Safe Places of Integration: Female Migrants from Eurasia in Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract

The article works with (Re)Searching Needs and Hope through Visual Storytelling which is the author’s audiovisual research project containing interviews with migrants of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. The same set of questions was asked of people with different nationalities to identify the similarities and differences within their integration process; the questions focused on the socio-cultural aspects of integration. The article compares the participants’ answers regarding what helped or hindered their integration experience. The article relates these outcomes to what contributes to a migrant’s feeling of safety in a new home country. The main concepts used are “integration,” applying differentiating levels of integration experience, and “safe place,” which originated from Yi-Fu Tan, but have been interpreted through a wide socio-cultural lens in the conclusion.

Keywords

• migration
• integration
• home
• safe place
• lisbon
• portugal