Towards a "Level Telling Field on Migration and a New Narrative of Successful Integration" brings together the worlds of NGO work, scholarship and science, advocacy and art. Our goal is to overcome the rhetoric of crisis in current migration discourses and to establish a new narrative on migration and successful integration.

Successful collaboration begins with a shared language which, like all languages, evolves and continuously adapts. Hence the need for a living glossary, which is continuously updated and revised to reflect our progress and start new conversations. This joint effort of contributors from several teams ensures, on the one hand, terminological and conceptual coherence across not only our theoretical approaches, but also the qualitative case studies and quantitative research conducted in OPPORTUNITIES. On the other hand, our glossary facilitates communication between the academic side of the project and the fieldwork conducted by NGOs, uniting our teams working from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ghana, Italy, Mauritania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, and Senegal.

We believe that interdisciplinarity works best when all contributors agree on key concepts. While the terms and definitions provided here establish common ground across disciplines, the cross-references create a conceptual geometry which challenges traditional boundaries between theory and practice, the social sciences and the humanities, research and field work. In doing so, it launches the fruitful dialogue we seek to initiate on local, national, and transnational levels.

The glossary includes key terms from discourses on migration, integration, narrative, and media representation that will be used frequently in OPPORTUNITIES. In addition to these thematic areas, the glossary provides relevant terminology from corpus linguistics, quantitative media studies, and narrative theory. This wide semantic field gives shape to our two core concepts, cross talks and level telling fields. The glossary not only provides definitions of these terms, but also discusses their origins and briefly sketches their historical development, citing the relevant literature and sources. It thus also functions as a cross-disciplinary literature survey, making scientific and scholarly knowledge available in an easily accessible format. A complete list of references to narrative theory, cultural studies, migration and mobility studies, quantitative media studies and corpus linguistics can be found in the select bibliography, which is a foundation for our work in OPPORTUNITIES.

 

The entries in the glossary are divided into different categories, depending on the type of term and its relevance to the OPPORTUNITIES project. The glossary distinguishes five categories:

Category A: Standard definitions of technical terms routinely used in research.

Category B: Reconceptualizations of existing scholarly terms and concepts that will be developed or redefined in the OPPORTUNITIES project.

Category C: New concepts, often based on conceptual transfer or analogies.

Terms in category B and C represent significant theoretical, conceptual, or methodological advances.

Category D: Established legal terms, often with alternative definitions.

Category E: Humanitarian definitions of key concepts, which may deviate from the usage of identical terms in category D.

Some terms may belong to more than one category. Entries on migration and refugees, for example, juxtapose legal and humanitarian definitions, highlighting the project’s differentiated understanding of these terms, which seeks to integrate African as well as European perspectives.

 

Each entry in the glossary gives the name(s) of its author(s) at the end. The authors’ names are abbreviated as follows:

AR: Anna Ruelens, research manager at HIVA – Research Institute for Work and Society at KU Leuven, Belgium. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/hiva

AT: Aly Tandian, Professor of Sociology at the University Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis, Senegal. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/germ

BBK: Birgit Bahtic-Kunrath, research fellow at ifz, Salzburg, Austria. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/ifz

CG: Carolin Gebauer, postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Narrative Research and the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Wuppertal, Germany. Editor of the Glossary. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/buw

CS: Clemens Sedmak, Professor of Social Ethics at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana and Chair of the Academic Board of ifz, Salzburg, Austria. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/ifz

DC:  David De Coninck, postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Media Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/ims

DK: Dora Kostakopoulou, Professor of European Union Law, European Integration, and Public Policy at KU Leuven, Belgium. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/hiva

FK: Fabian Kos, research fellow at ifz, Salzburg, Austria. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/ifz

IN: Ides Nicaise, Emeritus Professor with formal duties at HIVA – Research Institute for Work and Society at KU Leuven, Belgium. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/hiva

LH: Leen d’Haenens, Professor of Media Studies at the Institute for Media Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/ims

MC: Marco Caracciolo, Associate Professor of English and Literary Theory at Ghent University, Belgium. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/gent

MD: Michel Debruyne, Senior Advisor at Beweging vzw, Brussels, Belgium. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/beweging

MM:  Mahmood Messkoub, senior research fellow at the International Institute of Social Studies at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/eur-iss

MMu: Mariam Muwanga, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Wuppertal, Germany. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/buw

RS: Roy Sommer, Professor of English Literature, Cultural Studies, and Media Studies at the University of Wuppertal, Germany. Editor of the Glossary. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/buw

SA: Simona Adinolfi, joint Ph.D. candidate at the Departments of English and American Studies at Ghent University, Belgium, and the University of Wuppertal, Germany. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/gent

SG: Silke Goubin, senior research associate at HIVA – Research Institute for Work and Society at KU Leuven, Belgium. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/hiva

SM: Stefan Mertens, postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Media Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium. https://www.opportunitiesproject.eu/ims