Exploring Mobility Through Mobility: Some of the Methodological Challenges of Multi-sited Ethnography in the Study of Migration

With the aim at grasping “glocal” nexuses as much as different human experiences of movement (migration, tourism, aid and development) within contemporary societies, mobile approaches as multi-site researches developed, where the field was shaped by following people, kin and other social networks, economic and social remittances, political projects etc. (Marcus 1995; Hannerz 2001). Drawing on ethnographic examples, I will show how this methodological perspective well adapt to the analysis of displacement into space. Simultaneously I will consider and discuss critical challenges to such an extension of the ethnographic field. More than on Space, I will focus on Time as a crucial variable to be managed in the attempt of compensating the “centrifugal” dispersion of multi-sited explorations. I will stress the fruitful outcomes of research characterized by multiple and repeated missions able to shape a “virtual spiral” (Riccio 2011) where each stage nourish the next one.