratively reflected and journaled about why in the first place we wanted to write, and who we wanted to write for; or what kind of readers did we imagine would read what we wrote, and why did we-as individuals and as a collective- find the process of writing enticing. Many offered that they had always wanted to write; others shared that they were good writers in their first language and it was the migration transition-and the spaces that opened up between their first language and English, their second language, that had caused their self-expression to freeze up, often due to the plummeting of self-confidence and self-esteem; and now they felt like they were falling through the cracks, incapable of writing creatively in any of the languages they knew. For others still, those bilingual or multilingual, writing in English as a second or additional language offered a sense of freedom to write about their experiences in ways that may have been prohibited or imprecise in their ‘other’ language(s).

As members of a kind of collective space, we did spontaneous free writing on a regular basis in response to writing prompts, with a timer set for 6–7 mins. Some examples of writing prompts we used were:

Have you ever wondered…When I saw those familiar streets…My greatest strength is…

When it rains, I feel…If I allow myself to think…

I’m a really respectful person but… For me writing is…I love writing because…

On my walk last night, I saw that beautiful… I wish I could write everyday…

These brief writing exercises turned out for writers to be pockets of time that they experienced as productive in the thoughtfulness-space they inspired. Most individuals experienced these exercises as interesting and surprising ways to get into a stream of consciousness kind of writing where although there was pressure created by the timer but it was relaxing as nobody else was going to read this raw overflow of spontaneous emotion, or powerful thought. If they wanted to share what they had written, with their peers in the larger group, they were welcome to do so. Many did, and even sharing how the process felt for them-of engaging in these activities with the group-felt inspiring for others; and as these prompts enabled the writers to delve into hidden spaces within themselves, often without self-consciousness or self-censorship, some of the ideas for final stories or their pandemic writing emerged from the spontaneous vignettes they wrote. Contributors to the collection were encouraged to develop regular writing habits, and reflection prompts they could use in free pockets of time were provided as home tasks.

A few topics we used are noted below: recounting a story associated with our name, the history and the meaning of the name if it was a word with a meaning, or any connection their name may carry to their family, and what emotional resonances, if any, did our name evoke in us; recalling a key memory from childhood that still lingers; vividly describing a place where you played as a child-was there a swing, a tree, were other children playing, describe them too, were you happy or sad, and what did the remembering of that experiencing now feel like; a time when you were fearful, describing the feeling, the situation, the trigger; your participation in a racist incident, either if someone displayed racist behaviour towards you, or when you were complicit in a racist act, either as a perpetrator or a bystander. These are just a few examples to communicate a sense (and flavour) of the collective journey we experienced during this first phase of the project.

The approach throughout was envisioned, and implemented, as exploratory and evolving, provisional and emergent; most significantly, it was based on a responsiveness principle so that it was important that each of the project’s segments proceeded and flowed into the next stage, and that we could ensure that all along the way individuals felt ready and supported to delve into the difficult emotional terrain of memory and nostalgia, storytelling and self-assertions. In that sense, since this was the first iteration of its kind that had been initiated at our centre- and even elsewhere, we had not come across similar examples that brought the particular muti-elements together as this project did- there was a distinct experimental feel to this journey.

Moving from margin to centre, to co-create reflexive spaces to ‘be ourselves’ in, was a kind of reversal we achieved, and part of this was also about making explicit the messiness at the heart of research, usually peripheral to the main story. Both the research process and the space it created evolved as we inhabited it together. Our being together in this-what became for many a passion project-and through sharing personal anecdotes and difficult stories, we were creating conversation spaces that felt respectful to ourselves and to each other. Built by us in collaboration- all of us academics and researchers-it was jointly owned by us; and this place also felt strangely different as here was somewhere we could be truly ‘ourselves,’ a feeling so far not experienced by any of us in the academic environment that we knew so well. We found that we could more easily show up in this space in our fullness, as our holistic authentic selves- personal and professional rolled into one.

As a group we began to feel a kind of strength in our collective vulnerability, feeling enabled to participate in engaged conversations about experiences of migration and of living in Canada, and write about these-for some, being newcomers, and others as the second generation born and raised here; still others, being a part of the 1.5, or as first-generation immigrants. This process of sharing and group-think was a place to co-create that helped many of us remember and surface pieces of our missing memories; and the momentum built by these discussions led many of us to pursue research into stories of family, and of our relationships, with homes past and present, and with loved ones, now passed, or living in far off parts of the world. Encouraged by the sharing, and using strategies for reflection and writing prompts, we were able to find common ground as well as validation from each other. This made us feel further affirmed and empowered to process our personal stories, excavate them using a kind of stream of consciousness form of journaling, and other expressive creative writing forms to explore deeper connections between who we are; the societal issues we felt impacted by; and the bigger context of the world we were living in. These contexts we were situated in were often shaped by discourses of migration and integration, racism and transnationalism, and they also carried simultaneous intonations of the past and the present that felt immediate and passionate for many, being close as they felt to our lived realities.

Needless to add, all this while, as we participated in this project workshops and built brick-by-brick our self-narrative stories through going deep into the recesses of who we are, the COVID-19 pandemic was raging full steam around and within us. The realities being exposed around us were inequities and systemic fragilities; highlighted and exacerbated, these vulnerabilities disproportionately impacted racialized groups, immigrants and refugees, newcomers and women, added complex new layers to our experiences, our conversations, and also to our understanding of ourselves and our writings. Chapter 23 in this collection delves into the details of this broader context that was the backdrop of the StOries Project; it is both a compilation and an analysis of pandemic times and themes provided by the editors, Ari and Atar; and individual submissions by the authors are written in a variety of narrative styles, from stream-of consciousness journal entries, arts-based and autoethnographic analytic vignettes.

The last chapter in this collection, Damiano’s “Becoming through Story,”-although a chapter by itself, is also a kind of continuation of this chapter as it houses the behind-the-scenes processes, and in some cases, ‘raw’ material that for many contributors shaped their final stories. The introduction to that chapter provides an overview that analytically situates this material in the context of the methodological frame of this anthology while it also provides a rationale that highlights the theoretical significance of its positioning in this work. Demonstrative of a paradigmatic shift, it brings to the centre of the discourse the unfinished notes in the margins that help recount the methodological journey of this book project by not only taking the reader backstage but by shedding a light on the underpinnings of our heuristic and methodological approaches. It does this by considering our views of knowledge and the ways it can be created in relation to migration and storytelling. The purpose of the chapter, originally conceived as a collection of ‘field notes’ of the story-writing process, is about our shifting concern with belonging, to one about the role of story in ‘becoming,’ especially in the context of migration.

As mentioned previously in the introductory section, this chapter also shares with the final chapter, submissions from contributors, including journal entries, individual and collective notes and reflections- in some cases visualizations- to curate that chapter. Narrative analysis is provided by the chapter editor, linking these artefacts to an overview of research methods used throughout the life cycle of this project. The objective is to help the readers simultaneously experience several stages of this evolving journey while they read not only the contributions that emerged from it but also some of the additional evidence of ‘truth-telling’ processes that produced these writings.

9 Qualitative Research and Truth Telling, Learning from Indigenous Research Methodologies

Speaking of ‘truth-telling,’ when we examine conventional non-positivist qualitative research processes, the emphasis is on premises of authenticity and credibility, the objective being trustworthiness in data gathering. Tuckett (2005) maps strategies for attaining rigour, relying on Guba and Lincoln’s trustworthiness criterion, to discuss research modalities like triangulation, researcher as instrument, and field notes and personal journals, as aimed at getting as close to the ‘truth’ of experience as possible. When we re-examine the ‘process’ leading up to the creation of this collection, and we assess how closely it followed the above ‘trustworthiness’ criteria, we note close similarities but also a paradigmatic reversal. When conducting qualitative research, the researcher broadly employs techniques like interviews, focus groups, life-history methods, including participatory research methods, to explore and excavate participant stories. Applying analytical tools, this data is studied and the findings used to arrive at conclusions. In the most essential and central sense, the objective of the StOries Project: Strangers to Ourselves- the project and the collection- is not so different.

Guba and Lincoln also emphasize the need for social science research to be emancipated from hearing only the voices of Western Europe, as well as from generations of silence, and seeing the world in one colour (Guba & Lincoln, 2005, p. 212). Further, Chilisa (2012) makes a similar argument to note the disconnections these predominantly western ways of knowing create – from multiple relations we have with our communities, including with the non-human world. How then can we create spaces of inquiry that centre decolonial discourses when colonialism is ongoing?

It could be argued that indigenous research methodologies are not as prevalent or being employed in other parts of the world to the same extent as they are in Canada, given the history of colonization of indigenous peoples in Canada, as well as the pervasiveness of structural inequities that marginalise these groups in present time. Further, the stories and testimonies provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (conducted from 2008- to its conclusion in 2015) provided opportunities for the documenting of this history, impact, and legacy of the residential school system. This has created visibility in the mainstream, both in Canada and internationally, around historical wrongs perpetrated against indigenous populations, as well as resistance and calls to action in which everyone can participate to redress these in the present.

Given this collection, and the StOries Project that led to it, are both situated in the Canadian context, the alignment that indigenous research methods share with this migration-focused project appears natural and organic as storywork and counternarrative are foregrounded in both; and possibilities are abundant to explore research methods that can help researchers, educators and practitioners to conceptualise frameworks for ‘knowing differently.’ The objective of the following discussion is to highlight the close relevance and conceptual alignment of indigenous research methodologies with postcolonial research approaches.

Wilson’s (2008) discussion, articulating research as ceremony, is relevant here. As a researcher, to understand his own work and methods as an indigenous researcher, Wilson finds that creating his own unique pathway to ‘knowing’ must happen firstly by being fully cognisant of the tradition he is currently situated in- for instance, the well-travelled path already out there- and engaging with it. The next step, the discussion suggests, is for the researcher to come to one’s own reckoning about the ‘how to’ of research that’s authentic to them, and this means becoming aware of the dissonances and the gaps with current methodologies, and understanding why things seem out of sync, and the pre-established framework does not work. In other words, Wilson’s reflections take him on a journey where he first maps the phases within western research frameworks- moving through stages, like positivist, post-positivist, critical, and constructivist- till he arrives at a place of developing indigenous research methodologies he finds relevant for ‘knowing,’ i.e., finding (and creating) emergent indigenous research frameworks that mesh authentically with his worldviews and life’s everyday practices, thereby leading to truth telling.

Smith (1999, 2021a) cites Audre Lorde, ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’; and she describes the challenge of decolonising methodologies as a set of knowledge-related critical practices that must simultaneously work with colonial and indigenous concepts of knowledge, decentering one while centering the other. In other words, the need to engage with both at the same time is key to this process as it is also about ‘confronting the Western academic canon -in its philosophy, pedagogy, ethics, organizational practices, paradigms, methodologies and discourses and, importantly, its self-generating arrogance, its origin mythologies and the stories that it tells to reinforce its hegemony’ (xii), and reimagining and bringing forth Indigenous epistemic approaches, philosophies and methodologies.

Furthermore, the case studies by practitioners in Smith’s Decolonising Methodologies demonstrate that ‘decolonising practices are not all about theory or all about action but they are really about praxis and reflexivity that is necessary for the integrity of research and of the researcher themselves.’ Some of the personal notes written by conference participants engaged in case studies where decolonising knowledge is at the centre, and shared by Linda Smith here, are telling. For instance, Martinez-Cruz and Vasquez from Nicaragua write about the ways this book helped them reframe the ‘social problem,’ reflect on our practice, and problematize our ways of seeing, feeling, thinking and writing. They go on to say that in their experiences, decolonisation as a process, situates them within ‘a multi-layered social dermis where imperial and colonial powers have impregnated politics and cultures. For instance, in Nicaragua, the left and the right, academia and intellectuals, civil society organizations and political parties, everyone with power to speak and be heard in the public sphere, portrayed the insurgents without thought and without history, reducing them to simple boxes such as ‘proletariat,’ ‘popular classes,’ ‘indigenous,’ ‘campesino,’ youth’ and ‘women.’ Those with power to classify apply old categories without questioning their own assumptions, histories, motivations and values that charge such ways of producing the social.’ Smith (2021b, xv). One of the core elements in the case studies and in Smith’s discussion is a reiteration of the foundational significance of relationships and connections, as well as reciprocity and accountability embedded in indigenous understandings of ethics and knowledge as a way to decolonise theory and praxis.

Following on Smith’s articulation, the (ideological) research framework that Jo-ann Archibald et al. (2019) propose when they discuss Indigenous Storywork as Methodology, is also relevant here. The principles and values that undergird this framework are the most important, for instance, that it should be a ‘holistic meaning-making process (that includes) understanding the impacts of colonization on people, families, and communities, (ensuring) that Indigenous values, philosophies, resilience, and resistance that are at the core of Indigenous stories help ease the pain of intergenerational trauma that may surface when sharing lived experience stories’ (p. 9). Further, situating Indigenous Storywork in the context of decolonizing methodologies, Archibald describes it as giving voice to the “lions” (7), seeing it as a way to “equip our communities not only to voice, listen to, and understand our stories with “respect, reverence, reciprocity and responsibility” (Archibald, 2008), “collectively become an Indigenous research community across tribal nations, borders, and countries…encompassing powerful forms of academic knowledge creation and production, enabling us to collectively assert a space that contests and challenges colonial research conventions” (2019).

Interrelatedness and synergy are additional core principles highlighted by Archibald; similarly, aligned with the above reasoning, it was important for us all collaborating on this project to produce this collection, to work through personal storytelling and story-ing to mine our lived experiences, grounding our self-narratives in the relational and in creative practice- to also re-imagine a theoretical and a methodological framework that would ‘fit’ with our vision, and our objectives; and these factors would then shape the outcomes, whatever these be. In line with such an evolving kind of methodology, later sections in this chapter explicate several significant theoretical disruptions and inversions that occured along the way-some deliberate and others serendipitous; and these led us to re-imagine and argue for the use of methodological approaches and research methods that have so far been little used in the migration field to study important mobility-related themes.

10 Confronting the ‘Who You Are’ Question Ethically, Approaches for Navigating Complexity and Power

The StOries Project and this edited collection are premised on exploring how we can use narrative methods (and practices of narrative inquiry) as well as creative writing as conceptual and methodological tools to expand our understanding of the lived experience of migration. Regarding the interpretive narrative approach in anthropology, Eastmond (2007) observes that it is a way to illuminate diverse aspects of human life; pointing to the relevance of largely subsumed personal narratives and life stories to explore lived experience. Not only that but these personal narratives also provide a commentary on the subjective dimension of social life and the dynamics of embedded power relations.

In our role as researchers, ethical concerns are front and centre as we must always ensure that other people’s experiences are represented with accuracy, and that justice, not harm, is done. About the authenticity of data that is gathered, we can only know what our research participants tell us, and also as researchers, we need to be reflective regarding the baggage we bring to our interpretation of what we hear. For these reasons, research outcomes vary hugely, reliant on multiple subjective factors, like the personality traits of the narrator and the listener, the quality of the communicative act and the relationship between the researcher and the researched, and the power dynamics within the research environment. Other relational elements, and intersubjectivities, are important too, and these are subtle and nuanced, for instance, considering questions like the following is also important: are we fostering non-hierarchical research relationships; have we established trust and mutual respect in the research process; and are we always being ethical?

Cederberg (2013) and Wolf-Knuts (2014) (cited in Bucitelli, 2016), argue for diversity and complexity in the interpretive approach when it comes to making sense of migration narratives as these are not only multi-faceted; they are often embedded in complicated broader social structures and power relations. Context is critical, and attention must be paid to factors that constrain interviewees. What Buccitelli (2016) observes, making a case for combining a life ‘history’ approach with oral history and narrative practice to study migration narratives, is somewhat resonant in relation to the StOries collection, especially in the case of second-generation immigrants for whom remnants from the past are ever present in the way family relationships, and cultural practices define individuals’ self -constructions of identity and how their subjectivities play out in the present. Hybridity and experiences of always living in in-between spaces are factors that end up impacting the coming- of-age experiences 1.5 and the second-generation immigrants have- be it in educational or romantic, social or political settings- and these formative times can lead to shaping their futures for always. For instance, one of the authors in this collection, James, in their intent letter, articulates the interest they have in contributing to this project process, and the collection as follows: “My experience as a 2nd-generation Canadian has been full of complexity, uncertainty, and a yearning to belong. How is it that I don’t feel entirely at home in the one place I’ve called home my entire life? Why do I feel proud of my Jamaican heritage, while simultaneously feeling ashamed for not being “Jamaican enough”? For James and for other authors too, there were struggles with continuously interrogating how their positionality and self-perception was impacting their sense of finding their community, or how these emotions were making them experience deep feelings of personal isolation, which in turn end up blocking pathways for healthy movement into the future.

In the reflective personal story James writes, and also through engaging with the experiences of peers, the author explores questions that confront and confound her deeply. It is through the process of teasing out the many pieces of the puzzle that come together for her that she creates the complex self-narrative that leads to new understanding for her. She puts the pieces back too, again through storytelling, but taking them apart has helped her to better understand where the misalignments are, and also, through experiencing the process of this journey, she is better able to learn what course-correction she might try to effect change. Perhaps, using story to simply understand things better, or pushing back against dominant narratives, was all that was needed to feel more comfortable being the person she herself believes that she is. Other contributors to the collection followed broadly similar paths to storytelling, but as you will see when you read the stories in this collection, the uniqueness of each individual’s circumstances, and also their particular ‘who you are’ going into the mix, and in a personal and creative (non-academic) style, always led to new ways of knowing and translating experience into story.

11 Self-Representations, Self-Narrative Viewed Through the Lens of Narrative Inquiry

Narrative inquiry, as described by Collins (2022), is a framework within the narrative turn that re-imagines representation, from how in the context of migration, people are seen and how we see ourselves, to who we become, and how we act in new environments where we create new lives. Referring to the ‘big story, small story’ approach of narrative inquiry to understand the experiences of African Caribbean immigrants who moved to England, experiences of navigating specific processes of transition and meaning-making in relation to their post-colonial identity are referenced here. Collins breaks down the approach as the former being about the stories told and reflected upon by the first- generation teller; and the latter about the process of next generation African Caribbean participants reflecting on what they heard and how they made sense of these stories. Multiple issues come together to complicate these representations, from histories of slavery impacting family and community lives in new contexts; issues of language and fight for survival, and these intertwined trajectories of movement leading to overrepresentation of migrant individuals in mental health and social care systems.

Self-narrative, a term described by Gergen and Gergen (1988) as ‘the social process whereby people tell stories about themselves to themselves and others’ is relevant as it has implications for methodology in the framework we’re trying to explore and articulate through this anthology. In such a context, ‘small story’ is especially relevant, as, given it relies on others’ interpretations, it is likely to contain ambivalences that lead Kim (2016) to describe it as a term used in life-story narrative work to refer to the ‘atypical, non-canonical, unpredictable, and fragmented’ (cited in Collins, 115). The use of lived experience, translated into self-narrative, if used as an additional element within the research process to further illuminate and triangulate ‘data,’ perhaps has chances of representation of migrant experience that has further reliability built into it. Although in self-narrative too, there is reliance on memory work, and that too is partial and selective, and in that sense may be viewed as unreliable; but if the story is about the self and told by the story-owner, it is also about the freedom to self- construct and pursue missing narratives that have special significance to particular individuals and communities, with them owning the act of ‘sense-making’-often a political one- in relation to the past in the context of the present. The emphasis in discourse can then shift to highlighting values like voice, agency, and choice, rather than elements like accuracy and credibility. Re-framing of this kind, in turn, has potential for positively impacting ways in which we create our new lives in homes of our own making, what Collins describes as the shift from ‘constructions of self to paying attention to the performance of self in different contexts’ (114). Certainly, while such ways of thinking about research processes carry implications that are foundational to methodological thinking, they could lead the way to re-imagining interventions in research that can enhance bottom-up approaches, thus enhancing values of inclusion and social justice, as well as disrupting power dynamics in environments where there are racisms and other forms of systemic discrimination.

12 Re-Thinking the Normative, a ‘Moving Stories’ Paradigm for Crafting New, Mobile ‘Immigrant Identities’

The common ground between narrative (or storytelling) and migratory movements is quite obvious as every individual, family, and community has a particular unique migration story; often they may also carry complex historical stories of movement from one place to another. Further, as Clandinin (2006) observes, qualitative methodology, and within that, narrative inquiry, analyses the telling or living of stories, using a range of research methods; it is the task of the researcher to interpret these stories in ways that are open and flexible. As argued by Fabos et al. (2021), narrative inquiry provides researchers the tools to interrogate not only dominant cultural and institutional frameworks, but also established migration-story tropes that lead researchers, practitioners and policy makers to make sense of migrant experiences in certain entrenched ways; these default ways of understanding lived experience often leading to certain directions in policy making.

Centering lived experience stories while amplifying the voices of individuals is an alternative way for such experiential stories to be owned by story-owners and integrated into research methodology. As an example, research projects, coming at research from approaches that include perspectives emerging from social justice, human rights and advocacy ideologies; and that employ methods grounded in co-creation and collaboration between researchers and research participants-like photo-voice and other visual co-creation methods-are increasingly being used to foreground lived experience stories and voices of refugees. In the context of migration studies, other creative and innovative projects- already most abundant in the refugee mobility and diaspora space- are participatory and co-created in collaboration with communities, and often they are arts-based. Lived experience is methodologically at the centre in research studies conducted in these contexts.

Fabos et al. focus on the refugee experience too, and they offer the ‘moving stories’ framework as a new narrative turn that disrupts the normative place-based understanding of forced migratory movements. For example, traditionally, the forced migration condition is understood as always being temporary and full of continuous movement, with refugees fleeing from conflicts and violence, always leading precarious lives marked by victimhood. A kind of nomadism exists in this discourse that flattens difference and complexity between individuals, focusing rather on refugee aspirations as a group, to return to re-emplacement solutions (and sedentarism) as a normative strategy to find solutions to the refugee cycle they are stuck in. Naming the regimen of border regulations ‘methodological nationalism,’ Wimmer and Schiller (2003)‘s term, Fabos et al. go on to show how analysis divides the world into citizens and lawful residents, grouping many other vulnerable people as temporary or undocumented, with unidirectional movements.

The ‘moving stories’ narrative paradigm they offer suggests a counter story-making migration trope with potential to shift the narrative focus to bring in fluidity, a sense of multi-sited mobility, and agency that aligns better with ongoing diasporic movements in our current time of transnationalism. These lived experience narratives can be moving, and they can simultaneously also come from an enablement-focused paradigm that can challenge the stereotypical dominant representations of refugee displacement as the single story. These narratives that disrupt established mainstream discourses (often rooted in deficit, representing refugee as being a burden on receiving societies) highlight instead the complex and resilient journeys of these individuals, with the fluidities in their identities intact, and the potential of their diasporic (and digital) networks active at a time when new modes of social organizations are shaping a world defined by global mobility quite differently. This kind of representation is contrary to the often more typical refugee narratives that are predominant not only in popular culture but also in academic studies. That said, employing a storytelling approach that centres self-narrative is a way to reiterate that neither of these versions is necessarily ‘truer’ than the other; and the point is that both may be equally true depending on the individual who gets to tell their story. This is why we need an abundance of stories, and research methods and processes in the migration field that can diffuse power in a way that can support and see as equally valid, these multiple ways of seeing, being, and knowing.

13 Using an Autoethnography Lens, Writing the Self

As previously articulated, the objective of this project, and the edited collection, was for contributors to use non-academic writing modes, employing a lived experience lens and personal storytelling approaches. Following such a focus, and given that none of the story-chapters are written in an academic format, the contributors to this collection did not explicitly employ autoethnographic research methods to craft their stories. However, given this project straddled the spaces that lie in-between academic and non-academic, and the authors are all academics and researchers, we discussed autoethnography as an approach for telling stories about the self that would also help us connect purposefully with the social context- helping us better understand the (autobiographical) experiences we were having, situated in the world around us.

As an example of autoethnography relevant in the context of this project, Murphy’s (1987) The Body Silent, a personal narrative about his disability, is telling. Being an anthropologist, the sudden onset of spinal cord disease set him off on an investigation of the social context and the medical infrastructure surrounding disability, and he describes his narrative as “research among the motor-handicapped, and (he shows how) participation in these organizations forced me to see myself in their lives, and this left me feeling that my own status was insecure and threatened.... I had learned a valuable lesson about the relationship of social standing to disability. I had also learned a great deal about myself (1987, 126). As a research method then, auto-ethnography as a genre, appropriate for writing the self, and intermingled with the social, is explored and complicated in multiple ways in the forms of “self-ethnography” (Okely & Callaway, 1992; Reed-Danahay, 1997), and “interpretive-ethnography” (Johannsen, 1992; Lichterman, 2017), and in its countless other manifestations. It is important though, as Keles shows in their review of studies (in Applied Linguistics), that when employing the autoethnographic method of research, that researchers be clear about the epistemological foundations and methodological alignments with their research topic to ensure its appropriateness.

Some of the other implications of the autoethnographic approach that underpin the telling of the stories in this collection align with Muncey’s (2005) analysis of the autoethnographic approach; when she shares in a journalistic and research mode, personal account of her teenage pregnancy and sexual abuse, they trigger questions about her integrity, when the real reason is that her story cannot be told as it is about taboo topics; this is the case even though she believes it would contribute a body of knowledge to help inform practice. Her memory is called into question, and she is asked questions like, why now, why not then, and could the passage of time have altered her story. This is a common challenge with personal storytelling if used for the purpose of research; for instance, Kierkegaard (1957) (cited in Muncey), suggested that life must be lived forward but can really be understood backward, confirming again the messy nature of interactions between lived experience, the selectiveness of memory, and reflexive practice. Muncey states, “Autoethnography celebrates rather than demonizes the individual story.” If a version of the story does not align with the dominant narrative, and it gets dismissed as a deviant story, she adds that perhaps, “my story is deviant just because no authority voice is telling it, I am left with a puzzle. Perhaps there are no deviant cases; perhaps there are just lots more individual stories waiting to be told, stories that are sometimes difficult to tell, that need support and understanding in the telling.” (78). The above perspective aligns with the experience we had participating in the StOries Project that some of the authors affirm in their own words and voices in the next section.

Further, as a research method, we argue that autoethnography, including collaborative autoethnography is particularly relevant for the study of migration, given the reliance such theoretical and methodological tools have on lived experience and positionality, as well as their focus on in-between and liminal spaces and reflexivity. Moreover, while the story-chapters in this collection do not deliberately employ the autoethnographic approach, they are informed by it; and in line with these perspectives, they bring the personal in communication with the sociological and the political.

14 Concluding Reflections, and Pathways for Moving Forward…

Borrowing from theoretical underpinnings around what Phillips and Bunda (2018) term ‘research through, with and as storying,’ in this concluding section, I tie in some of the central ideas highlighted in this chapter with a few ‘storied’ reflections the contributors of this collection have shared with me. I asked them to reflect upon what this experiential journey was like for them that culminated in their developing and submitting their story-chapter for this collection, and what the entire process meant to them; how their experience compares with the anticipations and expectations that had first motivated them to join this group of academics in the first place to share their migration stories using the medium of creative writing. Phillips et al. observe: “Through storying, we come to live, breathe and feel deep penetrating understandings of identity and place” (39); they also reiterate the importance of ‘declaring’ our standpoints that we bring to our stories, locating the self within the entanglements of our ancestral histories when we tell our stories, acknowledging the presence of our past in our living present.

Given that the following generous contributor reflections are personal, emotional, even intimate, it seems more befitting to honour their words when I share them here, through including both the first and the family names of the authors. Melanie Zuzarte notes, “I experienced the loss of my father (while this project was ongoing). I used the grief that I experienced to reflect on how my father’s life trajectory shaped my life as a racialized Canadian woman. I realized that faith, although I had denied it most of my life, was a gift that my father had offered me to support me in my healing in the present and in the future. I also embraced through my work on the StOries Project that it was important for me to slow down and truly consider all the gifts my father had offered me through his lifetime using the written word. Without this project – I don’t think I would be where I am in my healing today.”

Born in Canada to Italian and Azorean parents, Natasha Damiano was keen on exploring the transnational, intergenerational, and multicultural aspects of her family’s migration stories. These aspects included the legacy of her parents’ and grandparents’ resettlement difficulties, and her own complex feelings as a settler on Indigenous territory. As an academic, she understood the importance of decolonising methodologies in this process, in order to grapple reflexively with her place of identity within the complex tapestry of her family and Canada, past and present. In the additional chapter she writes for this collection, we learn much more about the dilemmas of her positionality, also the vantage point of her story.

For Sarah Ostapchuck too, the need to piece together and record her Christian-Trinidadian legacy was important as it was for her a way to understand her complex identity as a mixed-race woman of faith. The process of navigating these complexities-with the project compelling her to build in time and space for personal memory work in a communal setting to tell her story- helped her see, “those parts of my grandfather that are alive in me and make up large portions of my identity, and though I may not carry very obvious physical markings of him upon first glance, there are both physical and non-physical parts of me that will always bear his legacy.”

Nabila Kazmi wrote, “Stories, even though deeply personal, are equally political; when I said this in my motivation letter, I was establishing that my story as a recent immigrant to Canada was both personal but also exposed systemic ideas behind migration of people to the western world. As I reflect on this now, I find myself amazed at how the project exposed me to the political ideas of migration while at the same time placing my own experiences at the center of them. I am glad to have joined the project and to have an opportunity to write my story of migration. This gave me confidence in my own writing while at the same time assuring me that the struggles of a new immigrant are not merely my own but shared across people with similar stories.”

At some level, the lines are blurry between the two stages through which the StOries project was implemented: one was the experiential communal nature of this project, in the way it drew us all in, committing to participate and actively ‘be together,’ for a few months. The second phase was the actual process of writing and submitting our stories for this collection that writers completed independently; although the formal mentoring structures and activities remained ongoing throughout. The relationships of trust and support that were fostered-at personal and professional levels- are still ongoing, based on the strong mutual bonds that we formed, manifest now through voluntary collaborative learning-oriented initiatives and, in some cases through implementing other professional partnership initiatives. Methodologically speaking, the experience of participating in the project was instrumental in moving us from an individual-centric place of just writing and submitting our stories for this collection, and the collective identity construction that happened through engaged storytelling in community.

Karen reflects, “I was interested to be part of this project because of how it would build onto my budding interests in exploring immigrant and diasporic experiences using unconventional approaches to research, reflecting, and creative writing. I realized, however, how approachable of a space this felt compared to challenging experiences I had entering an online graduate program as the first in my immediate family pursuing graduate studies. The learning experiences felt familiar enough to graduate level seminars yet more informal where fellow participants and I led peer-based sessions that were sensory-based and fun; I found a profound connection with each and every one of the participants through the vulnerability we shared and expressions of how much this intersection of research, writing, and reflecting meant something unique to each of us.”

Jenny Osorio shares her reflections too, “I think this is the first time that I am given the official space to tell my story, not as an anecdote one tells at a party, but as my truth. And that was what drew me to send in my application the same day I saw the announcement.”

In the context of the contributor reflections shared above, I find extremely pertinent and resonant the way Louise Gwenneth Phillips and Tracey Bunda articulate the imperatives of their collaborative story-work and writing-both as a counterpoint to their standpoint as being part of the academy, and also as a continuation of it. Framing ‘storying’ through the play of words, (and the metaphor) of ‘Together/two gather,’ they tease out the differences between outcome-driven and competitive scholarship on the one hand and the more friendly value-driven work they do that reminds them of their ‘humanness.’ In their words,

In this spirit we commence with a play on words through naming our shared interests, not only as a coming together, but also two-gather. Together as known in normalised grammar conventions calls attention to our joining, but we are also signalling our warm-smile-on-the-face desire to transform conventions through a thoughtful playfulness with words, to rewrite our connection and therefore give breath to another grammar convention of coming two-gather. In reflecting on our practice, that is, what we have done and what we are aiming to do, our affinity with stories draws us close so that we two-gather to write this text.

There are similarities too, between the work they do as academics, and what they do outside through their story-work, influences from indigenous methodologies being an important aspect of their standpoint; and although the worldviews that shape the academy are different from those that define community, in both realms they ensure they lead with accountability and transparency.

Some final reflections add other dimensions to the experience and the learning we went through together. Arun Rajavel observed, “I am fortunate enough—and even privileged enough—to be an economic migrant who had the luxury to choose. The case is not the same for other kinds of migrants who are forced to migrate due to various external factors. It is of utmost importance that we listen to both the stories, to avoid the narrative being dominated by the former—as is, unfortunately, the case now. I think that StOries is one such initiative that will help bridge this gap. My experience listening to my fellow participants’ life stories and their perspectives made this a rewarding experience. The activities we did together such as meaningful objects added an additional dimension to the people I participated with, and even made me introspect and cement a part of my own identity.”

“Creative writing is something that I lost when me and my family moved to Canada,” Negin Saheb Javahar shared in her reflections, “and participating in this collection as a contributor gave me a reason and structure to pursue my passion in creative writing while allowing me to incorporate all the experiences I had achieved since I migrated. The workshops had a different vibe than academic circles, and for me it truly became a space to just talk about a shared passion and finding the space to work on tying all the pieces of me (the migrated teenager, the student, the researcher, the maturing professional) together. I believe that the project helped me grow closer to creative writing substantially even though I struggled with a very busy schedule; we explored experiences and identity crises in migration from an angle I had not encountered in my academic experience, and I have been impressed from the nuances of understanding I believe I gained from them. I am more than ever convinced that we cannot have a more understanding and inclusive Canadian society unless we give each other the space to tell our stories and to speak about ours.”

Finally, looking ahead to ascertain what the way forward might look like, I go back to the shared love of story, and to the multiplicities of interpretive potential stories carry within them. Their power also lies in their ability to challenge hegemonic status-quoist grand narratives. It is helpful that the human need for storying in our lives is a primeval and visceral urge. In this collection too, it is story that is our common ground, between the worlds (and worldviews) of research, pedagogy, and practice. Further, ‘declaring’ our dual standpoints as contributors to this collection-positioned as we all are, both within the halls of academia and outside of them-and it is from these points of overlap that the voices in this collection are together/to-gathered.