Emotional Encounters During Fieldwork: Researching Brazilian Women Migrants as a Brazilian Women Researcher

Abstract

This paper addresses the ethical implications of doing qualitative research among migrant women while being a migrant
woman researcher myself. Brennan (2014)’s affective turn shows us how affect (both positive and negative) irradiates
powerfully between one subject and another; while Ahmed (2010) reminds us that our affective situation may shape
what/how we will feel. Based on experiences and reflections, since my PhD in 2008, on Brazilian migrants’ experiences
in Portugal, I borrow Teresa Brennan’s concepts of affect and Sara Ahmed’s notion of emotion to look at how our
encounters throughout our fieldwork with migrant women affect our bodies and vice versa. Moving away from the
insider/outsider dichotomy, I argue that our knowledge production practice with migrant women is a reciprocal emotional
reaction, surrounded by inequality power dynamics, which entails a set of ethical implications when translating these
emotional reactions as research outputs.