“Have You Just Taken a Picture of Me?”: Theoretical and Ethical Implications of the Use of Researcher-Produced Photography in Studying Migrant Minorities

Abstract

This paper aims at discussing the value of researcher-generated visual methods in studying migration. It focuses on photography as a data collection method, and the problem is presented in the context of researching urban and rural arenas of exercising transnational belonging by migrants and their descendants in new and ancestral homelands. Photography is approached here as a sensorial experience mediating a relationship between the researcher and the participants. The author argues that the relationships occurring around photo-taking in the field are as important as the data collected intentionally. Moreover, the chapter discusses ethical questions prompted by the employment of visual methods, problematizing them in a context of different social, cultural and national settings. With this chapter, the author attempts to answer a question whether researcher-generated visual data can open new angles of analyses of migrants’ life-words and how the employment of visual methods can influence theoretical perspectives within migration studies.