Telling asylum stories differently: arts-based methods and vignettes of SOGIE asylum claims in Sweden

This paper advances the case for arts-based methods as a theoretically grounded and practice-led approach to qualitative research with vulnerable populations. Seeking asylum based on sexual orientation and gender identity expression (SOGIE) provides an instructive case for this methodological argument, specifically because SOGIE claims are rooted in non-visible, trauma-inflected and embodied identity traits that challenge formal credibility assessments. Drawing on an arts workshop conducted with SOGIE asylum seekers in Sweden, I demonstrate what creative practice makes possible that conventional oral and narrative qualitative methods cannot: attention to the embodied, affective and non-verbal dimensions of experience that resist standard forms of articulation. Using a qualitative, arts-based method grounded in feminist geopolitics, I analyse three vignettes to show how the process of making artwork afforded participants a different register of attention and expression. Each vignette demonstrates a distinct dimension of what arts-based methods reveal: the outward-facing and collectively framed narrative; the stoic, embodied flashbulb memory; and the traumatic recall triggered through the act of making. The findings suggest that creative practice returns agency to participants in how their asylum stories are told and nuanced, and that the vignette form is particularly well suited to capturing this generative, process-oriented quality of arts-based inquiry.