Weaving narratives: Autoethnographic migration research in the making
What does it mean when the researcher includes herself and her personal experiences in academic work? Are there limitations on what researchers can and should disclose? What are the freedoms, dilemmas and constraints when weaving one’s story into the analysis, and in what ways does it affect theorizing and genre?
At this seminar on autoethnography in migration research, we discuss these and other questions. Four stellar researchers reflect upon their use of different approaches to weave in their personal narratives when analysing migration and the struggle over mobility in today's stratified world.
Programme
14.00-14.05 Introduction, Ida Marie Savio Vammen and Nauja Kleist
14.05-14.35 Migration research in the making: some reflections on autobiography and ethics in ethnographic research on cross-border marriage between Senegal and Europe, Helene Neveu Kringelbach
14.35-14.50 Intervention I, Ayan Yasin
14.50-15.05 Intervention II, Sine Plambech
15.05-15.15 Standing poetry reading, Hans Lucht
15.15-16.00 Discussion and Q&A
Hélène Neveu Kringelbach is Associate Professor of African Anthropology at University College London. Her research is concerned with the ways in which immigration policies and social change affect family trajectories and the affective relationships they maintain across space and time. Over the past 11 years she has carried out multi-sited ethnographic research on cross-border marriage, migration and transnational family relationships between Senegal, France and the UK. Currently Hélène is working on a book project, provisionally entitled ‘The love of strangers: mixed marriage, family and migration in contemporary Senegal’.
Ayan Yasin is a Ph.D.-fellow at the Department of Communication and Arts at Roskilde University (IKH). Her PhD project is about why Somali-diaspora from the Western countries increasingly chooses to migrate and resettle to Turkey. As a Somali woman of Somali descent living with and sharing” the others” local repertoire of cultural markers and identity, Ayan uses autoethnography as a methodology for operationalizing her research. She is a recipient of an Elite Research Travel Grant in 2023 and an engaged voice in public debates.
Sine Plambech is a Senior Researcher in the Migration and Global Order Research Unit at DIIS. An anthropologist and scholar of international migration, she is engaged in e.g. questions of critical migration studies, migrant sex work, and the representations of this through visual anthropology and film making. In her forthcoming ethnographic book, Sine takes the reader on a global journey into the world of sex in the age of migration. Drawing on over 17 years of ethnographic research the book explores the contemporary transformations of labor, feminism, border politics through the prisms of sex, gender and migration.
Hans Lucht is a poet and Head of Department of the Migration and Global Order Research Unit at DIIS. His research focuses on undocumented migration from Africa to Europe via North Africa, especially West African connection men and the organization of clandestine routes, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana, Niger, Libya, Italy, and Greece. In addition to this, Hans writes poetry and fiction, using insights from his research. His latest poetry collection is entitled Feltarbejde and revolves around the fieldwork encounter with African migrants in the borderlands and everyday life in Denmark upon return.
Ida Marie Savio Vammen is a Senior Researcher in the Migration and Global Order Research Unit at DIIS. She works on EU externalization practices and the multi-scalar politics of mobility that shape West Africa migration today.
Nauja Kleist is a Senior Researcher in the Migration and Global Order Research Unit. She analyses how migration is perceived, practiced and governed by different actors and the transnational engagement of diaspora groups.
The seminar was held on 24 May 2023, 14.00-16.00 in DIIS Auditorium.
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