Call for submissions: 4th Annual Meth@Mig Workshop: Between Data and Dialogue: Focusing on Participants in Migration Research, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany, 3-4 April 2025. Deadline: 8 December 2024.
In migration research, as in social research more generally, the role of participants is critical in shaping both the data collected and the knowledge generated from it. Depending on the methodological approach and research question, participants may be seen as mere providers of information, or be involved as more active contributors and co-creators of knowledge. How researchers engage with participants profoundly influences the results, ethical considerations, and validity of studies. This also holds true with respect to long-established qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-mode approaches, but also considering methods building on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and digital behavioral data, where the continuum may run from the collection of digital traces of individuals that are not even aware of being studied to their voluntary, informed data donations.
Therefore, this workshop will focus on the role that participants may play in any stage of the research cycle, spanning from a project’s design phase to the dissemination of its results. This workshop aims to facilitate a discussion on how different methodologies influence the role of participants and gain insight into the ethical challenges that arise when involving or excluding them at different stages.
Possible topics that might be addressed include (without being limited to them):
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Scientific Quality: How does the role of participants in research have an impact on overall scientific quality, including validity and reliability of the data and research results, and the rigor of data collection, analysis, or interpretation?
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Ethical Considerations: What kind of complex ethical responsibilities (e.g., who is responsible for protecting participants and avoiding potential harm) and complex power relations (e.g., persistence of the power dynamics even though participants are actively involved in research) arise depending on the role of participants in research?
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Practical Issues: What practical issues arise if participants have varying levels of engagement in the research process, including questions of dataset ownership, data management and protection, and entitlement to authorship of research outputs?
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Impact of Methodological Innovation: What new complexities arise with the use of emerging methodologies and data sources?
Organizers welcome contributions from any methodological school or angle (e.g., qualitative, survey-based, mixed, relying on digital trace data) that critically explore the role of participants in research, examining the ethical and methodological implications of treating participants as data providers versus involving participants as active collaborators in the research process. A clear methodological focus is required for all contributions.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 