The ForMOVe 2 Project: “Stay return or move on: Comparing the life strategies of forced migrants in the transit countries of Colombia, Jordan, Mexico and Turkey” is a joint research project between the Faculty of Social Science at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the Institute for Latin American Studies (LAI) at Freie Universität Berlin. It will run from December 2022 to December 2025.

The DFG funded project will analyze and compare live strategies of forced migrants in transit countries. It will look at the construction of biographical projects of forced migrants and decision-making processes of mobility and in its interrelation with various factors ranging from sociodemographic and setting-specific to time-related factors. We understand projections of future life based on current social entanglements, past experiences, socialized values and attitudes, specific preferences, expectations, and resources. The project follows a transnational focus and comparison of life strategies of migrants in four transit countries Turkey and Jordan, Mexico, and Colombia, respectively the two regions of Middle East and the Americas.

It will employ diverse quantitative and qualitative methods such as ethnographic visits to immigrant shelters and organizations, narrative biographical interviews with migrants, and the conduction of a standardized longitudinal survey.