Bringing Conviviality into Methods in Media and Migration Studies

Abstract

‘Conviviality’ conveys a deep concern with how we understand modes of human connection and possesses a renewed charge in the context of current migration. Within the extant literature, however, there exists little thinking on the methodological possibilities of conviviality: What can conviviality do, or rather, what can researchers do with it in efforts to understand the connections between media, mediation, and migration? How can researchers across disciplines do conviviality as part of an interventionist research praxis? In this chapter, I draw on a research project in which conviviality becomes a prism to understand media practices related to migration and refugees, and I discuss how the concept is best appropriated as a methodological tool in research designs informing current and future activist-based studies.