Methodological Quilts: Political Transnationalism as History of the Present
Abstract
Population sub-recordings, silence(s), and distrust are among the many challenges faced when approaching the study of migration qualitatively. These are more notorious when the focus is set on political migrants – their transnational practices and framing process. Which sources to collect and mobilize? What methods appear as more appropriate to interrogate them? As a research subject, political transnationalism in contexts of marginalization and high distrust, calls for a multidisciplinary approach given the assortment of sources that are difficult to identify by a lack of classification (archives), as well as low levels of trust (individual participants) and of visibility (associations). The study of political transnationalism calls for the mobilization of all possible sources – giving equal importance to the written, the oral, and the observed. Drawing from evidence from the study of Colombian political migrants in France and the United States, this paper illustrates how this is possible through the lens of the history of the present.
Origin : Publisher files allowed on an open archive