Please tell us about yourself and your research at the EUI.
I am about to end my PhD at the EUI as I have just submitted my dissertation. I was trained in political science at the University of Geneva, with a focus on social movements, political theory, and gender studies. For my PhD, I conducted a multi-sited ethnography of the solidarity movement with migrants at the internal borders of the European Union.
The solidarity movement consists of a loose and informal network of organisations, political collectives, and autonomous activists who support people on the move through different means. Activists often engage in activities of distribution (food, clothes), of legal or social support (for instance in translating documents or helping with the asylum process), and in a huge range of political activities (campaigns, demonstrations, events, transnational meetings, etc.).
The solidarity movement in border areas is also known for the 'solidarity crimes', meaning when activists are legally accused of facilitating entrance, stay, or transit to irregularised individuals. This contentious atmosphere against activists is part of a general criminalisation of migration, which affects primarily the migrants themselves. While during my fieldwork I met many people, including those on the move, institutional actors, or social workers, I was mostly interested in the subjectivities of the activists.
I decided to concentrate on the daily life of activists at the internal borders of Europe: Why and how do people engage in solidarity with people they do not know in a context of repression? What became clear early during my fieldwork was the central role of emotions and affect in initiating, sustaining, and giving meaning to political activism. People engage in a cause because they have political beliefs, because they have time (think of the students or the pensioners), and resources (in terms of money, but also of educational background). However, what I show in my thesis is that activists also embody their struggle. Throughout the thesis chapters, I explain how activists form emotional ties (friendships, camaraderie), how they experience solidarity activism through their bodies (how they move in space, but also how they suffer or burst into joy), and how they create emotional meanings with, in, and about the border space.
I thereby considered activism as a site where the political subject (the activist) is shaped and transformed. And the original contribution of my thesis is to study this experience through a lens that intertwines the spatial and the affective.
Could you please tell us about your fieldwork experience?
I conducted political ethnography in different periods between the summer of 2021 and the fall of 2023 along the Italian borderlands, hence the borders between Italy and France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia. However, the intensity of my fieldwork varied highly, reflecting the intensity of the activism itself. For instance, I went to the border between Italy and France a dozen times, while I only visited the area between Italy and Switzerland twice.
As most of my field sites were located in Italy or close-by the borders and accessible in a few hours by car from Florence, I decided to adopt a fieldwork approach that involved multiple frequent visits rather than staying a long time in one place. In these border towns, I was completely immersed in a variety of activities along my informants; I would stay from a few days to a month and then head back to Florence. This back-and-forth technique was useful, as it allowed me to often take a step back and adjust my approach, if necessary. I felt that it was a good configuration for my own mental and physical health too.
In terms of activities, I engaged along various political collectives and associations and participated in the distribution of goods, in regular assemblies, and in the monitoring of critical areas. I also volunteered in a day facility, attended public events and demonstrations, shared living spaces, and took part in collective reflections. My fieldwork, hence, combined highly publicised moments (like transnational demonstrations or camps) with the mundanity of cooking with research participants.
What did your fieldwork teach you that may be of use to researchers planning to conduct fieldwork in their studies?
Before doing fieldwork, I had heard about what constitutes a 'real' ethnographic fieldwork, how many interviews one needs to write a 'good' thesis, and how much 'distance' one is supposed to have with their informants. I guess these standards must be kept in mind, yet placed in the background, because fieldwork is way more about real life than something one can control.
I guess many will agree that what is essential when it comes to fieldwork is time. However, if you do not have time (in the field), there are many ways to do fieldwork from afar. My experience also taught me that caring about daily, micro-interactions, even over only a few days, can be extremely powerful in terms of research. At the same time, it is true that our own immersion depends on the availability of our informants and how much space they are willing to share – and how our project may resonate with them or not. Time and access are therefore not only potential obstacles, but they also help us in giving shape to a field research that is potentially more collaborative and realistic.
Another important lesson learnt is to listen to oneself: If this does not feel right, just don’t do it. I remember a session organised by the EUI Qualifie – Qualitative and Fieldwork Working Group on self-care and fieldwork, which resonated strongly: Fieldwork is not about 'being Indiana Jones' and, during the experience, you can indeed sometimes feel a bit lonely. Thus, it is of course important to rely on a network of friends and colleagues during fieldwork; I had the opportunity to conduct fieldwork with another researcher in Trieste. It was motivating and a source of intellectual exchange that complemented nicely the rest of my fieldwork.
In sum, I would say that fieldwork is a great time to be creative methodologically and adjust to the participants’ requests and our own limits.
How has being a researcher at the EUI facilitated your fieldwork experience?
Being a researcher at the EUI gave me a lot of freedom in my fieldwork: where, when, how long. I was lucky to have a group of peers (PhD researchers and more advanced researchers) with similar interests with whom we could share our experiences and tips on fieldwork. This helped to create a nice community and regular (in)formal meetings. Additionally, members from the EUI Ethics Committee and the EUI Data Protection Officer were helpful in developing and ensuring ethics and safety for my informants and myself. Moreover, my supervisors, professors Jeffrey T. Checkel and Martin Ruhs, gave me a lot of autonomy, and other experienced colleagues were also supportive in planning or reflecting back on the fieldwork.
In my case (fieldwork in Europe and back-and-forth between sites and Florence), the course load, workshops, and other deadlines at the EUI could be accommodated with my long-term fieldwork. I followed a few available trainings at the EUI before doing fieldwork, but fieldwork is mostly about the unexpected. Since then at the EUI, there has always been always more interest towards ethnographic methods, fieldwork, and ethics, which I see as essential for conducting safe and ethical fieldwork.
What do you believe is the added value of being a PhD researcher at the EUI?
The EUI provides an extremely privileged environment to study and focus on research. I like the fact that PhD researchers can organise bottom-up workshops, hence responding to our own training needs. Throughout the years, I had the chance to collaborate with researchers and professors, organising events and conference panels. Additionally, the network of researchers associated with the EUI is great to get to know people who do similar research.
Ophelia Nicole-Berva is a PhD researcher at the EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences and a Postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Citizenship Studies of the University of Geneva. Her thesis is on ‘Feeling the Border: Everyday Solidarity Activism at the Internal Borders of Europe'. Ophelia is a member of the EUI Decolonising Initiative and was one of the organisers of a workshop that unpacked the construction of risk in fieldwork, consent as a process, and the issue of ‘giving back’ to communities being studied. Read more about the takeaway from the workshop in the EUIdeas article ‘Rethinking ethics review from a decolonial perspective’.