Positionalities in Research and the Question of Migrants’ Vulnerability

The Chapter aims to reflect on the importance of different views on vulnerability, taking it as an example of the ways in which the same categories that are applied to talk about inequalities are differently shaped by the various contexts in which they are produced, shared and circulated (Anthias et al. Paradoxes of integration: female migrants in Europe. Springer, Berlin, 2012; Yuval-Davis N. Raisons politiques 58:91–100, 2015). Based on the interviews collected by the VULNER research teams, the Chapter discusses the tension between views on vulnerability held by migrants, legal experts and social workers. The tension has been a prolific source of inspiration for the researchers, inviting us to take a self-reflexive stand on the way the use of academic working-definitions, such as vulnerability, can bring about unexpected consequences and therefore affect our understanding of reality. The Chapter emphasises the interaction between our positionality (as researchers) and the positionality of the people we interviewed. The analysis represents a way to reflect on the challenges of comparative and ethnographic methodologies through the lenses of feminist and general critical scholarship on knowledge production.