Migration and Identity through Creative Writing StOries: Strangers to Ourselves

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?

Part 1. Setting the Stage.- 1. Between Critical Inquiry and Creative Writing (Anna Triandafyllidou and Alka Kumar).- 2. Experiments and Interventions: Re-envisioning Qualitative Research Methods in Migration (Alka Kumar).- Part 2. Identity Negotiations, Othering the Self.- 3. How I Became an Alevi Muslim Woman (Esra Ari).- 4. Kingston Blues (Ozlem Atar).- 5. On Immigration, Religion and Home (Bibi Baksh).- Part 3. Am I a work in progress?.- 6. WIP (Work in progress) (Jenny Osorio).- 7. Journey Through the Self (Chelsea Nyomi Richards).- 8. My Journey as a Writer (Owen Guo).- Part 4. An Ode to our Loved Ones far away, some Messages in a Bottle.- 9. My Taiwanese Mom, Peaches (Galina Liou).- 10. Dear Bâbâjân (Sadaf Khajeh).- 11. Guerrico (Melanie Zuzarte).- 12. For DYee… Walking in These Shoes (Christian Hui).- Part 5. Border Trespassing.- 13. Some Timeless and Contemporary Borders (Arun Kumar Rajavel).- 14. Suitcases: A Story of Migration During the Pandemic (Nabila Kazmi).- 15. Eyesand ‘I’ (Karen Young).- Part 6. Longings and Belongings, and the Idea of Home….- 16. Trinidadian Trinkets (Sarah Ostapchuk).- 17. Making a Place for Our Selves: A Story about Longing, Relationships, and the Search for Home (Natasha Damiano).- 18. Things Lost, Things Not Lost, and the Ones That Were Found on the Way (Negin Saheb Javaher).- Part 7. Histories, Stories and Complicated Lives.- 19. Family Histories and Stories that made me (Brianna Jennings).- 20. Immigrant Stories (Thabata Costa).- 21. My PhD life, and Connecting the Dots between Here and There…. (Alka Kumar).- 22. The Research Memoir of an Intra-EU Migrant who has become a Guest in a Settler Colonial State (Anna Triandafyllidou).- Part 8. Reflections, Conclusions, and New Beginnings.- 23. Pandemic Thoughts: Life in the Times of COVID-19 (Esra Ari and Ozlem Atar).- 24. Becoming through Story: The Relational Processes of Writing and Creating the StOries Project (Natasha Damiano).

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 21^st 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).