European migration research is dominated by its focus on the lives of migrant families in their respective host countries. By contrast, empirical studies that specifically investigate the preparation process before migration are rare. This is the focus of the present project, which focuses on families who are planning to leave Greece due tothe financial crisis. The project raises the following research questions: - How do subjects appropriate biographically the economic crisis (Tsiolis, 2006)? Which biographical resources are activated in order to articulate the perspective of migration as a strategy of coping with the effects of the crisis? - Which discourses and causal schemes are invoked to legitimize such a choice in terms of narrative? - To what extent and through which rhetoric and narrative techniques does the prospect of migration appear either as a “forced displacement” or, conversely, as an “opportunity”? - How do subjects thematically organize the preparation period as well as the domestic negotiation and dynamics in terms of narrative? - During the decision making process, what is the apparent role of the children’s future prospects with respect to the acquisition of a proper education and, therefore, their social advancement? The project utilizes the biographical approach i.e. narrative biographical interviews and biographical analysis(Tsiolis,2012; Siouti, 2013;Rosenthal, 1995). The research design, the methodological choices, and the initial findings from the analysis will be discussed during the presentation.

Rosenthal, G. (1995). Erlebte und erzählte Lebensgeschichte: Gestalt und Struktur biographischer Selbstbeschreibungen. Frankfurt/Main, New York: Campus. Siouti, I. (2013). Transnationale Biographien. Bielefeld: transcript. Tsiolis, G. (2012). Biographical constructions and transformations: using biographical methods for studying transcultural identities. Papers. Revista de Sociologia, 97(1), 113–127. Tsiolis, G. (2006). Life histories and biographical narrations. Biographical approach in sociological qualitative research (published in Greek). Athens: Kritiki.