The Portuguese experience in preparing the SEHEME Case Studies stories

By Anabela Mateus and Ana Cunha from Lusófona University

The aim of this text is to describe the work developed for the Case Studies booklet by the Portuguese partner, which involved several stages and faced some difficulties.

Drawing from all the preparation work developed in a first moment that included carrying out research with several objectives, namely preparing guidelines for the interviews and for writing the case studies, the actual process involved several steps.

Firstly, it was necessary to contact Portuguese institutions that work with migrants and refugees on the field, helping their integration into the Portuguese society and ask for their cooperation. These partner institutions were very helpful because they disseminated our
project and our project objectives and identified the participants that were willing to share their stories with us. This was a challenging step since many of these migrants and refugees are struggling to survive and do not have time to spare while others are very suspicious and do not want to get involved in anything.

After this, it was time to interview the participants. This was a very interesting moment in our work since we had the opportunity to finally meet with the migrants in person and hear their stories in the first person. We interviewed four people, two men and two women under 30 years of age from different social and economic backgrounds and different countries (Brazil and Serbia). These migrants had different motivations to leave their countries that included discrimination based on sexual preferences, economic difficulties, a new job, safety and even a beautiful love story. The interview step was challenging and at the same time very enriching. We know that sometimes it is not easy to make people talk about their private lives, some are embarrassed to discuss their background, others have difficulties in expressing their feelings, but when they overcome the initial shyness, we get to hear interesting stories. And so was the case with the four people we interviewed.

After the interviews, the step that followed was to write the four stories and choose the two that will be included in the SEHEME Case Studies booklet together with the stories written by the other partners.