Navigating between belonging and exclusion: ambivalent and fluid identities in migration research

The post-modern shift in anthropology has led to conceiving ethnography as a self-reflexive practice (Clifford & Marcus, 1986), and an intense debate has arisen over the ethnographer’s complex positionality in the field. A rich literature has discussed the inappropriateness of dichotomic terms such as “native” and “non-native” or “insider” and “outsider” to describe scholars’ identities, and growing attention has been paid to the ethnographic experiences of anthropologists generally referred to as “halfies” (Abu-Lughod, 1986; Behar, 1996). Pursuing this research perspective and starting from my fieldwork in Senegal, this paper aims at reflecting upon the complex identities that shape a black migrant descendant researcher working in her country of origin. Specific aspects will be discussed, including the role and effects of the interplay between origins, migration background, race, and gender. Particular attention will be addressed to the interactions between blackness, nationality, and multi-layered privileges (i.e., educational, social, and economic), arguing that such reflections take on greater importance for anthropologists who carry out research on migration-related topics and whose interactions are considerably shaped by a differentiated and unequal access to mobility. This paper, looking at the entanglement of multiple social categories and its effects on ethnographic experiences, aims at contributing to an ongoing debate that claims for more complex and fluid analysis in relation to identities and positionalities in the field.