Problematic Insiderness in Migration Research: Refugee Researcher Researching Other Refugees

Abstract

In the area of race, ethnicity, and immigration studies, there is little discussion on the insider/outsider positionality when the refugee researcher and the researched refugees commonly experience ascribed racialization by the host society. I address this lacuna by reflecting on how insider/outsider positionalities played out in all phases of the research process during a research study that explored the racialization experiences of fellow Eritrean refugees in South Africa. Although my ethnicity, nationality, common experiences with racialization, and being known to some of my study participants positioned me as an insider, to others who had never been interviewed by a researcher in the past and who did not know me personally, I was viewed as an outsider. Asymmetric power relation was also a factor in shaping the research process and the knowledge produced. Reflecting on my problematic insiderness, I argue that within the field of refugee/migration studies, commonalities in ethnicity or nationality do not automatically make a co-ethnic/co-national researcher an insider. Insider or outsider positionality emerges and is shaped during actual encounters. Insiderness is also both beneficial and problematic throughout the research process from conceptualization of the study to interpretation of data.