ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the 'inappropriate' emotions for ethnographers. It explores the emotional dimensions including issues around the researcher's power and vulnerability. The chapter demonstrates how participants' reactions to a Hungarian studying the Hungarian diaspora in Australia offered a distinctive prism for interpretation and understanding. It focuses on the ambivalence of feeling at home and feeling a stranger within the community. It also explains dogmatic distinctions between insiders and outsiders based on some generalized socio-demographic, racial and cultural attribute. The monologue below grasps the complex way several Australian-Hungarians negotiated their feelings of belonging. Hungarian academic prompted particular reactions of suspicion and mistrust which proved important in highlighting the dynamics and effects of communist legacies among the Hungarian diaspora in Australia. The emergent distrust towards homeland institutions played an important part in the perception and shaping of homeland relations and the orientation of diaspora politics.
