Research spotlight

I鈥檓 currently working on a longer methodological reflection on the process of creating and developing the comic; exploring what it means to publish 'beyond words' in the context of urban research, and what we can learn from more visual and narrative-driven approaches.

Miro Born

For each half-term of the year, we showcase one piece of work from our faculty or research students.

From Research to Comic: Miro Born’s Exploration of Social Mobility

Together with illustrator Irem Kurt, Anthony Miro Born, ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Methodology, created a . We spoke to him about his approach to the project.

MiroBorn_Foto_comic
Miro, what inspired you to turn your research on social mobility into a comic?

For a long time, I’ve been interested in more creative ways of sharing research findings. A comic felt like an exciting format because it allows you to reach beyond academic circles and speak to people who might not usually read a journal article.

But perhaps more importantly, I wanted to do something that felt more open than a policy paper or report, where researchers are often expected to provide clear answers and implications. In contrast, I see the comic as a medium that creates space for reflection – something that, even if just for a few minutes, might encourage readers to think more critically about social mobility and its complexities. It was also an experiment in storytelling: a way to bring some of the voices, tensions, and contradictions I encountered during fieldwork to life in a form that’s both accessible and thought-provoking.

Can you tell us a bit about the research itself – what was the focus and what did you find?

The foundation and inspiration for this comic is research I conducted between 2019 and 2023, during my PhD at the Department of Sociology at 禁漫天堂. I wanted to explore the ideal of social mobility in marginalised neighbourhoods from multiple perspectives. As part of the project, I conducted over 60 interviews with so-called upwardly mobile individuals, their family members, and long-term residents of stigmatised neighbourhoods in Germany. What emerged was a picture of ambivalence, contradiction, and complexity. In particular, I focus on the divisive moments of moving ‘up’ and ‘out’.

Social mobility doesn’t just open doors – it can divide neighbourhoods, communities, residents and family members by giving some people a ticket to move up, based on individual competition and achievement, while leaving others ‘behind’. It divides by classifying residents of marginalised neighbourhoods into distinct moral categories. It divides by shaping people’s sense of belonging and imposing demoralising and humiliating symbolic baggage on them. And, indeed, even among those on the supposed sunny side of the process, social mobility can leave a sense of internal division.

What did that format allow you to do that a traditional article wouldn’t?

The obvious answer is that it allows you to engage with a broader audience. But I think it goes beyond that. Thinking about your research through the comic format pushes you to reflect on how you portray people and places beyond words. For instance, when it comes to marginalised or stigmatised neighbourhoods, it raises important questions: What do you show? What do you leave out? With their word limits and formal tone, academic articles often struggle to convey the complexity of these places. But even a small comic like ours can offer space for more layered and nuanced narratives. Yes, there are serious challenges - housing shortages, social tensions, economic struggles. But these areas are also full of life: they’re people’s homes, places where you find solidarity, pride, and moments of care. A comic lets you find a tone that sits somewhere between stigmatising and romanticising.

But how did you approach turning complex ideas like social mobility into visual storytelling?

We centred the narrative around the comic’s main character, Elin, as a way of weaving together key themes and lived experiences of social mobility. Her story draws on recurring moments that came up in many of the interviews I conducted during the research. For instance, Elin’s sense of stigma about where she comes from, or the emotional tension she feels when returning home to visit her parents, are based on real conversations. At the same time, I felt it was important not to portray Elin’s experience as purely alienating or negative. There’s ambivalence, yes, but also moments of pride and warmth!

Elin is, of course, a fictional character, and some scenes are slightly heightened for narrative effect. But from what I’ve heard so far, many people who have experienced upward social mobility in marginalised neighbourhoods recognise aspects of their own journey in the story we tell.

miroborncredits
What was the collaboration with the illustrator like throughout the project?

The collaboration with the illustrator, Irem Kurt, was one of the most exciting parts of the project. Right from the start, she was genuinely enthusiastic and really connected with the vision I had in mind. I brought the research, the themes, and a rough sense of the narrative – but translating that into visuals was like learning a completely new language. It was a constant back-and-forth throughout the process, especially as we were working within a limited number of pages. And I think Irem did an amazing job bringing my slightly bumpy narrative to life – after all, I’m a researcher, not a comic writer.

But it wasn’t just the two of us. The project really benefited from a wider network of support: friends and two former interviewees gave feedback on earlier drafts, Will helped with the translation from German to English, and the Reprographics team at 禁漫天堂 did a fantastic job producing a print version that I think looks brilliant. It truly was a collaborative effort – and that’s what I enjoyed most about the whole process.

What is the plan to do with the comic?

Originally, we imagined the comic with a specific focus on Year 12 and Year 13 students in schools. But early on, we decided that we wanted something that could appeal to a much wider audience – something that would be accessible and engaging for a range of readers. We wanted it to be short enough to be approachable, available in both English and German, and visually appealing, but still rich in detail and layered references for those who wanted to look a little closer.

We've now printed over 800 copies and are in contact with several foundations and charities in Germany and the UK who are interested in using it to stimulate more critical conversations about social mobility. A number of teachers have also expressed an interest in reading it with their students to open up discussions about class inequality, stigmatised neighbourhoods and social justice. At the same time, we have sent it out to sociologists and geographers to use as a teaching resource in university seminars. And beyond that, there are just lots of people – whether they've experienced upward mobility themselves, lived in such neighbourhoods for a long time, or are simply interested in the subject; who have told us they've found it a meaningful and thought-provoking read.

What do you hope people take away from this comic?

In public and political discourse, social justice is often equated with social mobility – as if promoting individual upward mobility is the primary way forward. The comic challenges that ideal by showing that the story is far more complex, both for those who ‘move up’ and for those often portrayed as having been ‘left behind’.

I hope readers come away with a more nuanced understanding of social mobility – both as a lived experience and as a political objective. In the end, we deliberately leave it open how the main character understands social mobility, inviting readers to pause and reflect on what it might mean for them too…

What’s next for you and this project?

I’m currently working on a longer methodological reflection on the process of creating and developing the comic; exploring what it means to publish 'beyond words' in the context of urban research, and what we can learn from more visual and narrative-driven approaches.

In addition, my book on social mobility, titled Social Ladders, is under contract with Oxford University Press and is hopefully due out next year. It’s less illustrated than the comic, of course, but it picks up many of the same themes and dives deeper into the complexities of social mobility and urban inequality from a sociological perspective.

Thank you, Miro.

Printed versions available upon request.

Miro’s research on social mobility in marginalised neighbourhoods:

Born, A. M. (2024). The Sociological Review 72(2), 394-411.

Born, A. M. (2023). Urban Studies 60(3), 537-553.

Kin Majorities: Identity and Citizenship in Crimea and Moldova - Eleanor Knott, Assistant Professor in Qualitative Methods

In this feature, Eleanor Knott talks us through the research behind her book, Kin Majorities: Identity and Citizenship in Crimea and Moldova. The book was published in 2022 and explores the (geo)politics of identity and citizenship in Moldova and Crimea in the wake of Russian annexation.

Leveraging a bottom-up, interpretive and comparative approach, Kin Majorities analyzes data collected from ordinary people in Crimea and Moldova in 2012 and 2013, just before Russia’s annexation of Crimea, to provide a crucial window into Russian identification in a time of calm.

KinMajorities-Eleanor's book cover

Hi Eleanor, thank you for taking the time for the interview today. First of all, did the research evolve from its starting point? If so, in what ways?

My research transformed during two key moments. Before I went to Crimea, I had read a lot that left a certain impression on me about what Crimean society would look like: pro-Russian, pro-Russian nationalist. Critically, I had assumed that Russian citizens would be present in every aspect of Crimean life, as if everyone was, or wanted to be, a Russian citizen.

Arriving in Crimea, I remember doing a preliminary interview and asking about “the Russian question”. Those I was speaking with immediately told me: there was no “Russian question”. Moreover, this “question” made no sense. There was no – or at least very little – contestation. I also quickly learnt, during this preliminary interview and others, that Russian citizenship was by no means as possible as other scholars had assumed and written about.

Returning after my first trip to Crimea, I almost entirely had to reconfigure my project. While I knew that Romanian citizenship was prevalent in Moldova, I had assumed the same in terms of Russian citizenship in Crimea, as the previous literature had suggested. This was what I wanted to explore and explain. How could I study something that, for all intents and purposes, seemed absent in Crimea? I decided to go ahead with exploring the answer to this question. I also expanded to explore other potential, and potentially absent, ways of engaging with Russia in Crimea, via other non-citizenship rights and benefits. Further, I wanted to explore if, how, and who was engaging with these policies.

The second moment of transformation came later and was more of a realisation. In particular, it was a lesson in listening and understanding participants in Crimea. Again, I had assumed certain things, that Russian ethnic identification in Crimea would be strong, uncontested, and a majority sentiment. This analysis is often taken-for-granted in how people understand Crimea, not least since Russia’s annexation in 2014. Except, many people I interviewed resisted identifying not only as ethnically Russian, but in ethnic terms in the first place. These individuals put their identification as politically Ukrainian, and as Ukrainian citizens, front and centre. Listening, learning, and understanding allowed me to understand, conceptualise, and write about this resistance and articulation of identification in ways that had been previously missed in analysing Crimean society.

Could you tell us about research ethics in the production of this research?

To speak about the ethical challenges and questions of this project, it is necessary to trace back in time, first, to when I conducted the fieldwork of this project in Crimea and Moldova in 2012 and 2013 and, second, to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

In 2012 and 2013, when I was conducting fieldwork in Crimea and Moldova – primarily interviews – both sites were relatively banal contexts. That is to say, while neither fully democratic nor autocratic, neither were sites of conflict or potential violence. There was no evident “danger” to me as a researcher. Neither did the questions that I asked nor the way that I approached participants present risk to participants, whether political, physical, legal, economic, psychological, or cultural forms of risk. Rather, the way in which participants engaged with me signalled their willingness to discuss questions of identity and citizenship and sometimes bemusement with my questions and interests. “Why are you interviewing me?” some would ask, or “what can I usefully tell you?”.

But, I do not want to be blasé about the ethical challenges and questions that I navigated during fieldwork. These issues, among others, I consider at length in the book’s . Although not common, some participants would half-joke that I might be a “spy”, whether for my own government or theirs. As such, I was conscious of avoiding the gaze of the state and not appearing to have any connections with the state, especially the security services. More common would be questions about what brought me to Crimea or Moldova and who was funding me. Facing these questions, I had to answer diligently and justify my intentions and my funding situation honestly, and my specific – and to many participants – peculiar fascination with identity and citizenship in these cases.

In contrast to these fieldwork challenges of ethics, the greatest ethical challenge posed by this research in Crimea came after I left the field when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Noting these new ethical challenges led me to write an article on ethics “”. In this article, I outline and discuss the unexpected ethical challenges that can emerge after we have left the field.

I was provoked to think about and address these issues because of how Crimea so radically changed because of Russia’s annexation between February and March 2014. After annexation, it no longer became possible to collect the kind of data that I had just eight months before. The questions that I was asking spoke directly to events that foregrounded annexation – questions of what Russia meant in Crimea, how Russia was understood, how and if participants identified as ethnically Russian or with Russia, and how and if participants were or wanted Russian citizenship. At least until Russian forces leave Crimea, it would be foreseeably too dangerous for researchers to ask such questions and for participants to answer them.

What were the key findings or outcomes of this piece of work? What might be the broader implications of this research?

The book tries to do a few things. First, it argues for a new concept that allows us to study where states engage with cross-border co-ethnic communities that are local majorities (kin majorities) and not local minorities. Second, it shows the possibility of an interpretive, qualitative, and comparative approach – exploring how communities and individuals in Crimea and Moldova engage with Russia and Romania (respectively) and how this plays out for meanings of identification and practices of citizenship. I use a comparative lens to explore convergences and divergences within and between these two cases. Third, I offer a theoretical approach for studying the intersections of identity and citizenship.

The main findings are of variation: boundaries of identity, such as ethnic identity, are not neat and mutually exclusive. For example, people rarely identified as either Moldovan or Romanian in Moldova. Rather, they identified plurally, and these identifications were infused with different meanings. I also argue there is variation in terms of how meanings of identification intersect with practices of citizenship: citizenship has to be both desirable and legitimate, for example, in the case of Moldova.

Crucially, I also describe how Crimea was passportized after Russia’s annexation, not before. Before annexation – when I conducted fieldwork in 2012 and 2013 – Russian citizenship was seen both as undesirable and illegitimate for those who had no interest in it (the majority), and as inaccessible for the minority who did want it. This minority were local pro-Russian nationalists and activists that were, unsuccessfully, lobbying Russia for citizenship. They were more successful in lobbying for financial support.

The main takeaways stem from these findings. First, in order to understand identity and citizenship, we need to study plurality rather than putting things into neat boxes and assuming that this neatness can simplify the complexity of a messy social world in a meaningful or useful way.

Second, qualitative in-depth research is important to counter existing assumptions and to do so in an evidenced way. For example, we often assume that Russia’s annexation of Crimea can be explained by pro-Russian sentiment in Crimea prior to annexation. I show how this was not the case. Russia, particularly the Putin regime, were not seen as legitimate actors. The small minority that did see Russia as legitimate were pro-Russian activists. We often read and try to analyse Crimea through this small minority. But, there is far more to the story. Moreover, no one – not even this small minority – saw territorial reconfiguration as possible or desirable; everyone I interviewed supported territorial status quo and saw Crimea as legitimately governed by Ukraine.

So, political events can change. And we need to be equipped to understand them, theoretically and empirically, rather than work with assumptions that only tell a part of the story.

Finally, what future projects are you working on?

My work in Crimea prompted my fascination with questions of ethics. I have several published articles on and the . I am also currently working on a project with Denisa Kostovicova that investigates how ethics is reported in published articles.

But, I’m also committed to being a researcher of identity and citizenship, both in post-Soviet space and beyond. Following Brexit, I became interested in how questions of identity and citizenship were being discussed and experienced by EU citizens in the UK. More recently, with Jelena Dzankic (EUI) and Szabolcs Pogonyi (CEU), we won a to investigate how citizenship might be affected by democratization and democratic backsliding in central and eastern Europe.

Finally, in terms of the next big project after Kin Majorities and in the shadow of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine, I’m beginning to explore ways to examine the effects of the war on neighbouring states, such as Moldova.

Find out more about Miro Born

Explore other publications from our department

A comic felt like an exciting format because it allows you to reach beyond academic circles and speak to people who might not usually read a journal article.

Miro Born