Convenors
Nina Sahraoui, UVSQ–Université Paris-Saclay / PRINTEMPS, CNRS
nina.sahraoui@cnrs.fr
Edgar Córdova Morales, UVSQ–Université Paris-Saclay / PRINTEMPS, CNRS
edgar.cordova@cnrs.fr
How can ethnography account for processes that extend beyond the field while preserving the depth, specificity, and situated character of the knowledge it produces? Socio-environmental transformations, mobility and displacement, reconfigurations of the state, and forms of governance take concrete shape in particular contexts, yet point to relations and histories that extend beyond them (Feldman and Roux, 2015). Scale is therefore not merely a methodological question: it is also produced through the processes we seek to understand and the ways in which they become ethnographically observable.
The challenge is not simply to “scale up” from the local to the global, nor necessarily to multiply fieldwork sites. It requires questioning distinctions between micro and macro, local and global, centre and periphery, not as pre-given levels but as scales that are socially produced and contested (Pleyers, 2012). Margins are not simply local manifestations of structures produced elsewhere, but sites from which broader formations can be interrogated (Das and Poole, 2004; Gupta, 2012).
These questions are particularly salient in research on mobility and displacement, borders and migration governance, and socio-environmental transformations. Such processes connect bodies, households, cities, border regions, institutions and transnational spaces, while producing uneven effects across territories and populations. Researching migration trajectories and experiences as well as migration and border regimes therefore offers particularly productive terrains for examining how ethnography moves across sites and scales without presupposing their equivalence.
Scales are produced both through unequal relations of power and through ethnographic practice. Delimiting a field, following a trajectory, policy, or relationship, or bringing materials from different places into relation are analytical and epistemic decisions. Bringing different contexts into relation does not require turning them into equivalent cases. Comparison may involve tracing connections and translations, identifying resonances between distant situations, or recognising frictions and differences that resist comparison.
We invite empirically grounded contributions on mobility and displacement, borders and migration governance, across diverse geographical contexts. We particularly welcome, multi-sited and comparative ethnographies that examine how these processes connect sites and scales while producing differences, frictions and unequal relations. Rather than treating comparison and scale as methodological questions in the abstract, we ask how particular empirical phenomena challenge the boundaries of the field and the case, and what forms of comparison, generalization and theoretical production these ethnographic engagements make possible.
Open questions
- How do mobility, migration and bordering connect geographically distant sites while producing uneven effects across territories and populations?
- What does it mean to compare ethnographic cases that are historically and geographically different but connected through broader processes of migration governance, bordering or transnational diasporas ?
- How do multi-sited ethnographic fieldworks redefine analytical scales and the very boundaries of case-studies?
- How can we bring together ethnographic case studies conducted by different researchers while accounting for the researcher´s role in coproducing data and knowledge through situated and individualised engagement in the field?
- How can ethnographic comparison contribute to theoretical production without erasing the specificity of different contexts or obscuring the unequal relations of power through which they are connected?
Keywords
Ethnographic comparison, situated knowledge, Multi-sited case-studies, Scales of analysis, Interdisciplinarity
Sub-disciplines / cross-disciplinary areas
Ethnographic and Qualitative Research, Political Anthropology, Critical Geography, Migration and Border Studies, Environmental Social Sciences, State and Governance
Convenors’ bio
Nina Sahraoui is a Junior Professor at UVSQ–Université Paris-Saclay and Principal Investigator of the ERC project GENDEREDCLIMATEMIG at PRINTEMPS, CNRS. Her research lies at the intersection of migration and gender studies, focusing on borders and bordering, humanitarianism, care work, maternal healthcare, and gender-based violence. She holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University and has conducted research in Morocco, Mayotte, Ceuta and Melilla, France, and Germany. She previously held research positions at the European University Institute, the University of Galway, and CRESPPA-CNRS, where she worked on migration, gender-based violence, and migrant experiences.
Edgar Córdova Morales is a postdoctoral researcher at CNRS–Université Paris-Saclay within the ERC project GENDEREDCLIMATEMIG. An anthropologist specialising in migration and border studies, his research examines migration governance, racialization, and socio-environmental inequalities. His ethnographic work has focused on Mexico and Tunisia, exploring how bordering processes shape mobility, settlement, and migrants’ everyday lives across different spatial and institutional contexts. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from CIESAS, Mexico, and has been a SPSS Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.