This project aims to explore how individuals and families with children deal with “arriving” in the city. “Arrival” is understood in a broad sense, as a complex socio-cultural process, also called “integration” in the political perspective, involving official actors and top-down management of these social processes.
Our intention is to “flip the gaze” and explore integration and social embeddedness processes (Ryan, 2019) from below, from the perspective of individuals and communities directly involved in this complex, multidirectional process that encompasses different actors, institutions, social environments and urban spaces.
We plan to explore social embeddedness(es) through two different foci, each highlighting an important aspect of this phenomenon:
1. through issues of learning (including language learning, studying in formal and informal settings: a good example would be the integration of Hungarian children in local schools, but also their choice of educational pathways belongs here, or issues related to German language acquisition in schools).
2. the role of communities, especially their own diaspora communities, in social embedding (but this also includes specialised, professional communities such as the Femspace initiative, which targets Hungarian women with a need for professional development and networking).
The research will draw on qualitative methods well known in the social sciences, including in-depth individual interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation. Participatory methods will play an important role in the project: Knowledge creation in collaboration with our interviewees through audio-visual methods will be central. Photography, filming, but also the method of walking through the city together will help the researchers to explore and understand their interlocutors’ relationship to the city, the immediate surroundings and society, as well as to each other.
Project team
The project will be carried out jointly by the Centre for Social Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary and Sigmund Freud University, Austria (Ass.-Prof. Dr. Erzsébet Fanni Tóth, erzsebet.toth@sfu.ac.at).
Methods
- Qualitative methods: in-depth individual interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation
- Participatory methods: knowledge creation in collaboration with our interviewees through audio-visual methods, including photography, filming, walking through the city together
Funding body
Project duration
1 July 2023 – 30 June 2024
Events
On 9th November 2023, researchers working on the “Arriving to the City” project met with fellow researchers in Budapest at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Following a detailed presentation of the project, the research questions, the already available results and further ideas for research, a most lively and fruitful discussion took place. The topics touched upon included general feedback and suggestions, recommendations for literature, and the viability of certain online research methods, all of which helped to define further objectives and milestones more clearly.
If you are interested in the project, please contact Ass.-Prof. Dr. Erzsébet Fanni Tóth at erzsebet.toth@sfu.ac.at.