Dwelling in Transition
An autoethnographic reflection on researching migration while living it
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v13i2.1911Keywords:
reflexivity, displacement, home, diaspora, autoethnography, India, Memory, embodied methodology, masculinity, internal migrationAbstract
This article explores the convergence of academic research and personal history through an autoethnographic account of conducting a PhD on internal migration and masculinity in India, while simultaneously navigating transnational academic migration as an Indian scholar based in the United Kingdom. Drawing on feminist and sensory methodologies, this article examines how the researcher’s lived experiences of childhood mobility, linguistic fragmentation and cultural fluidity shaped her approach to fieldwork and interpretation. By reflecting on the embodied dimensions of researching masculinity within feminised domestic spaces and considering memory and displacement as both data and method, this article argues for a situated, affective epistemology of migration. It suggests that the act of researching migration in itself is a recursive, migratory process, one that blurs the lines between inquiry and inheritance, between distance and belonging.
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