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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores multimodal storytelling in the context of forced return movements to Ghana. How can participation based on people's modes of expression unfold in contexts of uncertainty? What are the opportunities and challenges of a collaboratively developed multi-sensory methodology?

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic research conducted in 2023 and 2024 with Ghanaians on the move, who were forcibly returned to Ghana from Germany and labelled as 'returnees', this paper gives an insight into the multiplicity of participatory methods developed collaboratively in a context of uncertainty. It invests the question: What can participatory methodology look like when it thinks from the individual needs and preferences of research collaborators, especially when they face high social and economic uncertainty?

By describing the work with three research collaborators and their different ways of storytelling - through self-written texts, biographical photographs and self-made videos - I focus on the role of different senses within participatory research. Rather than pre-determined approaches, the engagement and modes of sharing stories and thus understanding people's experiences were discussed and developed within the encounters.

As I will show, the methodological openness to different modes of expression allows for engagement with sensitive issues and experiences of inequality in contexts of crisis. This approach links the question of how we know with what we know and highlights the importance of asking with whom we know. However, this attempt towards a decolonial approach to ethnographic research comes with its own challenges and remains in tension with a 'performative tokenism'.

Overall, this contribution is an invitation to reflect on what the approach of 'taking others seriously' (Ingold 2018) - and in particular, taking others' multimodal aspirations for collaboration seriously - can add to the discussion of participatory methodology in contexts of crisis.