Animating migration journeys from Colombia to Chile: expressing embodied experience through co-produced film

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the process of co-producing an animated film about the migration journeys of Colombian women resident in Antofagasta, Chile. It first establishes the relationship between feminist epistemologies and arts-based methodologies, which hinges on embodiment. It then turns to a detailed discussion of using film co-production as a research method for accessing and expressing embodied experiences of migration. This discussion highlights how moments of discomfort (Gokariksel, Hawkins, Neubert, and Smith, 2021) experienced by the researcher motivated the search for a more collaborative methodological approach that was better attuned to lived experience. This included striving towards more inclusive practices with respect to recruitment, anonymity, and confidentiality. Moments of discomfort also revealed how care and caring responsibilities are entangled with research, and how they gender possibilities of participation and production for community co-producers and artists, as well as for researchers. Finally, through discomfort, lessons were learned about the politics of representing experiences of migration, violence, and endurance, as well as joy. The paper concludes that, whilst by no means a panacea, collaborative arts-based research methods can offer an innovative toolset for exploring embodied experience and for navigating the relational and representational complexities attendant to research.

KEYWORDS:

• Arts-based methods
• feminist methods
• migration
• embodied experience
• discomfort

Acknowledgements

My deepest thanks to Alice Volpi, animator and illustrator, and the research co-producers who made this project possible: Berna Perea A., Dalia Liseth Argüello Mosquera, Idalia Mosquera Rivera, Irene Orocollo Sardón, Ledys Medina Riscos, Luz Amparo Uribe Noreña, Rocío, Sayira, Vanessa Benitez Lozanzo, Yury Ximena López Andrade, and those who wished to remain anonymous. Thank you to Gareth Jones for supporting this project as Director of the LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre. Thank you to Cathy McIlwaine for her comments on this paper, and for the opportunity to collaborate on the special issue. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback. This research was funded by British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship PF2180074 and the LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).