Researching Queenila and living in-between: multi-sited Ethnography, migrant epistemology and transnational families

Abstract

ABSTRACTI explore multi-sited ethnography as a method and methodology in an increasingly globalized world wherein migration and separation are social facts in the histories of families in the Philippines. I argue that multi-sited ethnography and migrant epistemology is a compelling methodology in investigating precarity under neoliberalism as the method mirrors the social realities both migrants abroad and their families in their homelands. In this paper, I argue that the study of transnational life and families requires the participation and epistemology of migrant women that includes an interrogation of the political and economic institutions that pulls families apart. Based on qualitative data gathered through multi-sited ethnography on Filipino transnational families, I provide evidence that the transnational social process of ‘multidirectional care’ emerge when the Filipino transnational family is the unit of analysis through an ethnography of multiple sites, instead of migrants and families left behind as mutually exclusive. Throughout the paper, I reflect the implications of multi-sited ethnography on the research participants and ethnographer involved in the study.