By Kate Dearden, The Migration Podcast
It’s an exciting time for qualitative research methods these days. Migration scholars are pushing the boundaries of traditional interview techniques, with the aim to amplify the voices of marginalized groups as well as to influence policy and reach wider audiences.
In this episode you’ll hear Silindile Mlilo interview two researchers who are using creative and non-traditional research methods.
Isabel Rose Soloaga talks about the use of participatory research and film through her forthcoming documentary, Growing Up in America: Life After the Taliban. The film is a personal story following two young girls and their family, who were forced to evacuate Kabul after the Taliban rose to power in 2021. Isabel told us: “Everyone has a camera and a platform today through social media, so I think debates on how to use these tools in an ethical way, while inviting people to reach out to their new neighbours — the key message of my film.” Soloaga is a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex School of Law, Politics and Sociology in the UK and an Independent Documentary Filmmaker.
Ntokozo Yingwana discusses her use of digital storytelling — which I learned is, the growing practice of everyday people using digital tools to tell their stories. In her PhD research project “Queering Sex Work and Mobility in South Africa: How does Migration and Mobility Influence Genderded Sexualities in Sex Work? Ntokozo conducted data collection through a digital storytelling workshop and WhatsApp. She also worked with two people from her research participant group, who are sex workers, as research assistants. Yingwana is a Doctoral researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society at Wits University in South Africa.
[This podcast was originally aired on The Migration Podcast website, under the same title, on 9 April 2025: https://www.imiscoe.org/news-and-blog/podcast/2360-how-can-film-and-digital-storytelling-be-used-in-migration-research]
