Asylum from the Field: Borders, Struggles, and Integration Practices

The Lab Asylum from the field aims to provide students with specific technical knowledge in the collection and analysis of qualitative data in order to give them the opportunity to scientifically understand the various issues related to contemporary social phenomena. Specifically, the Lab will be based on empirical research conducted in the field of migration for asylum, focussing on issues such as bordering processes, resistance and solidarity struggles, and "integration" practices.
In the first part, the Lab will foster the acquisition of knowledge about the distinctive features of the qualitative research; the research design; the use of the principle methods; the access to the research field; and the analysis of qualitative data. In the second part, the Lab will focus on the ethnographic approach, notably on two methodological tools like the qualitative interview and participant observation. Students will learn how to build an interview's structure and the field notes; how to conduct interviews and participant observation (dealing with the complex and related ethical and methodological issues); how to deal with the interviews' transcription process and the field notes' writing process; how to analyse interviews' and field notes' data; how to write a scientific paper with qualitative data based on interviews and participant observation. The Lab will be carried out through an alternation of frontal lectures and exercises through which students (alone or in groups) will experiment themselves with the methodological tool of the interview.

By the end of the Qualitative Data Lab, students will be able to:
· Identify appropriate qualitative methodological tool in relation to the specific research question;
· to build an interview's structure and to produce field notes;
· to conduct an interview and a participant observation (and to deal with the related ethical and methodological issues);
· to analyse interviews' and field notes' data;
· to present research results in oral and written form.