Conference Program

This panel contribution offers a feminist epistemological reading of photovoice, understood not as a participatory visual technique but as an epistemic and ethical device that reshapes the conditions under which knowledge is produced in contexts marked by inequality, vulnerability, and structural violence. Situated at the intersection of feminist research, visual methodologies, and critical migration studies, the contribution focuses on how interpretive authority is distributed—or contested—when working with images, narratives, and embodied experiences in research with migrants and refugees.

Drawing on a critical reconstruction of the genealogy of photovoice and on recent feminist scholarship, the contribution shows how the institutional expansion of the method has often been accompanied by processes of depoliticisation and visual extractivism. In many applications, participation is reduced to the act of taking photographs, while interpretation, theorisation, and public circulation remain under academic control. From this perspective, the central issue is not methodological in a technical sense but epistemological: who interprets images, who decides what becomes visible, and who controls the meanings and effects of visual knowledge.

Against these tendencies, the contribution proposes a feminist re-anchoring of photovoice structured around three key dimensions. First, it argues for the centrality of care as epistemic infrastructure rather than as a moral or emotional supplement. Working with images in migration contexts entails negotiating pain, fear, memory, and exposure; without sustained relational care, the risk of reproducing epistemic and affective harm remains high. Second, photovoice is conceptualised as a space for negotiating pain, where images do not represent traumatic experiences but enable them to be activated, named, and politicised without resorting to spectacle or re-victimisation. Within this framework, emotions are recognised as epistemic dimensions rather than as subjective residues external to knowledge production.

Third, the contribution examines photovoice as a practice of epistemic justice, insofar as interpretive power is effectively redistributed. Drawing on recent studies involving migrants and refugees, the analysis shows how co-interpretation of images, co-authorship, and collective control over visual circulation can displace entrenched cognitive hierarchies and generate situated knowledge that cannot emerge through representational methodologies alone.

Finally, the contribution addresses the challenges introduced by the digital circulation of images—expanded visibility, risks of re-identification, and enduring digital traces—and argues for understanding ethics not as a preliminary protocol but as shared, processual responsibility. From this perspective, photovoice emerges not as an abstractly inclusive method, but as a demanding feminist practice that requires rethinking rigor, care, and responsibility in contemporary social research.

'We are here': how migrants defy the logic of invisibility and become agents of change

Contemporary societies are characterised by growing and more diverse migrant populations that open challenges regarding migrants’ integration and education, in which migrants are often portrayed as passive or lacking in competence. In order to defy this logic, this paper recognises migrants as important actors in shaping the perspective on migrants’ integration and related education. While much adult education scholarship is sensitive to diverse migrants’ needs and critical towards generic migrants (re)settlement and integration programs, it still focuses mostly on the learning needs of migrants, rather than also on the learning needs of the receiving society to adopt to growing migration within a two-way integration process (Samaluk, 2020; Shan & Guo, 2023).

This paper addresses this gap by exploring how migrants publicly voice their concerns, enter in dialogue with local community, raise public consciousness about their conditions and strive towards changing oppressive social structures. It departs from wider understanding of migrant integration and radical adult education theory grounded within Gramscian counter-hegemony struggles and Freirean critical pedagogy (Elias & Merriam, 2005; Freire, 2005; Samaluk & Kunz, 2022) to examine a case study of a migrant-led communal space and an advocacy organisation Ambasada ROG, which emerged in Slovenia as a response to the 2015 crisis of the European refugee policy. The analysis is based upon participant observation at public events organised by Ambasada ROG and secondary sources of data featuring over 190 migrants’ written stories in the newsletter Tukaj smo [We are here] published on Ambasada ROG’s social media and web sites and in six printed issues. By utilising secondary data sources produced by migrants and by participating at events organised by migrants, researcher takes the role of participant, who does not intervene, but reads/listens to migrants’ stories, in order to uncover their own understanding and experience of integration and related education and their active engagement in society.

Findings show that migrants utilise public engagement in order to defy the logic of invisibility, dehumanised media portrayals and fight for recognition and mutual understanding. By sharing their stories and actively engaging within wider community they also act as organic educators, who focus on both learning needs of migrants and the receiving society that is still ill adapted to growing and more diverse migration. They thus raise other migrants’ political consciousness, public awareness about complex migrant conditions and put pressure on the government to change its migration policies. By doing that they also establish bridges and solidarity with local community and thus became agents of change, who demonstrate that integration is ultimately about economic and social security and mutual solidarity that can also bring some positive changes to oppressive laws and policies.

Our dissertation in educational sciences focuses on the evolution of school justice analyses of pupils from the first generation of immigration in Marseille (France). This work is partly based on data collected as part of the ANR-funded project entitled Orientation des jeunes primo migrants (OJEMIGR). The project is based on a three-years follow-up of some fifteen migrant pupils, starting with their educational orientation. They were around 15 years old when we started our study five years ago. We interviewed them as well as their family, social workers and teachers.

One of the first results of our survey shows an experience of injustice and facts of injustice that are sometimes disarticulated. The facts of injustice are not necessarily expressed by the pupils, the neoliberal narrative (Lamont et al. 2016) is often used by these students, which undoubtedly allows them to maintain a certain dignity.

Pupils generally declare little injustice, crushed as they are by other inequalities (Lamont, 2002 and 2016, Dubet et al. 2013; Talpin et al. 2021), but some express themselves, and increasingly as the survey progresses. School guidance does not always seem to be a major concern. Even if we note the development of a form of disenchantment as time goes by, these students remain for the most part optimistic despite their troubled social and educational paths.

We highlight instability in their analysis of justice, depending on the situation in which the young people find themselves at the time of the interviews, regardless of how long they have been in France. According to the pragmatic framework, in a situation of indeterminacy, individuals refer to what their knowledge in order to analyze a situation (Boltanski & Thevenot, 1991 and 2015). In this case, we're talking about school and social standards from countries of the Global South, which sometimes seem to get students out of the classic school justice conflicts in France (Schiff, 2000 ; Armagnague, 2019). Even so, some students denounce injustices at school.

As the investigation progressed, we have adapted our methodology by interview trying to empower the young pupils we have worked with. We have tried to help them with our study in their daily problem as well as in their analysis of their situation. We would to discuss our methodological choices and their ethical impacts.

Migration has become a central topic of academic research and public discussion. However, the knowledge production surrounding migration is still largely influenced by Eurocentric perspectives and institutional research agendas (Santos, 2014). In response to this challenge, this paper reflects on the creation of a collective edited volume titled ‘Skills, Mobility and Justice in Contemporary Europe: Institutional Narratives and Lived Realities in Conversation’ (submitted to: Routledge) that seeks to explore alternative forms of knowledge production, emphasizing the voices and experiences of migrants. Instead of presenting the book as a finished scholarly product, this paper treats the editorial process as a space for epistemic negotiation and political positioning, where issues of authorship, representation, and responsibility are central.

The edited volume brings together two rarely combined perspectives: institutional actors influencing labor market policies and migrants navigating skill recognition and integration. It draws on empirical research from various European contexts within Horizon Europe projects, featuring contributions from employers, unions, municipalities, and policymakers, as well as migrant workers. The chapters foster a dialogue between institutional narratives and migrants’ experiences, highlighting tensions around skills, integration, and justice. Inspired by Haraway's concept of situated knowledges (1988) and Spivak's views on representation (2023), the volume emphasizes collective writing to explore positionality and the risks of reinforcing existing power dynamics.

By examining the editorial journey of the volume as an empirical case, we contend that collective writing can serve as a critical practice for producing ‘situated knowledge.’ This approach has the potential to challenge dominant perspectives and experiment with more dialogical and politically accountable forms of migration research.

Methodologically, the volume adopts a dialogical and polyphonic ethnographic approach (Clifford & Marcus, 2023; Marcus & Clifford, 1985; Ghorashi, 2014), encouraging participants to co-author and co-create relational narratives that disrupt institutional discourses on migration, skills formation, and recognition. Instead of viewing stakeholders and migrant workers as separate analytical categories, the book pairs their accounts within each chapter, fostering deliberate conversations that illuminate intersections, tensions, and silences. The collective volume features a dialogic and polyphonic structure, emphasizing that knowledge production is situated and co-constructed through various voices and power dynamics. It serves as an interactive space linking policy frameworks with lived experiences and macro governance structures with micro realities of recognition, exclusion, and belonging. The text presents both an empirical contribution and a methodological innovation, highlighting how migration and labor market governance are shaped through dialogue, power, and negotiation.

The entire book is grounded in extensive qualitative interviews and focus groups conducted across various EU destination countries. At a time when European labor markets are grappling with skill shortages and growing political debates around migration, public discussions often separate institutional perspectives from migrants’ lived experiences. This work challenges that separation. While much of the existing literature addresses skills, migration, and integration either through policy analysis or migrant narratives, this volume systematically stages their interaction, demonstrating a more integrated understanding of these issues.

In recent years, the growing diversification of European educational contexts has raised new challenges for socio-educational services working with children and families with migrant backgrounds. In such contexts, building inclusive educational environments requires approaches capable of recognising different actors - children, parents, and educators - as subjects who possess knowledge, experiences, and resources, overcoming adult-centred and deficit-based perspectives still present in educational systems. In this perspective, participatory and creative methodologies represent valuable tools for fostering shared knowledge production and processes of educational co-design (Reason and Bradbury 2008; Kemmis, McTaggart, and Nixon 2014).

This contribution presents the preliminary results of a participatory action research study carried out within the DREAM project (promoted by Fondazione Cometa and ISMU) at the after-school educational centre “Il Manto” in the city of Como, a territory characterised by a significant presence of families with migrant backgrounds. The centre hosts children attending primary and lower secondary school, many of whom are children of immigrants or belong to so-called second-generation migrant families.

The research developed in two phases. The first aimed to produce a shared understanding of the educational needs emerging within the centre’s context. Qualitative and participatory tools were employed, including focus groups with educators and parents, expressive workshops with children, and semi-structured interviews with key territorial stakeholders. The use of expressive and multimodal activities with children draws on research perspectives recognising children as competent social actors and active participants in knowledge production processes (Clark and Moss 2011; Christensen and James 2017). In parallel, a socio-demographic analysis of the children attending the centre was conducted, highlighting a highly multicultural group characterised by different forms of social and educational vulnerability.

The results revealed several cross-cutting themes, including the importance of safe and structured educational spaces, the role of extracurricular experiences in children’s development, the difficulties faced by families with migrant backgrounds in supporting children’s schoolwork, and the need to strengthen relationships among educators, families, schools, and local actors. In this sense, the after-school centre emerges as an intermediate educational space supporting children’s learning pathways and social integration in migration contexts, contributing to more inclusive and intercultural educational environments.

The second phase initiated a participatory action process aimed at transforming the needs identified in the first phase into shared educational intervention pathways. Through participatory meetings involving educators, parents, and other local actors, three thematic working groups were established: support for learning and homework, promotion of intercultural practices, and strengthening educational alliances between families, schools, and local services. Activities based on dialogical methodologies and creative tools (role-playing, collage, guided discussions) fostered the sharing of experiences and perspectives, opening spaces for collective reflection and co-design.

The paper discusses the value of participatory and creative methodologies in promoting participants’ empowerment and supporting the development of more democratic educational environments. Involving children, parents, and educators in knowledge production and in defining educational actions allows recognition of the competences present within educational communities and contributes to practices more responsive to the cultural diversity of contemporary societies.

This paper contributes to current debates on creative and emancipatory research with migrants and refugees by consolidating an approach we term biographical creative methods (Massari et al. 2026; Gatta et al. 2026): a methodological framework that brings life-history inquiry into dialogue with creative coproduction across visual, performative and multimodal practices. Developed across several interrelated projects, this approach foregrounds reflexivity, co-agency and the collective re-elaboration of experience, challenging extractivist logics often embedded in research in this field. Within this broader programme, the paper discusses MEMODIAS – Memory Practices of the Afghan and Somali Diasporas in the USA and Italy (2022–2025), a HorizonMSCA project which convened participatory workshops with members of Afghan and Somali diasporas to work with biographical trajectories and with individual and collective memories related to conflict, exile, settlement in the receiving countries, and return. Designed explicitly as alternatives to data-extraction settings, these encounters opened up spaces to record present conditions and experiences, surface diverse perspectives and articulate future-oriented aspirations. The workshops enabled the coproduction of situated knowledge that could sustain incremental shifts in understanding relational dynamics and possibilities for both participants and researchers, while enhancing reflexivity for everyone involved.

Through practices of spatialisation, materialisation and multimodal composition, participants co‑assembled a provisional “city of diasporic memories”: a shared environment of objects, narratives and soundscapes that externalises memories and aspirations, lowers linguistic barriers, and fosters inter‑diasporic recognition and solidarity (Creet & Kitzmann 2010; Lacroix & Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2013; Lim & Rosenhaft 2021) without reducing experiences into single stories.

Building on these insights, we present an evolving, codesigned guide that translates the workshop architecture and facilitation strategies into adaptable modules for educational settings and diaspora‑led initiatives. Presenting the guide at this developmental stage is an invitation to gather feedback and practitioner insights to refine its scope, ethics‑of‑care safeguards, language mediation and accessibility strategies, and reflexive prompts for both facilitators and participants.

Conceptually, the contribution clarifies how biographical creative methods recast the researcher-participant relation as a shared inquiry oriented to meaningful forms of change. Practically, it outlines how research routines can be translated into educational pathways that broaden expressive repertoires, redistribute authorship in the framing of questions and relevance, sustain inter-diasporic educational work, and strengthen reflexive practice in contexts marked by mobility, displacement and inequality.