Paper short abstract:

Nightworkshop methodology unveils the close relationships between the visual and touch senses in ethnographic fieldwork. The innovative portfolio of tools captures hidden experiences of migrants working all night (MWAN) and reaches out to various audiences via mixed audio-visual outputs.

Paper long abstract:

This methodology unveils the close relationships between the visual and touch senses in ethnographic fieldwork. The innovative portfolio of tools captures the hidden experiences of migrants working all night (MWAN). The mixed audio (podcast) and visual (documentaries) outputs reach out to various audiences responding to such representations of research findings classically presented in written formats. From collection to dissemination, the nightworkshop research design includes a set of core components needed to make visible the experiences engrained into the participants bodies and hidden lives of nightworkers-turned-daysleepers. Nightworkshop builds on classical anthropological methods (informal conversations and interviews), and expands into media methods (projecting short films, and off-air podcasting), complemented by 'bodynote' taking by the researcher immersed in London's largest wholesale fruit and vegetable market. The paper combines podcast excerpts from the authors' audio library (NightWorkPod, CEU Podcasts, 2018) and film excerpts from the trilogy of short films he made for research and teaching: Invisible Lives (2013, UK); Nocturnal Lives (2015, UK) and Nightshift Spitalfields (2020, UK). All three films focus on London's "other workers". Each film marks a different time (politically, before and after EU transitional controls (ended 2014), and before and after Brexit referendum (2016 and 2020, respectively); and the author's stages of research (prior and post-doctoral fieldwork). Though, all emerged from researching migrants working all night in London, Invisible Lives is the brainchild of a collaboration between a filmmaker (Tim Marinnan) and an anthropologist. Films tackle issues faced by nightworkers: isolation, sleeplessness, bodily exhaustion due to nature of nightwork.