Abstract
This thematic issue is a collection of articles reflecting on methods as border devices of hierarchical inclusion spanning migration, mobility and border studies. It maps some key concerns and responses emerging from what we call academic backstages of migration, mobility and border research by younger academics. These concerns are around (dis)entangling positions beyond Us/Them (i.e. researcher/researched), delinking from the spectacle of migration and deviating from the categories of migration apparatuses. While these concerns are not new in themselves the articles however situate these broader concerns shaping migration, mobility and border studies within specific contexts, dilemmas, choices, doubts, tactics and unresolved paradoxes of doing fieldwork. The aim of this thematic issue is not to prescribe “best methods” but in fact to make space for un-masking practices of methods as unfinished processes that are politically and ethically charged, while nevertheless shedding light in (re)new(ed) directions urgent for migration, mobility and border studies. Such an ambition is inevitably partial and situated, rather than comprehensive and all-encompassing. The majority of the contributions then enact and suggest different modes of reflexivity, ranging from reflexive inversion, critical complicity, collective self-inquiry, and reflexive ethnography of emotions, while other contributions elaborate shifts in research questions and processes based on failures, and doubts emerging during fieldwork. We invite the readers to then read the contributions against one another as a practice of attuning to what we call a ‘cacophony of academic backstages,’ or in other words, to the ways in which methods are never settled while calling attention to the politics of knowledge production unfolding in everyday fieldwork practices.
Highlights
Borders, Methods and the Academic BackstageIn their book, Border as Method, Mezzadra and Neilson (2013, p. 7) argue that “borders are devices of inclusion that select and filter people and different forms of circulation in ways no less violent than those deployedSocial Inclusion, 2020, Volume 8, Issue 4, Pages 110–115 in exclusionary measures.” In this thematic issue we are interested in how such devices entangle with the methods employed by researchers engaged in migration, mobility and border studies
The foundation for this thematic issue emerged from intensive discussions at the Nijmegen Centre of Border Research, where all three authors of this editorial are based
This needs to be seen in light of the anxieties emerging from doing migration, mobility and border research in Europe and the privileges and blind spots this entails
Summary
Border as Method, Mezzadra and Neilson (2013, p. 7) argue that “borders are devices of inclusion that select and filter people and different forms of circulation in ways no less violent than those deployed. We invite early stage academics to share tactics they adopt in shifting the gaze away from the spectacle and adopting reflexive methods to avoid reproducing the design principles of migration apparatuses and border regimes in one’s own research designs With these two dimensions (questions regarding one’s position in a wider socio-political field of struggles over what knowledges come to matter and why, and the direct links between academic work and border devices) we seek to discuss what is included/excluded and visible/invisible in and through our everyday academic work, with the purpose of starting a collective conversation; to learn from each other’s doubts, questions, struggles, discomforts and failures, rather than solely from successes and ‘products of ideas.’. By taking the reader through different scenes that entangle research fatigue, compassion fatigue and racial battle fatigue, she draws our attention to the uneven emotional geographies of migration control that researchers move in, and in turn shape
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call