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

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 what types of knowledge have the authority of truth, Migration and the Politics of Methodology will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, geography, and communication and cultural studies with interests in research methods and migration.

Kirsten Emiko McAllister, Professor, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University

Ayaka Yoshimizu, Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Asian Studies, The University of British Columbia

Daniel Ahadi, Senior Lecturer, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University