Using Narrative Research to Explore the Welcoming of Newcomer Immigrants: A Methodological Reflection on a Community-Based Research Project

Abstract

In this article, we examine the use of a narrative approach to a community-based action research project that sought to support welcoming initiatives for immigrant newcomers in a mid-size city in Ontario, Canada. We employed a place-based lens to situate the insights of community stakeholders as representatives of local organizations and government and in their everyday lives in the city. We reflect critically on whether the narrative approach we devised fostered a dialogical, collaborative, and critical orientation that action research advances, by evaluating the way the project was designed and implemented. We argue that a narrative approach provides valuable avenues to situate community-based action research in the multi-leveled context of research production and elicits the multi-layered elements of meaning-making that are often overly simplified, particularly in positivist approaches.