Initially, in order to get a broader idea of the research topic, we studied the available bibliography on issues of gender and migration.

The findings of this study can be found in the literature review section. Then we studied and indexed the transcribed interviews of migrant men and women from Eastern Europe already contained in the life stories’' archive of the Social Anthropology Laboratory. In this way, it was possible to attempt a first analysis of migrant men and women's life stories and to trace significant theoretical topics in relation to the migration experience. This helped us formulate some first research questions and prepare ourselves for the second phase of the project's conceptualisation.

This phase lasted from March to April 2004.