Making the Move: Reading Memoirs of Migration

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Rak, Julie

• SSHRC PEG awarded 2017:This project represents the initial phase of what we hope will become a larger, interdisciplinary, collaborative project investigating the circulation and reception of migration stories in different regions of the world.Our international research team is well positioned to carry out this research, with experts on life stories (Rak, Poletti), reading studies and mixed methods research design (Rehberg Sedo, Fuller) and the sociology of health and development (Kaler). In this first phase we will focus on how the telling of stories inspires those who do humanitarian work, and how workers themselves participate in collecting, circulating, presenting, reading and recalling the stories of those whom they want to help. Many NGOs, publishers and general readers believe that the telling of forced migration stories is important for migrants, and that they are of interest to the communities where migrants now live. But little is known about how these experiences are collected, what autobiographical forms they take when they appear in official and unofficial texts and documents, and what happens when they are read by humanitarian workers and volunteers.

• Date created

  2017-08-24

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Partnership Engage Grant
  • PEG
  • SSHRC
  • Reading
  • Migration
  • Human Rights Workers
  • Memoirs
  • Life Stories
  • Refugees
  • 2017AD-2020AD
  • Western Canada
  • North America

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-jwjf-xc80

• License

  ©️Rak, Julie. All rights reserved other than by permission. This document embargoed to those without UAlberta CCID until 2022.