The uncomfortable truth about luck: reflections on getting access to the Spanish state deportation field

Abstract

Methodological accounts often deliberately omit the role that luck plays in getting access to challenging research sites. Indeed, it sounds unprofessional and feels unsatisfying to attribute luck to our work. ‘I hope to get lucky’ will not go down well with most supervisors or as part of any grant proposal. We should, however, consider that luck literally stands for the probability that certain events might take place under certain circumstances. Reflecting on our luck can therefore help us to expound important features that structure the probability of getting access. In my case, getting access to the Spanish state deportation regime could never be anticipated or secured simply in line with the importance of my project or my academic credentials. Obtaining formal approval from the Spanish authorities proved to be impossible, but I eventually achieved access in a messy way that involved many informal interactions and much uncertainty. Accounting for my months‐long attempts, I show how luck sensitised me to officials’ ample discretionary power and pervasive sense of impunity in producing an image of ‘the state’ as unpredictable and opaque. This image induced the strong sensation that my fieldwork crucially depended on the whims of particular officials.

Organisational ethnography as a project of unease

“…They not only appear as untrue but also deeply frustrating to all of those who have used ethnographic methods to research organisations. In practice, access negotiations are often continuous and messy, the researcher highly dependent on their interlocutors (Borrelli, this issue) – and indeed, their efforts to both “get in and get on” in the field depend, in the end, as much on sheer luck as on meticulous preparation or ethnographic expertise (Kalir, 2019).…”

The absent presence of the deportation apparatus: methodological challenges in the production of knowledge on immigration detention

“…While negotiating a research permit to the sites of migration governance requires considerable effort (Bosworth and Kellezi 2017; Esposito 2017; Lindberg and Borelli 2019; Rozakou 2019) and can be dependent on voluntary work (Hasselberg 2016), legal assistance (Le Courant 2013) or luck (Kalir 2019), getting access is only the first step. Notwithstanding restrictions in conducting research, fieldwork inside immigration detention can even produce diverging interpretations, depending on the methodological choices, research questions, circumstantial factors, timing and length of the fieldwork, and the case selection.…”

Between suspicion, nicknames, and trust—renegotiating ethnographic access with Swedish border police

“…The Moomins “test” was not the only testing which functioned as a rite of passage that came with a status change (Chughtai and Myers, 2017) but it was one not created by the officers and instead naively introduced through me by letting them take the personality test, and somehow, it eventually facilitated a difficult process of sense-making in a lucky way (Kalir, 2019). Further, because the officers readily accepted my nickname, it highlighted that Little My's characteristics, to some extent, already fit my personality (Jones, 2014, p. 120; Goffman, 1989).…”