4. NeMiF Day – Workshop on the documentary method

Already for the fourth time, the Network Migration and Refugee Research Bavaria hosted their NeMiF Day in early December. While the event has been held in a conference format in the past, this year the organizers decided to design a content offering for early-career researchers. The digital methods workshop was thus aimed specifically at those members of the network who are still in their qualification phase.

The transdisciplinary association of refugee and migration researchers from southern Germany was founded in 2018 with the participation of the Center for Flight and Migration (ZFM) and has since been supported primarily by early-career researchers.

These had the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of qualitative social research at the annual NeMiF meeting, which was again financially supported by ZFM this year. With Professor Sina Mareen Köhler and her colleague, Dr. Yağmur Mengilli, from the University of Hildesheim, two experienced speakers were recruited to teach the 14 participants the basics, application and special features of the documentary method. A special focus in the workshop was on empirical material obtained from group discussions and biographical interviews, as these are particularly well suited for evaluation with this method.

The documentary method is a reconstructive procedure which, through the manifest content of an interview or a group discussion, also searches interpretatively for discourse processes and implicitly shared patterns of orientation. In particular, the workshop afternoon offered participants the opportunity to discuss specific and current problems in their qualification work and to apply the method themselves using an example transcript. In addition, for example, questions regarding field access or the selection and implementation of the documentary method in ongoing or planned research projects could be clarified.

Further information on the Network Migration and Refugee Research Bavaria are available (in German) here.