Introduction to Immigrant Detention in Poland. Theory and Methodology

The book is addressed to everyone who is interested in researching any type of total institutions. It will be useful for those researchers who work in hard-to-reach areas. Its readers will include academics working on the methodological concerns of the Social Sciences and all social actors in and around the guarded centres.

The book consists of four chapters. The first one contains information about the topic which introduce the project's characteristics, and, at the same time, provide the background for further theoretical and methodological reflection. The second chapter contains a list of research problems and questions, a presentation of the philosophical worldviews (research paradigms) of the project team who guided the planned research and which resulted in the adoption of research strategies compatible with them, and, consequently, procedures and techniques for obtaining source materials and their analysis. In the third chapter, we present a set of terms, ideas, and concepts which inspired the project team as useful tools for describing and analysing the phenomenon under study. The fourth chapter is a kind of ligature that binds together all the previous findings, it is a summary of integrating ideas, concepts, as well as the adopted research procedures and techniques.

Autorentext

Dariusz Nied wiedzki, associate professor at the Institute of European Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. His scientific interests include research on social identity, migration, social memory, social and cultural changes in the integrating Europe, and the relationship between culture and politics. Jacek Schmidt, associate professor at the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznä. His areas of interest are: European migrations, methodology of the social sciences, border studies, stereotype- and myth-creating processes, and antisemitism.