This paper presents a case study to understand how migrant communities embrace and connect with their host city’s heritage. It discusses the MEMEX project, which seeks to give migrant communities a voice through an advanced ICT tool on a smartphone, aiming to capture and mobilize migrants’ intangible heritage to foster social integration. The research question addressed is how migrant communities connect with their host city’s heritage and how they talk about it.
The study utilized photo-elicitation and short textual descriptions to prompt participants to connect their stories and memories to the hosting city and culture. A photo challenge was conducted, where participants took photographs of sites in Lisbon and provided a textual description for each photograph. Thematic analysis was used to organize and describe the data, identifying patterns within the studied transcripts. The findings revealed that participants addressed memories of their daily lives in various ways, highlighting a strong relationship with music and expressing difficulties encountered as immigrants in their host countries.
The study also highlighted the importance of symbolic interactions in opening up conversations and connections among migrant communities. It identified areas for future research, such as reconsidering the structure of the task and the co-creation activity. It provides valuable insights into the experiences and perspectives of migrant communities in relation to their host city’s heritage, offering implications for the development of collaborative storytelling tools related to cultural heritage.
