The Journeys Project began as a multi-year, multi-country qualitative study led by Kimberley Wilson, documenting the financial journeys of migrants around the world. That work generated hundreds of stories, reports, financial biographies, maps, and artwork—valuable records of human experience that remain essential even as large-scale data collection has concluded.
Today, the Journeys Project continues with the same spirit and ethics that guided its founding: research that is lean, respectful, and useful. We honor participants’ contributions by ensuring their stories remain active, relevant, and generative for new scholarship, teaching, and public understanding.
Why We Do This
Migration is one of the defining realities of our time. The experiences captured through the Journeys Project offer insight into how people navigate borders, markets, families, and futures. Our mission is threefold:
- Highlight Powerful Research
The original data and outputs are not archives to be shelved—they are living resources. We make them accessible for scholars, teachers, and students so the lessons and insights they contain continue to shape how migration is understood. - Engage Students as Active Learners
Students are invited to explore, analyze, and write with this material in a low-stakes but high-quality environment. Whether producing financial biographies, legal commentaries, or thematic essays, students learn by doing: grappling with complex material, making sense of it, and finding their own voice in scholarship. - Invite Analysis with New Eyes
Novice students often notice what experts overlook. Their writing may not be polished or comprehensive, but it reveals questions worth asking and highlights gaps in research. By responding to these student commentaries with references to existing scholarship, we foster dialogue across levels of expertise and create a dynamic repertoire of ideas for future research.
How We Work
The Journeys Project is guided by a “no waste” research philosophy. This means:
- Lean methods. We keep research as non-intrusive as possible, avoiding unnecessary extraction from participants.
- Full use of contributions. Every interview, insight, and story is treated as valuable, used in multiple ways—reports, biographies, teaching materials, commentary prompts.
- Reciprocity. We strive to give back by turning participant stories into tools for learning, policy reflection, and scholarly engagement.
Looking Ahead
In addition to highlighting existing research and student commentary, we host interviews with experts and provide curated scholarship to extend the conversation. Our aim is not to critique student work but to enrich it—connecting their observations to broader debates and providing pathways for deeper exploration.The Journeys Project remains a collaborative space where students, scholars, and practitioners engage migration not only as a field of study, but as lived experience that shapes communities and futures.