ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents diverse case studies exploring varied and contested research identities, the politics and the ethical challenges of research and the role of positioning for knowledge production. The salience of the researcher's individual experience in informing academic inquiry is both a celebrated and contested notion within the social sciences. Considerations of the constitution, salience and utility of the insider-outsider dynamics have been present within various disciplinary domains. However, within studies of migration and mobility this discussion is a more recent phenomenon. Here research questions can become relevant in one's own life, home and field distinctions are problematized and one's political involvement is explicitly implicated in research. The book explores the taxonomies that seek to homogenize people and their experiences, tensions of self-other distinctions and complexities in confronting the claims of shared identities and understandings. It also explores the dynamics of community formation.
