Meeting Challenges in Regime Research at the Micro Level With Participatory Approaches? An Analysis Using Social Mapping

Abstract

When researching migration regimes at the micro level, qualitative methods are usually applied to analyze individual experiences of immigrants with different regime actors. In doing so, researchers face the challenge of drawing conclusions from these individual experiences about structures at the macro level which are implemented through various actors and organizations at the meso level. This abstraction is particularly challenging when the legal and institutional context is complex and research participants have little knowledge of the respective state structures and responsibilities (as is often the case with refugees shortly after their arrival in the host country). Based on the experiences from a case study on local and regional structures for the integration of refugees, in this article I analyze the potential of participatory research methods such as social mapping to meet these challenges in regime research. Social mapping is a method that combines the qualities of narrative interviews with a visualization to capture the experiences of research participants with structures and actors in their local environment.