The Strengths and Challenges of Cross Cultural Collaborative Field Research of Families and International Migration

• In Event: 2384 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 05. Drivers and Dynamics of Migration

Abstract

Most field researchers work alone rather than in partnership or in teams. As different field researchers have distinct strengths based on their positionality, disposition and skills, they might more productively work together, particularly if they come from different cultural backgrounds. In this article, we critically reflect on the strengths of our collaborative field research investigating how familial ties, attitudes, and obligations deter people from traveling or migrating abroad, and also discuss the challenges we have faced. As we each possess different expertise about international migration, different cultural backgrounds, and different level of familiarity with and relation to the field site, we brought distinct theoretical perspectives to the project. These perspectives complemented each other and helped us more richly theorize and test how migrant selectivity on the state and individual levels interact. Furthermore, we argue that bicultural collaborative field research offers opportunities to test the external validity of findings that interact and inform each other. We also found that we collected much complementary data because one of us was more culturally familiar with the field site and the other less, one of us emphasized what was particular and idiographic and the other what was generalizable and nomothetic, and lastly each of us had comparative advantages in terms of our positional abilities to recruit respondents and draw upon and utilize social contacts. The paper concludes by suggesting that bicultural collaborative field research can benefit tremendously from synergistic interactions between cultural insiders and outsiders, and emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the contributions made by each researcher.

Authors

• Jacob Richard Thomas, University of California-Los Angeles

• Peng Huang, Peking University