FMP/ Migrant Integration — 07. Content and Narrative Analysis
After the last week of carrying directed storytelling sessions, I performed an exhaustive documentation of audio into text from the recorded videos with the help of an AI powered software called Otter.ai. It transcribed speech word-to-word by processing recordings of the lengthy meetings, of 120 minutes and 45 minutes with Pedro and Samuel respectively.
Coding and Theming
The objective was to conduct an in-depth content analysis for extracting common themes arising within the stories narrated by the two immigrants. The first step was to derive empirical codes by reading between the lines for each conversation as a part of inductive analysis. These were written alongside the transcript by highlighting sentences which I thought contributed information towards my research enquiry.
Thereby, two lists of codes were generated which were then reviewed and reorganised under themes.
These basic themes underwent further filtration to produce organising themes, which cluster information to form higher order premise. Finally, by connecting organising themes, global themes were constructed. They served to distill the overarching text into a statement or two, represented in the most abstracted form.
The images below show the entire process as explained above: development of codes from transcripts and clustering of these into themes of three orders.
All of the resultant themes are pulled together into a comprehensive diagram called as the Thematic Network, shown below.
Therefore, the three global themes deduced from the above analysis are:
- The need for belonging to a community is spotlighted.
- Orientation culturally is seen as a key factor of adaptation.
- There is a transition in identities of migrants taking place.
Analysis of Narrative Data
Further, analysis of narrative data helped me to establish the following objectives:
1. The stories recited by the participants were underpinned by a backdrop of comparisons drawn between ‘here-and-now’ and ‘then-and-there’. These references made about time and space were pointing out to differences mainly originating within the cultures of the two countries. Orientation/disorientation/reorientation, became the central dimension of these stories produced by migrants who had been not only displaced physically, but psychologically as well.
✅ Objective 1 : Building inter-cultural cohesion
2. As migration is an important breakdown in people’s lives, it leads to the construction of their personal autobiographies and identities (Macías-Gómez-Estern, 2015). Narratives of migration hence have become a tool for the creation of coherence of identities and, therefore, communicate the level of consonance between the self and and the society. For example, being a teetotaller, Pedro disliked going to pubs due to which he felt disconnected at many occasions since in the British life, they considered to b staple social institutions. This showed how a thing that one used to be proud of became something of a botheration when the person moved to a different culture.
✅ Objective 2 : Nurturing the identities in transition
3. Feeling belonged and being integrated with a group is experienced when an individual’s personal story is aligned with the master cultural narrative (Syed and McLean, 2015), which consists of story structures or collective stories that convey how to be a fitting member of a society. A master narrative is defined as a dominant discourse (Hammack, 201) identifiable in cultural products and artefacts (e.g., media, literature, film, textbooks). Therefore, based on this knowledge gained from literature, it is found that interaction of migrants with hosts is essential to the process of integration. This project is specifically focused on synchronising personal identities with the aspect of culture in master narrative; as a way of growing ‘sharedness of the sense of being human’ between migrants and hosts.
✅ Objective 3: Fostering belongingness through sharedness
All the objectives amalgamated into the refined research goal for the project.
Objective 1 + Objective 2 + Objective 3 = Redefined Research Goal
→ Facilitating self-society identity integration of migrants in host societies through meaningful design intervention
Bibliography
Hammack, P.L. (2011). Narrative and the politics of meaning. Narrative Inquiry, 21, 311–318. doi:10.1075/ni.21.2.09ham
De Fina, A. and Tseng, A. (2017) ‘Narrative in the study of migrants’, in, pp. 381–396.
McLean, Kate & Syed, Moin. (2016). Personal, Master, and Alternative Narratives: An Integrative Framework for Understanding Identity Development in Context. Human Development. 58. 318–349. 10.1159/000445817.
Macías-Gómez-Estern, B. (2015) ‘Narrative as a Sense-making Tool in the Construction of Migrants’ Identities. Apprehending Emotions’, 32nd International Conference of the Spanish Association of Applied Linguistics (AESLA): Language Industries and Social Change. 3–5 April 2014, Seville, SPAIN, 173, pp. 168–175. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.02.048.
McLean, Kate & Syed, Moin. (2016). Personal, Master, and Alternative Narratives: An Integrative Framework for Understanding Identity Development in Context. Human Development. 58. 318–349. 10.1159/000445817.
