Migração, pesquisa biográfica e emancipação social: Contributo para a análise dos impactos da pesquisa biográfica junto de migrantes

• Main Author: Elsa Lechner
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra 2009-06-01
• Series: Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais
• Subjects: migration; biographical research; social emancipation practices; intercultural relations; civic epistemologies
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/rccs/336

This article focuses on the personal and collective impact of biographical practices involving migrants. Taking as its starting point an anthropological research study on identity processes associated with immigration (Portuguese nationals in France), which focused on the suffering and resilience of migrant patients at cultural psychiatric sessions (Portugal), and on the basis of experience in group biographical work (UNEB, Brazil), the article explores the formative, transformative and emancipatory effects of biographical practices. It offers theoretical, methodological and socio-political reflections on biographical work with migrant populations. In addition to analysing the effects produced by biographical research, it also proposes consciously bringing researchers and laymen together with a view to creating a civic epistemology or, in other words, the co-production of knowledges and the construction of social cohesion.