Calendar interviewing: a mixed methods device for a biographical approach to migration

ABSTRACT

Biographical interviews are used in life stories research to elicit narratives on retrospective views of the self and the social world. Life calendars are used in life course research to collect standardized data in various domains of individual lives. Both instruments deal with autobiographical memory, which is a critical aspect for data quality and accuracy. This article presents a mixed methods use of life calendars and life stories for researching on migration called the Calendar Interviewing Device (CID). The CID consists of a life calendar for characterizing trajectories and collecting life stories through open-ended interviews. An analysis of 12 interviews examines the features of this particular research device, namely its flexibility on adapting to different interviewees, the strategies they used for recalling events and locating them in time, and the richness of the data obtained with the CID.

KEYWORDS:

• Calendar interviewing device
• life calendars
• life course
• life stories
• migration

Acknowledgements

The Haute École de Travail Social de Genève and the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences (University of Porto) provided the material conditions for writing this article. The authors would like to express their thanks to Patricia Gomes and Marcelo dos Santos Mamed for their collaboration on the data processing, as well as to the anonymous reviewers, to Jean-Marie Le Goff, Luís Fernandes, Claudio Bolzman, Guy Elcheroth, Rosita Fibbi and Gaële Goastellec, for their comments on the manuscript.

Funding

This publication benefited from the financial support of the Bureau de l’Égalité of the University of Lausanne and of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research NCCR LIVES (former project IP2—from youth to adulthood: descendants of immigrants insertion in the Swiss society).

Notes

1. The use of the word “device” distinguishes from a single research instrument. As we show, “calendar interviewing” can be considered a “device” because it applies different methods and research instruments.

2. Some researchers who use calendars suggest the annotation of historical cues in calendars (Axinn et al. 1999; GRAB 1999) depending on the goals of the research. In our calendar, we chose not to include these annotations to avoid constraints in the interviews that were not central to the research goals.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ana Barbeiro

Ana Barbeiro is a PhD candidate at the University of Lausanne in social psychology of the life course. Since graduating, she has been teaching qualitative methods, social, and development psychology at several universities. Her research interests focus primarily on life course and biographical approaches to deviant behaviors, social justice, identity, and migration.

Dario Spini

Dario Spini is a full Professor at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in social psychology of the life course. For the last 30 years his research focused on social gerontology, identity, and health processes. He is currently Director of the Swiss National Centre for Competence in Research LIVES, a 12-year interdisciplinary (sociology, psychology, demography, economy, statistics) research program on vulnerability across the life course regrouping more than 150 researchers.