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Paper short abstract:

Our ongoing research program conducted in Laos experiments innovative forms of knowledge mobility across social/cultural boundaries. This is a creative space negotiated in an authoritarian environment born from a plurality of social ties and the social production of an enacted reflexive approach

Paper long abstract:

An ongoing research in Laos interrogates the links between mobilities, intimacies and infectious vulnerabilities (MIGRLAO-IRD/CRF/EF). It documents the biographical journeys of women and men who have joined peri-urban areas of industrial production in order to work in textile factories, construction sites or restaurants both in Laos and in neighboring countries.

This is a multidisciplinary community-based research program that experiments various innovative forms of knowledge mobility. It involves the participation of stakeholders (donors, developers and practitioners), community actors, activists, researchers and students at each step of its implementation: project and research protocol design, data production, results restitution and transfer of knowledge. Each is invited to turn one's gaze on a specific issue, to plan his/her field investigations in an already familiar space and where his/her own social network can be mobilized.

The paper retraces this experience by paying particular attention to the specific conditions of knowledge mobility across social and cultural boundaries and to the encounters between development and scientific research domains. This is a creative space negotiated in an authoritarian environment. This space is born from a plurality of social ties and the social production of an enacted reflexive approach imposed by the anthropological practice itself and inspired by the professional and personal trajectory of the author.

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