"Life stories allow us to retrace the integrality of labor and migration pathways," says Beatrice Zani, sociologist and a permanent researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

Zani says experiences and spending time with people through information conversations where she does not have a dictaphone or notebook to take notes is the best way to get into the lives and the real experiences of those people. 

"This is not something we can grasp and get out of numbers and statistics," she says. "So, qualitative research, interviews, observation – whether participant observation, in situ observation, or natural observation – help us to really grasp what’s going on here and now.”