Migrants’ Agency: A Re-Articulation beyond Emancipation and Resistance

Abstract

ABSTRACT In our fieldwork, we frequently encountered forced migrants who articulate discourses that engage in the hierarchization, essentialization, and othering of other migrants. This led us to interrogate our positioning as researchers vis-à-vis our informants: by endorsing the language of (un)deserving migrants, were some of the informants exhibiting “false consciousness”? Is the researcher’s role to uncover a “true consciousness” and correct such ideological “confusions”? What would this imply for our understanding of migrants’ agency? The researcher’s positionality can lead to projecting one’s political subjectivity onto migrants at the risk of dismissing certain narratives as misguided. Rejecting the explanation of a self-deceived migrant consciousness and challenging the transcendent positioning of the researcher, we propose a re-articulation of the concept of agency in order to engage migrant voices from an immanent and non-prescriptive positioning. We argue that migrant expressions of agency are pragmatic attempts to re-appropriate norms within a constraining social context.