Constructing Processes of Involuntary Global Migration: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

Involuntary (or forced) global migration has been bringing together people of different cultural backgrounds, including migrants and those hosting them. In this introductory article and the articles which follow, we focus on the meanings constructed of involuntary migration processes, aiming to better understand these processes according to those who participate in them (both migrants and hosts). We locate ourselves as social constructionist researchers and clinicians, interested in language use and its consequences in social interactions such as interactions between involuntary migrants and hosts. We view language as central to the communicable sense we make of involuntary migration. As clinicians, we view discourse and conversation as central to our work and use discursive research methods to explore how our conversational partners’ cultural preferences are recognized and negotiated in the turn-by-turn of our conversations. We close by introducing articles that, from different theoretical and clinical perspectives, focus on the discursive, cross-cultural negotiated conversational process between involuntary migrants and the local communities into which they integrate.