The research was based on semi-structured life stories and on fieldwork carried out in Volos, Albania and Bulgaria. In all we have collected sixty interviews with male and female migrants from Albania and Bulgaria. The interview schedules were diversified according to thematic field and age group.

The research team selected its interviewees from networks it had established in the city of Volos during previous research and through new contacts developed in the course of the fieldwork research. Researchers expanded these networks using the snowball method. Informants were selected on the basis of the following criteria:

• Age, gender and country of origin
• Relevance of the individual's personal experience to one of the three thematic subfields
• Social and cultural background

We also conducted seven video-taped interviews in which the informants commented on photographs from their personal photo albums.