It has been seven years since the so-called refugee crisis in Europe, andwarfarecontinuestoforcepeopletoleavetheirhomelandstosettleelsewhere.AsIamwritingthis,inAprilof2022,RussiantroopsaretearingapartUkraineand the lives of its people, forcing many people to flee their homes. Forcedmigration is not temporary phenomenon, and historical, ethnographic andcity museums will –one wayor another –continueto address it throughtheirwork. Museums are already increasingly taking migration as a focus, and indoing so, they help contextualise the experiences and lives of migrants whohave moved to countries in the Global North. The refugee protection crisisof 2015 led to a large number of participatory projects in museums in whichpractitioners engaged forced migrants to contribute their experiences andheritage. These projects led to a lot of research into participatory work withforced migrants (Sergi 2021; Ünsal 2019; Vlachou 2019; Vlachou 2017) and toinsights into museums and migration more generally (Porsché 2019; Labadi2018; Johansson and Bevelander 2017; Whitehead et. al. 2015; Gourievidis2014), yet very few of these studies took the perspectives and experiences ofthe participants into account. This observation shaped the premise of thisproject: through conversations with practitioners and former participants ofmuseum projects, I sought to learn about the outcomes for the individualsas well as for the institution. Conversations and related literature introducedme to the possibility that in some ways, these projects may have had negativeconsequences as well as positive outcomes for the participants. With that inmind, I started this research as an evaluation process, with a focus on thedifferent aspects of museum work that might need to be reconsidered.During my research project, I was based at the Museum EuropäischerKulturen – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Museum of European Cultures –Berlin State Museums,referred to hereafter as the MEK),which also providedone of my case studies. I undertook work as a curator, engaged in strategy meetingsandbecamepartoftheteam,whilstcriticallyassessingthemuseumand its work for this project. The museum became a site for participantobservation,allowing me to also see and experience some of the very practicallimitationsfacedbypractitionersonaday-to-daybasis.Italsomeantthatthismuseum, as a site of one of my case studies, was most closely analysed. Withaccess to all documents and photographs from the project, I gained a muchmore detailed overview than was possible for the other case studies. Thisframed my research and its scope, which will be discussed in the following sections.