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Paper short abstract

Based on ethnographic research in a migrant reception centre in the Canary Islands, I examine care as a methodological and ethical challenge in contexts of urgency and profound relational asymmetry, shaping documentation practices, narratives, and migrants' futures within European border regimes.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in a migrant reception centre in the Canary Islands, I analyse the methodological and ethical challenges of conducting research in conditions of extreme vulnerability, intense time pressure, and profound relational asymmetry. I pay particular attention to the tensions between ethnographic objectivity and engagement, asking how "care" becomes not only an ethical imperative and a practical dimension of fieldwork, but also one of the key challenges in such contexts.

I show how decisions made in crisis situations – regarding presence, silence, documentation, or omission – shape people's futures and determine which narratives come to be privileged. I further examine how the need to respond to suffering and urgency problematises ethnographic research. Situating the analysis within the broader context of European border regimes and polarised debates on migration, I reflect on how research conducted in spaces of migratory precarity reveals tensions between humanitarianism and the production of knowledge and power.