13th Migration Research Lab: “Conducting Qualitative Research in Contexts of Violence”
07.05.2025 16:00-18:00 (CET) Venue: KWZ 1.601 (Heinrich-Düker Weg 14) online via Zoom
with Jacopo Anderlini , Research Fellow in Sociology of Cultural and Communication Processes at the University of ParmaRegistration: To participate, we kindly ask you to register via the form below by 04.05.2025. To facilitate the exchange among each other, we will circulate the submitted short descriptions of the research projects to all participants in advance.
This Migration Research Lab is designed to initiate exchange about research experiences in contexts characterized by structural, social, and diffuse violence.
In his presentation Jacopo Anderlini will examine methodological approaches: Drawing on two case studies from Tunisia, he will explore how creative, participatory methods on the one side, and ethnographic techniques on the other, can generate knowledge while navigating complex ethical and practical challenges. The first case study analyzes the application of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed methodology with young Tunisians contemplating migration, revealing how embodied, performative approaches enable participants to articulate experiences where futures appear simultaneously foreclosed between post-colonial disillusionment and intergenerational tensions, and demanding to be imagined otherwise. The second case study examines ethnographic fieldwork investigating what he terms the “deportation/departure complex” affecting sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia – a dual system comprising dangerous maritime departure infrastructure alongside state-sanctioned repression, detention, and collective expulsions. Anderlini will discuss how ethnographic methods must adapt to document violence while protecting participants and researchers.
Based on these experiences, the floor will be opened for joint discussion to explore together methodological orientations for research in violent contexts: approaches which are contextual and emerge from social relations situated in the field and oriented by an ethics of care and practices responsibility. Researchers in all stages of their careers (advanced Master students, PhD students, postdoctoral researchers) will be invited to contribute and share their own research experiences, challenges and open questions.
Jacopo Anderlini is a Research Fellow in Sociology of Cultural and Communication Processes (SPS/08) at the University of Parma since February 2023. He teaches the Sociological-Legal Clinic "Discrimination, Social Movements, Rights". He was a Research Fellow at the University of Genoa from February 2020 to January 2023 where, within the Borderlands and ASIT (PRIN) projects, he dealt with the governance of contemporary transit migration in Europe, focusing on the border regime, its infrastructure and technologies, its legal and procedural framework, its practices - from the birth and development of the Hotspot Approach, to the re-emergence of internal borders, to the digital and technological dimension of controls, to border externalization processes. He also studied the intersection between contemporary mobility and exploitation dynamics in seasonal agricultural work. He was a Visiting Researcher (2023-2024) at the Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research (BIM) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His main research interests concern border studies, migration and asylum, critical theory of technologies, and social and political philosophy. His research focuses on the transformations of mobility governance, its infrastructure and logistics, at Europe's southern borders.
Here you can register for the 13th Migration Research Lab "“Conducting Qualitative Research in Contexts of Violence”: