Investigating foreign migrants living in a village: what procedures for what results, experience feedback
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Abstract
I draw up experience feedback on my thesis: how to study, while getting rid of methodological nationalism, the way in which foreign migrants live in Cadaqués, a Spanish touristic village? In the test of the field, I abandoned a migratory, ethnicist and transnationalist approach, centered on the Bolivians, for a psycho-social geography, in order to grasp the dynamics of globalization and the experiences of various inhabitants at work in this village mutations. Statistical data, semi-/open interviews, and the paradigmatic approach adopted by human presence and diversity, resulted in: the creation of conceptual models to deconstruct the figure of the migrant in terms of personal experiences, to enhance the villages in migration dynamics, as well as knowledge of the profiles and the practices of Bolivians in Cadaqués. By branching out from transnationalism to the locality and from the foreign migrant to the (mobile) inhabitant, bringing one’s interest to the psyche and to space ultimately constitutes a means of getting rid of the foreigner/citizen distinction; and rural spaces with protean mobilities are relevant for studying the relationship to foreignness and the changes in our societies. I suggest four lessons to maximize conceptualization from the field.