Exploring the lives of young male migrants through a participatory methodology: A case study of poles in Britain

Citation

Tkacz D & McGhee D (2015) Exploring the lives of young male migrants through a participatory methodology: A case study of poles in Britain. In: Bhopal K & Deuchar R (eds.) Researching Marginalized Groups. Routledge Advances in Research Methods, 14. London: Routledge, pp. 117-133. https://www.routledge.com/Researching-Marginalized-Groups/Bhopal-Deuchar/p/book/9780367598716

Abstract
Methodological nationalism is particularly apparent and especially problematic in migration research, in which research participants are typically assigned a primary subjectivity based upon migrancy. This chapter discusses the practical challenges posed by methodological nationalism when researching marginalised groups, such as migrants. It describes how to go beyond the nationalist images of normal life that portray immigrants as others as one way forward to decolonise ethnographic methods. One research by Lena, a Finnish researcher, is on the occupational subjectivities of care workers with migration background in Finnish elderly care. The chapter presents several vignettes from Peter Holleys doctoral research in which he is conducting fieldwork amongst a network of immigrants residing in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. The chapter not to focuses on the subjectivities of our research participants, but rather on the practices and processes of categorisations through which subjectivities are reproduced, contested and challenged in empirical research that is subjectification.