Theoretical and Methodological Position, Project Participants and Empirical Material

The results presented in the paper comprise the outcome of five projects carried out in the years 2000–2012. The inspiration for the preparation of a comparative analysis and ‘going across’ the acquired data was the similarity between the semantic categories ‘extracted’ from each subsequent portion of the material collected in the selected projects. This led to the formation of a collective, qualitative case study in the sense coined by Robert Stake (2005), in which I set the goal of monitoring the process of redefining the meaning that the narrators (affected indirectly or directly by contemporary migration processes) attribute to identity and dignity. Both these categories are the result of the analyses and interpretation of the gathered empirical material, and not concepts imposed a priori. They are also hulled from the entire collection of meanings assigned by the interlocutors to the experiences of their life and their selected “biographical episodes.”

Thanks to a vast collection of categories proposed by the project participants, the analysis of the input material allowed me to build a continuum of meanings (conditions), indicated by them as crucial in the process of redefining their identity inextricably interwoven with a sense of dignity. This continuum is going to be presented at the end of this text.