'Security is no Accident: Considering safe(r) spaces in the transnational migrant solidarity camps of Calais’ (original) (raw)
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In this article, I reflect on how paying attention to the flow of affect between participants and the researcher during interviews unveils knowledge that highlights inequalities and advances a decolonial approach. I specifically discuss the capacity of productive discomfort in revealing valuable insights about the lived experiences of forced migrants and in uncovering knowledge that might otherwise stay hidden. In doing so, I demonstrate how my positionality as an 'insider Other' and my approach to interviews as affective encounters open up profound layers of experiences and sense-making. Expanding upon this, the study presents a unique framework that combines the method of interviews, conceptualized as situated affective encounters, with an affective-discursive analytical framework that views affect as intertwined with meaning and discourse. This fusion emphasizes the significance of emotions as a source of knowledge in the research process. The study highlights how this approach contributes to the reflexivity turn in migration studies and elucidates how the combined framework can guide researchers to work with discomfort. This can be a source of insight, as demonstrated by reflecting on my own research on the lived experiences of Eritrean migrants. I use several excerpts from my data to demonstrate how viewing emotions as meaningful leads to nuanced interpretations, thereby enriching insights into the living conditions of those who arrived as forced migrants.
Between an Activist and Academic: Contested (Re)positioning of Ethnographers in Refugee Research
The Palgrave Handbook of Social Fieldwork, 2023
An unsettled contestation between activist standpoint and academic positioning has long been an issue of powerful debate in social research (see, Grey 2013; Flood et al. 2013; Choudry 2020; Leal et al. 2021). It brings certain fundamental methodological questions in social search on board including subjectivity versus objectivity, emic versus etic, outsider versus insider, native versus foreigner, 'self' versus 'others' and so on. Ethnographers frequently struggle to uphold a sensible equilibrium of a dichotomized positioning between attachment versus detachment, association versus disassociation and engagements versus disengagement with the object of study while doing fieldwork (see Uddin 2011). It turns more critical when it comes to the question of refugee research since refugees are often depicted with various negative connotations by the host society (Uddin 2012), but the researchers tend to stand by the refugees due to perceived vulnerable conditions of refugeehood (Uddin 2022b). This contested representation takes shape and is articulated amidst the dynamics of refugee management. For example, many human rights organizations, refugee rights activists and different rights bodies often help the refugees living in the place of migration in very inhuman conditions with poor housing, inadequate food and water supply, unhealthy sanitation, and the lack of many
kritisk etnografi: Swedish Journal of Anthropology, 2021
This article presents a reflective account of the research process related to my longterm ethnographic fieldwork on activism in Malmö-an important site of pro-migrant and antiracist activism in Sweden-between 2013 and 2016. Employing ethnographic methods in the field of political activism raises questions about positionality, impact, possible overidentification with the people or groups studied, and distinctions between theory and action and epistemology. Being an insider to the field geographically (as a resident of the city and neighbourhood in focus) and ideologically (leftist politics), was highly advantageous for gaining access to the field and in building trust and close communication with radical activists. At the same time, my closeness raised challenges. Examples discussed in the article are related to the academic-activist relationship with a specific focus on negotiating positions in the field, and the ethical concerns related to studying a politically charged field. These reflections aim to offer transparency in terms of the impact these aspects' have had on my research, while at the same time being aware of the limitations of reflexivity.
Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 2018
The relationship between activism and social research constitutes a longstanding source of debate. In the mental health and disability fields, this tension has specific connotations: User-survivor activism is premised on the priority of first-hand experience over detached, 'objective' knowledge. Personal experience is the foundation for the specific and irreplaceable perspective that users and survivors bring upon issues of interest. Considering this, how do user/survivor activist groups relate and collaborate with academically oriented researchers who lack a first-person encounter with psychiatry? Drawing on my participant observer role in a user-led activist group in Chile and through three 'reflexive vignettes', in this paper, I retrospectively trace how my interests and presence were received, negotiated and contested by users and non-users in the field. The findings describe three episodes in which my own status-and that of others participating 'in the name of research'-was interrogated. Although the group was open to anyone, boundaries emerged in response to specific demands from external agents interested in participating. A sense of 'personal connection' with the aims and nature of the group was one of those boundaries. In parallel, professional members had their own way of signalling their legitimacy, usually through a self-critical, anti-professional and anti-academic attitude. Doubts about my commitment to the group emerged as fieldwork progressed. The vignettes map the tensions that I experienced, the efforts I made to navigate them and the way they affected my disposition towards the group. The article argues that researcher's reflexivity towards their own situation constitutes a primary source of information in the context of emergent, user-led advocacy efforts. Attention to how these groups accept and/or resist academic agendas provide insights into the solidarities and affinities that shape activist efforts. More than a pre-defined, 'ethico-political' disposition what's required from researchers interested in this field is reflexivity to navigate the interface between academia and activism, honesty about the limits of academia and openness towards the contingent outcomes of an encounter with activism.
Being an "insider" and keeping one's distance: Fluid positions and dilemma in ethnographic fieldwork
The article demonstrates how relationships between the respondents and the researcher were developed while conducting an ethnographic research in a sub-district in the northern part of Bangladesh, where people were protesting the establishment of an open cut coal mining in their vicinity. During the field work it was experienced that the position of the researcher which was not fixed but multiple and shifting had greatly contributed in the relationship building. The field experience played an important role not only to gain ethnographic materials but also to understand motivations and perceptions of human security of the protesters of the social movement. However, fear of mass displacement among locals, an important motivation of the protesters to join the social movement, had also thrown the researcher in the dilemma of balancing engagement and distance with the research community. The field experience reinforces that each anthropologist should be viewed in terms of shifting identifications amid a field of interpenetrating communities and power relations (Narayan 1997:23). The experience also converses with the engagement of anthropologists Svensson, 2006) in public debate and advocacy.
Human Affairs, 2021
This article describes experiences of long-term ethnographic fieldwork on disobedience, disloyalty and dissensus among women in public space in selected (post-)Yugoslav cities. I focus on the opportunities and pitfalls of feminist ethnography and methodology in the context of positionality, engagement and solidarity as essential elements of research into activist networks. In order to problematize the emerging field positionalities and solidarities, I examine the "militant ethnography" methodological approach (Jeffrey Juris), which seeks to move beyond the divide between research practice and politically engaged participation. It is about being among and within the activist network and adopting many identities and roles by constantly shifting between reflective solidarity and analysis. In trying to shed light on the critical self-reflective research process of embodied understandings and experiences, I focus on ethnographic practices embedded in transnational "crowded fields" that encompass the dynamics of relationships and dependencies between knowledge producers.
The Difficult and Hopeful Ethics of Research on, and with, Social Movements
Social Movement Studies, 2012
This article explores a number of key questions that serve to introduce this special issue on the ethics of research on activism. We first set out the limitations of the bureaucratic response to ethical complexities in our field. We then examine two approaches often used to justify research that demands time consuming and potentially risky participation in research by activists. We label these approaches the ethic of immediate reciprocity and the ethic of general reciprocity and question their impacts. We note, in particular, the tendency of ethics of reciprocity to preclude research on ‘ugly movements’ whose politics offends the left and liberal leanings predominant among movement researchers. The two ethics also imply different positionalities for the researcher vis-à-vis their subject movement which we explore, alongside dilemmas thrown up by multiple approaches to knowledge production and by complex issues of researcher and activist identities. The overall move to increasing complexity offered by this paper will, we hope, provide food for thought for others who confront real-world ethical dilemmas in fields marked by contention. We also hope that it will encourage readers to turn next to the wide range of contributions offered in this issue.
This paper discusses ‘insider’ identity based on experiences as both social researcher and housing practitioner, drawing on Norbert Elias’s ‘involvement and detachment’ theory. Examples from doctoral research are used to illustrate where ‘involvement’ influenced social research processes. ‘Involvement’ was highlighted by reactions during research processes and this account describes transitions towards a more ‘detached’ perspective. This is not to discredit emotional reactions in research stages, or to suggest that we should seek to just manage those feelings. Instead, embracing and confronting reactions helped generate substantive findings and a ‘critical eye’ beneficial for developing more sophisticated explanatory insights. Understanding ‘involvement’ is an ongoing process that the researcher constantly refines and adapts through an experiential approach to social researching. Those complex and challenging processes touch on important issues about what constitutes knowledge, what it means to ‘do’ social research and how it is possible to ‘be’ self critical.
INSIDER-OUTSIDER DYNAMICS AND IDENTITY IN QUALITATIVE STUDIES OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, 2023
The scholarly conversation about insider and outsider positionality in observational research is long, rich, and often contentious. Debates about the benefits and challenges of studying sites where researchers share insider identities with participants, in particular, have yielded insights about power, inequality, and the uniquely relational character of observational research. In this chapter, we enter this conversation by relating our experiences with outsider-ness and insider-ness while studying social movements. We draw on two ethnographic case studies of social movement organizations within higher education settings. We identify some of the challenges faced while qualitatively studying identity-based movements embedded within institutions, specifically (1) being mindful of and negotiating the impact of researcher identity and how it relates to those of the subjects; (2) determining one's level of participation within the movement being studied; and (3) securing research approval and access to data. We offer suggestions for how researchers might think through these challenges in their own work.