Gender, racialisation, and border regimes: reflections on social positions and positioning in research with young people on the move

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article starts from our experiences as two Western women of Black mixed-race background, undertaking fieldwork among unaccompanied young men on the move in Europe. We add to scholarship on ethnographic accounts of encounters. We do this by reflecting on how our positionality affected the research process along often taken-for-granted social categories and markers of sameness and difference, as they related to our fieldwork and the space created between us and participants. We analyse the ways in which power is infused along multiple intersecting axes such as gender and race, and is imbued with movement in that space, helping people to feel, among other things, safe and unsafe, located and dislocated, and visible and invisible. We find that the social positions and positioning that emerged were tied into vulnerabilities related to gender and age, legal status, dimensions of race, class, and specific histories and imaginaries. We also show how performativity, shifting boundaries, and othering came into play and shaped bordering practices and a sense of belonging.