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Researching Queenila, Care Work On the Move: Multi-Sited Ethnography and Transnational Families

Mon, August 14, 4:30 to 6:10pm, Palais des congrès de Montréal, Floor: Level 5, 513E

Abstract

I argue that migrants engaged in transnational practices can participate in multi-sited research through co-constructing a transnational field for ethnography. I explore multi-sited ethnography as a method and methodology in an increasingly globalized world wherein migration and separation are social facts in the histories of families in the Philippines. I review the debates in multi-sited ethnography and posit that it is a compelling methodology in investigating transnationalism as it reflects the social realities and epistemology of both migrants and their families in their homelands. Based on qualitative data gathered through multi-sited ethnography on Filipino transnational families, I provide evidence that the transnational social process of “multidirectional care” emerge when the Filipino transnational family is the unit of analysis through an ethnography of multiple sites, instead of migrants and families left behind as mutually exclusive. Finally, I reflect the implications and challenges of multi-sited ethnography on the research participants and ethnographer involved in the study.

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