Moving Through Life

In today’s discussion, I aim to highlight the parallels between the experiences of migrant interlocutors in the host country and the researchers during their field experience. Drawing from the first part of my PhD title, I propose Jackson’s (2013) concept of Moveo Ergo Sum or moving through life. My work, “Moving Through Life”, argues that despite African migrants having a tumultuous relationship with the Indian locals, educational institutions, and police officers, along with robust state regulations and rising racism, negotiate challenges and uncertainties by oscillating between despair and hope, immobility and mobility, and mundanity and opportunity. While I do not intend to delve into the specifics of my PhD research, I wish to discuss what was not included in my thesis—the complex yet evolving bond between the researcher and the interlocutor. I argue that like the migrants who are my interlocutors, researchers also undergo similar journeys, manoeuvring through the complexities of their research field or what I call “Moving through the Field” and adopting creative strategies to overcome the challenges.

Finally, I urge that in this process of moving through life and moving through the field, both the researcher and the interlocutor can create small creative bonds and overcome the differences through Southerner sharedness of identity, whether based on culture, food, religion, or gender, to name a few.

Moving Through Political Realities and Structural Forces

I argue that moving through the field, political timing and structural forces should be valued more in our writing and reflection as scholars because these factors shape how anthropologists enter the field, what they can do, and what relationships they develop with the interlocutors. For instance, the relationship that African migrants had with the Indian locals, as well as the social and political system, immensely shaped their relationship with me. In Bengaluru, African migrants had to maintain a safe distance from Indian locals due to widespread racial discrimination and violence. Harmful stereotypes, homogenizing Africans as “uncultured,” “primitive”, “wild”, and “illegal”, were perpetuated by Indian officials to justify strict immigration policies.

Therefore, in India, the absence of racial discourse and acknowledgement of the rights and opportunities of the Black population shapes the researcher’s relationship with their counterparts, requiring new approaches tailored to the cultural and social challenges of Indian and African communities.

Pursuing the need for tailored, innovative methodology, I moved through the field by adopting strategies of “vulgar competency” (Garfinkel & Wieder, 1992) in an African church, arranging chairs, and configuring the stage and the mic, along with wine and bread for the post-prayer ritual. I realized that the hospitability in the church surpassed many differences in nationality, ethnicity, gender, and colour, bringing a sense of equality between the African and the Indian communities. There was a tradition where both Africans and Indians would order biryani after the Sunday masses, and Pastors and African church members wore Indian clothes like kurtas and pyjamas. Participating in this ‘bricolage’ of host and homeland created a sense of intimacy and trust I could not establish with the African migrants when I individually met them at home or in cafes.

Moving Through the Illicit and the Illegal

My second argument in moving through the field is “Moving through the Illicit and the Illegal”. To understand the issue of illegality, I decided to visit another spatial location named African Kitchens, an illegal establishment that serves African cuisine, mainly Nigerian and hosts parties and events for the African community. While the spatiality of the African Church mostly worked in my favour, the African Kitchen, frequented by traders and undocumented migrants, was a problematic methodological terrain to navigate.

Even though I realised that I was an Indian woman who was not supposed to be present in an intimate space like the African kitchen, I noticed excessive othering behaviour when I was not being offered the Kitchen menu for food and drinks. A Congolese woman, Clara, who had brought me to the African Kitchen, told me that Mark, the owner, was reluctant to serve our food to me as he has had a few bad experiences with Indian landlords rebuking him for cooking “smelly” food at home.

Besides me not being served food, my apprehensions were also amplified by tales of police raiding such places and harassing and detaining migrants. I had also heard newspaper stories of African kitchens being hubs of drug peddling and sex work.

Anthropology tends to glorify the forbidden, the hidden, and the secretive. However, we need to question whether it provides guidance on conducting ethnographic research in these contexts, particularly in relation to the global south and the interactions between different cultural groups. I did not have an answer to this question.

While initially lacking a nuanced understanding of undocumented migrants and their illicit spatial engagements, I navigated the African Kitchen by fostering a friendship with the owner’s wife, Monica. I took it upon myself to prepare an Indian meal for a select group of frequent patrons. One Friday, I bought potatoes, spices, and wheat, and spent the afternoon cooking puri and aloo tamatar (potato tomato) sabzi with Monica and Mark’s help. Although this effort did not result in everyone, including me, in their conversations, it did establish a sense of respect. On another occasion, Mark and Monica taught me to make jollof rice, Nigeria’s national dish. They did not become my confidants, but I felt seen. At that moment, that was enough for me.

While visiting the Kitchen became more and more difficult because of police busting, I realised that the “southern sharedness” of rich culinary experiences allowed me somewhat to traverse illegal spaces’ rugged and complex terrain.

Moving Through My Gender

I must confess that being a woman, I experienced unwarranted attention from many migrants even when they knew I was a researcher. From assumingly holding hands to love letters and proposals, all seemed a regular go through a few months down my field. That does not mean I did not make some very close friends and some very trusting interlocutors, but an incident or two where someone would make an uncomfortable move on me would stay with me for a long time. No one, including myself, had an answer: how am I psychologically and emotionally supposed to navigate through such feelings of apprehension and dread?   

Serendipitously, I stumbled upon a remarkable group of women from Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, and Congo DRC, which inspired me to curate a gathering of 10-12 African women from various countries. These weekly meetings extended beyond dance and music, evolving into a forum where women shared the challenges they faced in Bengaluru. Topics ranged from the fascination with their hair to the stereotypes of African women as sex workers. I realized I could also speak of my experiences moving through the field, for instance, receiving advances from men.

The enthusiasm for Bollywood dance among these women was palpable, providing an opportunity for mutual cultural sharedness. While I taught them Bollywood dance moves and introduced them to Punjabi artists like Diljit Dosanjh and Badshah, I also learned dances from South Sudan and explored Nigerian pop culture through artists like Burna Boy and Wizkid.

As a researcher adopting a lone wolf approach, striving to emulate Malinowski’s ethnographic methodology can be exhausting and disheartening. Creative endeavours like immersing in church experiences, cooking meals in illicit setups, or forming gender-based bonds to transcend national and racial boundaries are established practices in Western ethnography. However, I propose an epistemological shift focusing on “moving through the field” from a Southern perspective. This entails affective and action-based training between researchers and interlocutors, often lacking in PhD pedagogical preparation. Embracing the uniqueness of both researcher and interlocutor from the Global South can highlight new power dynamics, such as racial tensions, and foster new forms of solidarity, such as religious, culinary, and gender-based bonds. Moving through the field involves moments of mobility and immobility, hope and disappointment, ease and discomfort. To transcend Western ethnography’s insular and masculinist ideals, Southerners must explore their own cultures’ unique perspectives and shared experiences, fostering discourses that reflect their diverse viewpoints and commonalities.

References:

Garfinkel, H., & Sacks, H. (1970). On Formal Structures of Practical Actions in J. C. McKinney & E. A. Tiryakian (eds.) Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments. Pp. 338–366. Appleton-Century-Crofts.

J. Michael. (2013). The Wherewithal of Life: Ethics, Migration, and the Question of Well-being. University of California Press.

Shambhavi Bhushan completed her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Florida. She is interested in migration studies, African studies, race theory, and ethnography. Currently, she is working as an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Human Development in New Delhi, India.