Voicing the global immigration crisis: Documentation and analysis of immigrant stories for social change

The project employs diverse cross-disciplinary perspectives and methods to document, understand, and improve immigrant adaptation. The project will first use the innovative digital storytelling technology designed and built by the University of Minnesota Immigration History Research Center to gather data from recent immigrants in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Berlin, Germany—in two countries currently experiencing unprecedented levels of new migration. The research team will then use quantitative psychological methods to code these accounts, along with more than 200 existing U.S.-based immigrant stories already collected, to analyze immigrant adaptation experiences and to design interventions to increase positive immigrant adjustment. The project includes an international symposium bringing together scholars from a wide range of disciplines to study immigrant adaptation through digital storytelling in both the U.S. and Europe. The impact of this research will lie in the development of cross-cultural understandings of immigrant adjustment and in providing a platform for marginalized communities to share their stories that potentially can help others.