Migration has become a topical theme both in academia and in public discourses across the media which have contributed to create a highly political and visual 'migrant subject'. However, the highly mediatized figure of the migrant has left crucial aspects of migration underrepresented and unrecognised. What is normally concealed and left to the margins of public debate is the individual experience of the protagonists, their imaginative lifeworlds and the complexity of their stories. This practice-based research has centred its inquiry on the relationship between the lived experiences and the imagination of past, present and future existential possibilities, by engaging three Egyptian migrants through the creative processes of theatre improvisations, storytelling practices, participatory photography, collaborative filmmaking and animation. It recognizes the fundamental role that imagination and future existential possibilities play in people’s perceptions of reality, in their decisions and actions, and finally in the way they narrate their experiences. In order to better understand how individuals make their choices, interact with each other, understand themselves and the world around them, I have argued that we need to take into account their biographies and imaginative inner lives as the ways people retell their stories allow space for contradiction, feelings of ambivalence and uncertainty, unlaced and unfinished thoughts and existential dilemmas. Imaginative realms of existence are ever-changing and ungraspable, posing a challenge to conventional methodologies in the social sciences which rely heavily on observation, interviews and text. The thesis is divided into two parts. By using the ethnographic material that emerged during fieldwork and from the creative processes, in the first part I look at the role imagination and the future play in Ali’s, Mohamed’s and Mahmoud’s relationships to their origins, and to their decisions and experiences of illegally crossing the Mediterranean Sea in order to reach Milan (Italy). The second part describes and reflects upon the performative and audio-visual collaborative practices that involved my participants in producing their own narrations and theoretical reflections on their experiences, aspirations and memories. It is thanks to the ‘subjunctive possibilities’ enabled by performative improvisations, creative storytelling and the animation that my participants and I could explore their mnemonic and imaginative processes. Finally, the thesis concludes by arguing for social research to engage participants in more collaborative and creative practices in the study of migration, as a necessary way of involving the protagonists in producing the questions and counter-narratives that reclaim their acts of struggle and their creative imaginative abilities to contrast objectifying political discourses and exclusionary legal and bureaucratic procedures.

A dissertação investiga possibilidades formais de articulação entre universos pessoais e processos históricos no campo da realização documentária em primeira pessoa. O ponto de partida são materiais e procedimentos advindos de um documentário de longa-metragem que atualmente desenvolvo, intitulado Bem vindos de novo. O filme aborda as experiências da minha família na imigração de nipo-brasileiros para o Japão, conhecida como \"fenômeno decasségui\". Nele, busco articular as experiências pessoais e familiares com aspectos mais amplos desse acontecimento histórico e social, de proporções internacionais, que atingiu, e continua afetando diretamente, cerca de 600 mil pessoas. Abordo três procedimentos formais empregados no filme: (1) a utilização de fotografias domésticas; (2) a elaboração da narração em voz over; (3) o emprego de filmagens históricas realizadas por Hikoma Udihara, colonizador e cinegrafista pioneiro da imigração japonesa no Brasil. Através do mapeamento de possibilidades formais relacionadas aos procedimentos em questão, busco identificar e analisar um conjunto de conceitos, de instrumentos críticos e teóricos, úteis para se pensar a articulação entre o íntimo e o histórico, o pessoal e o social, em documentários na primeira pessoa; em diálogo constante com aspectos concretos da realização cinematográfica. / This master\'s thesis investigates formal possibilities of articulation between personal universes and historical processes inside the first person filmmaking practice. The bases are materials and procedures related to a feature documentary film that I am now developing, called Welcome Back, Farewell (Bem vindos de novo). The film addresses my family experiences in immigration of Japanese-Brazilians to Japan, known as \"dekassegui phenomenon\". In the film, I try to articulate personal and familiar experiences with wider features of this historical and social event of international proportion, which reached, and still concerns directly to six hundreds thousand people. Three formal procedures of the film are covered: (1) the use of domestic photography; (2) the elaboration of the voice over narration; (3) the usage of historical footage produced by Hikoma Udihara, colonizer and pioneer amateur filmmaker of the Japanese immigration in Brazil. Through the organization of formal possibilities related with the previous procedures, the aim is to identify and analyze a group of concepts, of critical and theoretical devices, useful to think the articulation between the intimate and the historical, the personal and the social, within the first person documentary; in frequent contact with concrete features of the filmmaking practice.

A dissertação investiga possibilidades formais de articulação entre universos pessoais e processos históricos no campo da realização documentária em primeira pessoa. O ponto de partida são materiais e procedimentos advindos de um documentário de longa-metragem que atualmente desenvolvo, intitulado Bem vindos de novo. O filme aborda as experiências da minha família na imigração de nipo-brasileiros para o Japão, conhecida como \"fenômeno decasségui\". Nele, busco articular as experiências pessoais e familiares com aspectos mais amplos desse acontecimento histórico e social, de proporções internacionais, que atingiu, e continua afetando diretamente, cerca de 600 mil pessoas. Abordo três procedimentos formais empregados no filme: (1) a utilização de fotografias domésticas; (2) a elaboração da narração em voz over; (3) o emprego de filmagens históricas realizadas por Hikoma Udihara, colonizador e cinegrafista pioneiro da imigração japonesa no Brasil. Através do mapeamento de possibilidades formais relacionadas aos procedimentos em questão, busco identificar e analisar um conjunto de conceitos, de instrumentos críticos e teóricos, úteis para se pensar a articulação entre o íntimo e o histórico, o pessoal e o social, em documentários na primeira pessoa; em diálogo constante com aspectos concretos da realização cinematográfica. / This master\'s thesis investigates formal possibilities of articulation between personal universes and historical processes inside the first person filmmaking practice. The bases are materials and procedures related to a feature documentary film that I am now developing, called Welcome Back, Farewell (Bem vindos de novo). The film addresses my family experiences in immigration of Japanese-Brazilians to Japan, known as \"dekassegui phenomenon\". In the film, I try to articulate personal and familiar experiences with wider features of this historical and social event of international proportion, which reached, and still concerns directly to six hundreds thousand people. Three formal procedures of the film are covered: (1) the use of domestic photography; (2) the elaboration of the voice over narration; (3) the usage of historical footage produced by Hikoma Udihara, colonizer and pioneer amateur filmmaker of the Japanese immigration in Brazil. Through the organization of formal possibilities related with the previous procedures, the aim is to identify and analyze a group of concepts, of critical and theoretical devices, useful to think the articulation between the intimate and the historical, the personal and the social, within the first person documentary; in frequent contact with concrete features of the filmmaking practice.