Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.15176/vol62no28
Migration Experts by Experience: Dialogue as a Method in Collaborative Knowledge Production (in Migration Studies)
Samer Arkawi
; Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana
Nina Khamsy
orcid.org/0000-0002-2362-8808
; Institute of Sociology, University of Neuchâtel
Abstract
This paper develops a dialogical methodology for collaborative knowledge production in border and migration studies, focusing on experiences of border violence at the European Union’s frontiers. Through the collaboration between Samer, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Social Work and a war refugee from Syria, and Nina, an anthropologist conducting ethnography among people on the move, the paper critically examines the ethics and epistemologies of researching migration. Building on the notion of “migration experts by experience” (Čačinovič Vogrinčič et al. 2011), the authors propose a framework that acknowledges the expertise of people with migratory experience without reproducing hierarchical distinctions between the “researcher” and the “researched”. Conventional academic practices risk perpetuating structural and epistemic violence by speaking for, rather than with, those affected by border regimes. Drawing on Paulo Freire’s (1970) philosophy of dialogue, the paper advances dialogue not merely as conversation, but as a method of co-learning and mutual recognition that resists imposed frameworks of intelligibility. Through their respective engagements with Arabic- and Persian-speaking people on the move, the authors show how dialogical collaboration can generate ethically grounded, reflexive, and decolonial modes of anthropological inquiry, contributing to a rethinking of the politics of representation and expertise in border and migration studies.
Keywords
migration, knowledge, dialogue, experience
Hrčak ID:
341676
URI
Publication date:
19.12.2025.
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