Families on the Move. A follow-along ethnography of families’ trajectories in the asylum regime in Belgium

Description: This PhD research consists of a longitudinal ethnography of families’ experiences during their asylum trajectories in Belgium. Taking as a starting point the process of applying for asylum, it follows a number of families within and beyond the multiple stages of their asylum procedure: from their stay in the reception centres to the neighborhoods and local communities, they settle into, or until they receive a negative decision and are regimented by return/deportation measures. Using various ethnographic methods – participant observation, home visits, narrative interviewing – the researcher seeks to analyze how families experience and contest processes of in/exclusion in their daily lives, as they move through multiple geographical and institutional sites in search of protection, care and stability. Moreover, she pays particular attention to the ways in which dominant family norms become entangled with notions of protection, belonging and integration in the politics of migration.
Website research project: https://soc.kuleuven.be/anthropology/staff/00134571/view
Promoter(s): Karel Arnaut , Ilse Derluyn
Researcher(s): Elsemieke van Osch
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences
Period of time: 2019 - 2024