Paper short abstract

This presentation combines patchwork ethnography with Freirean dialogue in research with Sudanese refugees in Cairo. Following life-history interviews conducted via social media. It centres co-theorising as a product of relational demands that patchwork ethnography highlights.

Paper long abstract

This presentation shows how combining patchwork ethnography with Freirean dialogue addresses ethical challenges in refugee research. Drawing on my research with Sudanese refugees in Cairo, this shows that patchwork ethnography's acknowledgment of seamfulness can centre interlocutors as co-theorists.

Unable to ‘do’ fieldwork in Egypt due to ethical and financial constraints, I conducted life-history interviews via WhatsApp and Messenger. However, patchwork extends beyond this data collection. Following interviews, I engage interlocutors in Freirean dialogue - presenting my theoretical interpretations and inviting them to affirm, refuse, or modify my analysis.

This traces how constraints shaped insight (focusing on meaning-making rather than observation), how my prior commitments as a refugee protection worker constitute rather than contaminate the research, and how Freirean dialogue responds to patchwork ethnography's implicit question: if we acknowledge that research is shaped by relational entanglements, how do we avoid extractive knowledge production? Dialogue extends patchwork's logic: if the seamfulness of research is visible, the seams of theorizing should be too.