Appendix: Backstage, Notes on Methodology and Ethics

The methodological note revisits the main challenges of doing research with refugees. This chapter reflects on the difficulties in gaining access to refugees and their living environment, in building mutual trust as well as in managing expectations emerging from complex and unbalanced fieldwork relationships. Drawing from field experiences, the chapter elaborates on researcher’s positionality in terms of gender, age and sexuality. It narrates significant episodes of conducting covert research in an illiberal political environment, avoiding authorities’ scrutiny in refugee camps and deconstructing refugees’ self-representations. Then, the notes discusses ethical issues concerning the researcher’s accountability towards his\her informants as well as the moral and political role of research in the larger debate on asylum.