Migration and the Politics of Methodology : Doing Fieldwork, Decentring Power, and Foregrounding Migrants’ Perspectives

This book examines the politics of fieldwork and the challenges of researching migrants constructed as outsiders both nationally and transnationally, showing how interdisciplinary, self-reflexive, fieldwork-based approaches can provide insights into the ways in which which migrants take part in producing their transnational worlds.

This volume examines the politics of fieldwork and the challenges of researching migrants constructed as outsiders both nationally and transnationally. Based on research with undocumented migrants, temporary workers, refugees, international students, and those who, having received citizenship status find their lives to be discursively and legally restricted, it shows how interdisciplinary fieldwork-based approaches can provide detailed accounts of migrants’ voices and their conditions of existence, offering insights into the ways in which they understand and take part in producing their transnational worlds. Applying critical, self-reflexive methodological approaches that challenge assumptions about who has the authority to produce knowledge and and what types of knowledge have the authority of truth, Migration and the Politics of Fieldwork will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, geography and communication and cultural studies with interests in research methods and migration.