Introduction: Stranger, Guest, Researcher – A Case for Domestic Ethnography in Migration Studies

Abstract

AbstractBeing a guest in the home of someone else is a meaningful experience in several ways, including the scope it gives for an ethnographic understanding of people’s life conditions, routines and emplaced forms of homemaking. This introduction is an invitation to appreciate the potential of home visits and stays, particularly in research on migrants and refugees, to appreciate both the infrastructural aspects of one’s dwelling conditions and the underlying lived experiences. Home visits, possibly as part of broader research strategies, help to situate people’s identities and narratives in different and more or less unequal household arrangements, at certain points of their biographical, housing and migration trajectories. Methodwise, we discuss the negotiations of roles and identities, as guests and researchers, that are inherent in this fieldwork option, with the attendant relational implications and ethical dilemmas. This overarching discussion paves the way for the case studies presented in the book, across different target groups, locations and scales.