Motstånd och poetiska fragment. En aktionsforskningsstudie om kunskaper och migration

Abstract

This article is based on reflections on field notes from a participant observation in a socially vulnerable environment, an environment where a Swedish church carries out its daily work. The article presents and reflects the initial steps of an action research project, and (en)tangles issues of privilege, hierarchy, power and language that researchers are forced to face and relate to. The focus of the article is on the question of how to move from a researcher’s outside perspective, to a ground/place where it is possible to, firstly, give room to the study’s participants as subjects, and secondly to create conditions for mutual, if not equal, dialogue. This process, covering the researcher’s observations and the initial formulation of questions for further work, is explored and conceptualised. In particular, the article reflects on the bridging from observation to text. The results show how the researchers’ own boundaries become clear; the necessity to problematise these boundaries are underlined. It also becomes clear how the academic language falls short. Instead poetic pieces showed great potential to grasp and express what the researcher experienced during the observations. This opened for a suggested method for interactive conversations about working in an environment where unexpected challenges and peoples’ vulnerability often constitute the normal starting point for untraditional daily actions in a church.