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The present article explores 'free' wild-berry picking in Sweden, as experienced by Thai migrants. Thai women with permanent residence permits in Sweden pick and sell wild berries to earn extra income during the summer holidays. They also invite seasonal migrants who provide the wild-berry industry with berries, but who have no formal employment. This private form of organising berry picking can be understood as a strategy, in that women with heavy social and financial responsibilities have found a way of maintaining the social reproduction of their Thai families and helping them earn important additional incomes.

By addressing a case of data collection strategies applied in research on Thai migration to the Swedish wild-berry industry, this article argues for how a feminist approach based on care and concern for research subjects both safeguards ethical concerns and promotes good knowing. The data collection procedures were designed in a step-by-step manner, including the research subjects as much as possible at different times and in different ways in an attempt to create preconditions for a more inclusive production of knowledge. In-depth interviews, participant observation, photo documentation and group interviews were used, which facilitated the possibility to understand the content and meanings of wild-berry picking from the workers' points of view. Through prolonged contact, including repeated encounters and dialogue with research subjects, in-depth knowledge was produced concerning Thai migrations to Sweden, as migration was set in relation to the migrants' life courses and living conditions.

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