“Can you recommend a critical reading on the concept of going native?” – This seemingly simple question from one of our students during a seminar of educational science on ethnographic research alerted us to the fact that we were unable to find critical literature on the concept of going native (which describes the researcher’s adaptation to what is being researched). Instead, we only found literature that reproduced the so-called “risk” (Breidenstein et al. 2015, p. 109) that ethnographic researchers might become ‘too similar’ to the field they are researching. Given this circumstance, we decided to write a paper ourselves in which we critically examine methodological manuals and our own research practice in the context of migration and refugee studies (Plöger & Runge 2021). In our talk, we will focus on three main aspects:
1) We discuss (post)colonial entanglements in ethnographic research and explore the question of what knowledge is made relevant in migration research.
2) By critically reflecting on our own positionalities as ethnographers in migration research, we question how we can responsibly deal with the knowledge, perspectives and voices that we encounter in the research process and how postcolonial discourses and knowledge can be integrated into the research process in order to disrupt colonial practices and the continuous reproduction of hegemonic knowledge.
3) We ask ourselves how we can bring our experiences into our teaching and engage in dialogue with our students, recognizing that they can bring important perspectives, as the example of the beginning shows.
First, we will introduce the problem that prominent methodological manuals on ethnography and (reflexive) grounded theory still contain and reproduce concepts such as the going native (Breidenstein et al. 2015) and the adventure narrative (Breuer et al. 2019). Both of these concepts stem from colonialism, when Europeans colonized territories and ‘researched’ them, which formed the basis of the legitimization of colonial practices such as exploitation, harassment, and genocide. Nevertheless, we consider methods of both ethnography and reflexive grounded theory suitable for investigating social action – especially in migration research. How then, can we use these methods responsibly without falling prey to (post)colonial entanglements?
Given this question, in a second part, we address our own involvement in the research process. As ethnographic researchers, we actively produce and construct the data. This calls for a special reflection on our role as white researchers with German passports, on the knowledge we make relevant and the voices and perspectives that are (not) incorporated in our research. By giving very concrete examples form our own research processes, we discuss potentials as well as challenges and failures of ethnographic research in migration research. We search for alternative ways of producing knowledge such as strategies of subversive listening (Castro Varela & Dhawan 2003) and authorised writing (Kaltmeier 2012; Rufer 2012). We explore the methodological possibilities of a critical ethnography in a reflexive relationship to (post)colonial traditions without denying the limitations of overcoming global asymmetrical power relations.
In a third part we look at our teaching: We discuss how to teach ethnographic research methods without reproducing postcolonial entanglements or at least aim to confront them. We advocate for making these very entanglements transparent and discussing them productively with students. Nevertheless, we also need to address students who have not yet had contact with postcolonial theories. As concepts such as research-based learning become increasingly relevant, we believe it is necessary to equip students not only with research methods but also with critical reflexivity. Taking them along on our own learning process and seeing them as a serious reflection is a way to make our teaching authentic and productive.
