Paper short abstract:

Seeing a collection of drawings created by a composite cohort of South Asian migrants in Europe, this paper reflects critically on the methodologies and ethics of engaging with research participants’ artwork, foreseeing the chance to move from ethnographic analysis to collective exhibitions.

Paper long abstract:

Can drawing be alternative, ancillary or complementary to conventional ethnographic modes? What if our interlocutors’ graphic artifacts are braided within the verbal predominance of anthropological fieldwork? This paper reflects on the pictorial outcomes of an extensive multisite research that I’ve undertaken with South Asian diaspora families settled across European countries since 2017. Set within an ERC-funded project, which investigated the experiences of home-making for people upon conditions of mobility (esp. forced or economic migrants and their descendants), my methods rested primarily on participant observation in domestic settings and collection of life stories. Yet, focusing on the drawings produced by participants, whether during focus groups, following in-depth interviews, or on a spontaneous basis after elicitation, I argue for recognizing the significance of the sketches, portraits and even plans of people’s houses collected. Asking my interlocutors to make a visual handicraft of their home was a challenge from which some withdrew, others responded with application: in their own time, with their own means. Besides the aesthetic value of such artworks, I emphasize the cognitive and emotional import of transferring into graphic sign the meanings of home for those who may be torn between lands, identities and affects. What’s in a home: objects or relations, places or habits, memories or projections? The selection of drawings I will display reveals this research method as a potential practice of freedom for participants, and their handmade pictures as a valuable gift bestowed within the ethnographic collaboration, which can afford novel interpretations and prospects for dissemination.