Research in both fields of cultural heritage and migration studies provoke a range of questions, i.g. “How can an individual transfer heritage with them?”, “How to give an equal space for various heritage practices if a person is expected to be assimilated in a new country?”,  “What are the criteria of representativity to claim a right for heritage?”

Tendencies and challenges of the cultural heritage field

Cultural heritage defines the relationship of a human towards the past and future on the basis of cultural objects and sites. It exists mainly in an Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) (Smith 29), which states the attitude towards heritage as something fixed and weakly open for a change and defines the relationship of people around heritage — actors, beneficiaries and simply people interested in cultural heritage. AHD describes the authority that experts of the field hold and use to act around heritage. In this context, marginalised groups of people and minorities are designated as “beneficiaries” of those activities carried out by the same “experts” of cultural heritage. This top-down approach creates both unequal opportunities for contributions to cultural heritage (which contradicts the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and an understanding of certain vulnerable groups of people as passive beneficiaries, which resonates with the main challenges of migration research (see next section of the essay). Thus, the so-called “outsider” look on heritage is created, which was described and introduced by Susan Ashley and Sybille Frank in the work “Introduction: Heritage-Outside-In.” Even though the newest approaches suggest alternative perspectives, including human rights based vision (Bidault 75), further work on their implementations both from the academic and practical perspectives is needed. 

Tendencies and challenges of the migration research field

“Migration theory has been at an impasse for several decades. The field of migration studies has remained a surprisingly under-theorised field of social inquiry (de Haas 1).” Many considerations are based, for example, on simplified models of individual benefit maximisation, despite the fact that such an approach does not explain real migration patterns and processes.

According to de Haas (3), the main points that exist in migration studies and hinder progress in understanding global processes are as follows:

• “the ‘receiving country bias’ and the concomitant ignorance of the causes, consequences and experiences of migration from an origin-area perspective, leading to one-sided, biased understandings of migration;
• the dominance of government perspectives, ‘methodological nationalism’ and the related tendency to uncritically adopt state categories to classify migrants and migration, which often sustain distorted, ideological views on migration;
• disciplinary and methodological divides, particularly between quantitative (positivist) and qualitative (interpretative) approaches;
• the divide between the study of ‘forced’ and that of ‘voluntary’ migration; and
• the divide between the study of international and that of internal migration.”

In light of above mentioned challenges of both cultural heritage and migration research, it can be seen that there are similar challenges that address authoritarian one-sided approaches to research, dominance of state interpretations. De Haas (15) elaborates on this point, “Conventional migration theories tend to ignore five vital issues with regard to migra- tory agency. First, people’s access to economic (material), social (other people), cultural (ideas, knowledge and skills) and bodily (good health, physical condition and habitus) resources shapes their ability to move (or, conversely, their ability to stay), their preferences and aspirations (to stay or to go), their choice in terms of destinations and their ability to obtain work, housing, education and legal status while protecting themselves against abuse and exploitation.” “While the assumptions of neither functionalist nor historical-structural theories have universal value, both sets of explanations can nevertheless be useful in developing a richer, nuanced and contextualised understanding of migration processes (de Haas 9).” 

How to approach research in migration from the perspective of cultural heritage?

Intersection of cultural heritage and migration studies is not strongly established, therefore does not have clear guidelines. It might be related to the fact that the connection of both fields lay in between a variety of people’s experiences, therefore inextricably linked to feelings, emotions, personal challenges and struggles. Cultural heritage raises questions about a person’s belonging, strategies of acculturation, attitude to the countries of origin and destination. Researching these questions and receiving answers may open up new knowledge on how migration works from the point of the process itself rather than statistics and logical reasoning.

Visual methods could help to surmount the novelty of such an approach and contribute to both of these fields. In order to nudge the discussion to practise, I propose looking at one of the methodologies. In 2023, I created an event ““Others” as Creators of New Understandings of Heritage” in order to discover research methods in migration and adapt them for the intersection of cultural heritage and migration. With the help of Dr. Irma Budginaitė-Mačkinė and her research “How Transnational Mothering is Seen to be ‘Troubling’: Contesting and Reframing Mothering. Sociological Research”, we mapped out a strategy. The original methodology of this visual method belongs to Irene Levin, who aimed to reveal the hidden knowledge that everyone has, but usually does not articulate, about how they see their family. The work according to her methodology consists of three steps: (1) asking to create a list of people belonging to the family, (2) mapping out the family (individual parts of the preceding list in relation to each other) and (3) verbal interviews about the process and results. As a result, Irena Levin was able to look at the family from different angles.

The format of adjusted methodology as follows:

1. Creating a list of images that a person identifies with the countries of origin, transit and destination. 
2. Combine the objects in groups based on what the objects/traditions/situations/other categories that a person identifies. It is possible to take an additional step and ask a person to emphasise the items that are mostly relevant to them. 
3. Verbal interview about the process and results. 

Such an approach challenges the field of cultural heritage and suggests a fresh look at migration studies. Speaking about cultural heritage, the new perspective would require a shift from focusing on past and future to present, from criteria of evaluation to multilayered experiences, from building a national idea to building connections between people (Waterlon, Smith 13, 16). The key to use of cultural heritage for researching migration is to consider heritage as a process rather than a result (Harvey 2). 

References

Ashley, Susan, and Frank, Sybille. Introduction: Heritage-Outside-In. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2016, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13527258.2016.1184704.    

Bidault, Mylène. Heritage and Participation as Matters of Human Rights. Europa Nostra Finland. Forssa Print, 2018, https://www.europanostra.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2018-heritage-is-ours.pdf.

de Haas, Hein. A theory of migration: the aspirations-capabilities framework. Comparative Migration Studies, 2021, https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40878-020-00210-4.

European Humanities University. ““Others” as Creators of New Understandings of Heritage”, 2023, https://en.ehu.lt/events/ehu-in-partnership-with-ehcn-and-nordic-summer-university-will-hold-a-seminar/.

Harvey, David. Heritage Pasts and Heritage Presents: temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2001. p. 320, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13581650120105534.

Juozeliūnienė, Irena, and Budginaitė, Irma. How Transnational Mothering is Seen to be ‘Troubling’: Contesting and Reframing Mothering. Sociological Research, 2018. p 262–281. https://doi.org/10.1177/1360780417749464 

Levin Irene. Family as Mapped Realities. University of Trondheim, 1993, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192513X93014001007.

Smith, Laurajane.Uses of Heritage. Routledge, 2006, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203602263. 

Waterlon, Emma, and Smith, Laurajane. There is no such thing as heritage. Taking Archaeology out of Heritage. Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009, http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/503707.