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2013 61: 646 originally published online 23 July 2013Current SociologyGaelle Dequirez and Jeanne Hersant

The virtues of improvisation: Ethnography without an ethics protocol

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The virtues of improvisation: Ethnography without an ethics protocol

Gaelle DequirezUniversité Lille 2, France

Jeanne HersantUniversidad Andrés Bello/Universidad de Playa Ancha, Chile

AbstractResearch relationships in the social sciences are becoming increasingly codified through formal procedures set by ethics committees. This article addresses the virtues of improvisation based on two fieldwork experiences in countries where ethics protocols are not institutionalized and are left to the judgement of researchers. The first involves the Turkish minority in Greece, with research conducted in Greece, Turkey and Germany, and the second involves Sri Lankan Tamil migration studied in France and Ontario. Based on a comparison of their respective approaches to two identity-based movements, the authors show how they were able to undertake an ethnographic revisit of these topics and highlight their political dimensions.

KeywordsEthics protocol, ethnographic revisit, identity-based mobilization, long-distance nationalism, Sri Lankan Tamils, Western Thrace

The dominant, quantitative approach to political science has at times been thought to protect against ‘charlatans, deception and mad men’ (Kriesi, 1980: 383, translated here). Gradually, however, it has become apparent that the study of traditional topics in the canon of political science (e.g. voting, political parties) and the use of statistical methods alone do not allow us to grasp the full complexity of politics (Auyero and Joseph, 2007; Fillieule, 1997). The Perestroika movement in the United States challenged the

Corresponding author:Jeanne Hersant, Universidad Andrés Bello, Quillota 919, Viña del Mar, 2531098, Chile. Email: [email protected]

484454 CSI615-610.1177/0011392113484454Current SociologyDequirez and Hersant2013

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Dequirez and Hersant 647

hegemonic positivist paradigm in political science which advocated for the mathematical modelling of social facts (Monroe, 2005; Schram and Caterino, 2006). A lot of research over the past 10 years has pleaded in favour of methodological pluralism and for a broad-ening in the scope of political studies to include an ethnographic approach1 that goes beyond institutional politics (Bensa and Fassin, 2008; Joseph et al., 2007; Schatz, 2009).

We would like to address a corollary aspect of this debate: the issue of ethics proto-cols, modelled on medical experiments (Mondain and Sabourin, 2009), which highlight the rationalization process at work in social science research. Ethics protocols are gener-ally found in research sectors which require of researchers a predefined research protocol in order to obtain funding: a predefined list of conditions under which interviews will be conducted, where the research will be done and the sample of interviewees, with proof of all necessary authorizations. As such, informed consent forms place those interviewed before a research topic and type of interview that were defined without their input. Sociological interviews, however, are not a simple operation of knowledge production; they are a social interaction in and of themselves (Bourdieu, 1999), with the unforeseen elements that such a process entails.

The methodological challenges and unpredictable variables of such protocols – par-ticularly with regard to informed consent (Murphy and Dingwall, 2007; Plankey-Videla, 2012; Schrag, 2009) and the anonymity of those interviewed (Fine, 1990) – have often been a topic of debate. Here, we would like to examine the virtues of improvisation per-mitted by the lack of an ethics protocol, since such an approach is not yet the norm across Europe. This type of improvisation – in the sense of an ability to adapt and be inventive – is beneficial for knowledge production and analytical frameworks.

The approach taken here is based on two fieldwork experiences – the study of Muslims in Western Thrace (northeastern Greece) and Tamil immigration in France – which involved political contexts in which it would have been impossible to obtain the written consent of those interviewed. The context surrounding both cases is tied to two events which marked the political landscape of the 1990s and 2000s in the European Union: for one, the quest for political stability in the ‘new Europe’ following the EU’s political powerlessness during the war in the former Yugoslavia; and the war on terrorism follow-ing the attacks on 11 September 2001 and subsequently those in London and Madrid.

In the first case, this resulted in the desire to promote the state of law and national or ethnic minority rights in the Balkans; in the second case, it translated into an attempt to identify the terrorist organizations present in Europe. These two trends led to the dis-semination of a large body of non-scientific grey literature, and the related frameworks for understanding events influenced both researchers and those interviewed. They as such affected both researchers’ intellectual work and research relationships.

The lack of an imposed ethics protocol2 allowed us to sidestep this problem by orient-ing our research differently. By establishing informal research relationships we were able to conduct a ‘heuristic revisit’ (Burawoy, 2003: 671) in one case (I); in the other, when those interviewed were unhappy with the information published the ‘valedictory revisit’ (Burawoy, 2003: 672) became a difficult but nonetheless enlightening experience (II). Both cases involved multi-site fieldwork locations, as well as (physical and intellectual) return trips between the original territory and migratory spaces. Our contributions here each point up one facet of these configurations.



648 Current Sociology 61(5-6)

Throughout this article, informality refers to the lack of an ethics protocol, but also to ethnography’s unique approach, necessary for understanding the ‘gray zones of politics’ (Auyero, 2007): ‘Research conducted at close range invites the researcher to “see” dif-ferently; heterogeneity, causal complexity, dynamism, contingency, and informality come to the fore’ (Schatz, 2009: 11).

Our contributions are based on topics which Auyero and Joseph (2007: 3–11) con-sider particularly salient to approach from a political ethnography perspective and which they call ‘official-rhetoric-confronts-daily-experience’ (I) and ‘clandestine-connections-count’ (II).

I. Courtesy visits and a heuristic revisit in Western Thrace

There are several reasons why the case of Muslims in Western Thrace (northeastern Greece)3 poses a challenge for research in political science. This minority – comprised of several ethno-linguistic groups but for whom Turkish is the vehicular language – is the subject of a symbolic struggle: its representatives and the Turkish government profess the Turkishness of the minority while the Greek government recognizes only a religious minority group. The region’s mountain villages were long isolated and cut off from main communication channels,4 making them a prized site for ethnological observation since the 1960s (Vernier, 1998). With increased interest in national and religious minorities in the Balkans following the war in the former Yugoslavia, since the mid-1990s, Western Thrace has caught the attention of European deputies, Council of Europe representatives, as well as anthropologists. The reinvention of a local folklore in the 1990s – in a context fuelled by the strong politicization of cultural identities – turned Western Thrace into an ‘over-invested research field’ (Chabrol, 2008). This situation affected the analytical approach taken in most academic research: ethnic identities became overbearing in anal-yses of historical facts and social conflict in the region.

As such, the image of an exotic population (Bourgois, 1990) mired in ‘identity prob-lems’ was created and disseminated. Most existing monographs do not address the politi-cal dimension or social hierarchies. For example, despite the fact that the election of deputies is a critical moment in the mobilization of identity politics (Muslims have had their own deputies since 1923), there has been practically no research conducted on the voting behaviour of Muslims (Hersant and Yatropoulos, 2008). The Turkish identity movement has not been studied much either.

This movement began in Western Thrace, Germany and Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s, driven by cultural associations whose activities were and are still promoted by the Turkish government. Recognition by the European Union and European Court of Human Rights of the discrimination suffered by Muslims in Western Thrace legitimized claims about the Turkish nature of the minority without however leading to official recognition by Greek authorities (Hersant, 2008).

This section recounts a ‘heuristic revisit’ during fieldwork conducted in Greece and in the migratory territory (Turkey, Germany and Great Britain). Rather than conforming to the dominant culturalist approach, I conducted a ‘heuristic revisit’ and took a political sociological approach to the ethnic issue following the recommendations put forward by Michael Herzfeld (1987: 8) in his critique of ‘Mediterraneanist’ anthropology: estab-lishing a connection between the local ethnography and nationalist or regionalist




ideologies. To do so I analysed the discourse of the ‘oppressed minority’ as a positioning tool within the local political field and, paradoxically, as revealing of the dominant posi-tion held by members of the Turkish identity movement within this realm. This involved, to borrow the terms employed by Brubaker et al. (2006), analysing the ‘rhetoric of eth-nopolitical entrepreneurs’ and seeing how ethnicity ‘works’ in everyday life.

How to tackle a somewhat illegitimate topic?

The initial goal of my research was to address the subject from a totally new angle: legal and illegal migration to Germany and Turkey. That research topic was unacceptable however, for many of my contacts and undesirable to both Greek and Turkish authorities. The lack of official data was compounded by an omertà (fear of governmental repercus-sions or fear that I would stray from the minority’s ‘real’ problems). This meant that it was impossible to formalize a research protocol (recordings, informed consent) and fur-ther forced me to undertake long and in-depth fieldwork in several countries in order to establish a network of contacts and reconstruct the migratory routes employed. In August 2002, after a few months of laborious fieldwork in Istanbul and Ankara, I decided to have a look across the border in Western Thrace.

My attempts to locate municipal records that would allow me to assess emigration were cut short. For one, the people with whom I met particularly wanted to talk about the economic issues facing tobacco farmers (an activity traditionally done by Muslims), the ban on Turkish associations (see Box 1), etc.

Box 1. Turkish associations in Western Thrace

Three associations were created in the late 1920s to promote Kemalism: the Turkish Union of Xanthi, the Komotini Turkish Youth Union and the Union of Turkish Teachers of Western Thrace. They have been at loggerheads with Greek authorities for over two decades due to the presence of the ‘Turk/Turkish’ adjective in their names. Although officially banned, their activities never really ceased. Created in 1982, the Western Thrace Minority University Graduates’ Association chose not to include the incriminated adjective in its name. It plays an important role within the Turkish identity movement.

In an attempt to please the foreign researcher, they also occasionally made up the data I requested. Like the mayor of one rural municipality who haphazardly scribbled on a piece of paper the numbers and percentages meant to answer my questions. The increased number of fieldwork sites meant short visits; it was as such not possible to form trusting relationships with local elected officials that would likely have allowed me access to their records.

Confronted with the reticence and incomprehension of those I addressed, I decided to change strategies. Since I was dependent on the appointments and availability of my hosts,5 I decided to let myself be guided by them and to adapt to the rhythm of their social engagements rather than attempting to ‘lead’ the investigation. Given the reticence




I encountered, I stopped seeing migration as my main research topic and changed the focus of my interviews.

My presence in Western Thrace was important for my contacts: as a European researcher, I was meant to relay the cause of the Turkish minority. My status as a doctoral candidate from a Parisian university gave me a certain degree of prestige and I had the advantage of being external to the local identity conflict. The first per-son I met was a deputy from the minority with whom I was put in touch via one of my contacts in Istanbul: I needed to meet with ‘important’ people who ‘would be able to explain the minority’s problems to me’. Then I spent two weeks with a family of retired migrant workers I had met in Germany the year before. The success of my research was tied to my ability to be adopted as a guest (misafir); this allowed me to delve beyond the circle of local elites promoting the Turkish identity of the minority that all observers inevitably meet.

Aside from the desire to be hospitable ingrained in the codes of savoir-vivre, the fact that my contacts temporarily adopted me allowed them to temper my status as a curious stranger who commits blunders due to her poor understanding of the context, customs and local rivalries, and especially as a ‘still single’ 25-year-old living alone in Istanbul. My guest status combined with being a foreigner (who is thus allowed to deviate from certain rules) allowed me some crossover between the associative/public, politicized, male sphere and the domestic, feminine arena that is often much more conducive to dis-cussions about private life, thus allowing me to retrace migrants’ trajectories. My role was generally limited to taking part in courtesy visits made by my hosts to their kin, acquaintances and those to whom they were obliged, or when they received visitors. These visits were part of a social ritual called misafirlik; they introduced me to an entire social sphere beyond the associative realm and its set discourse.

Misafirlik generally refers to the form of sociability found amongst women confined to the domestic sphere of Turkish social space (Aksaz, 2006). By extension, it applies to courtesy visits (nezaket ziyaretleri) which follow similar codes that outline a system of hierarchies and social obligations. Misafirlik is central for understanding social codes, but also for understanding informal political practices; yet the way such ties are formed and maintained has rarely been studied from this perspective.

From courtesy visits to an analysis of the local political sphere

In Western Thrace such visits are theatricalized and aim to garner publicity during reli-gious holidays and Turkish national holidays, but they are also part of the everyday life of notables. They are the ones who maintain a connection between the city and economi-cally and socially isolated rural areas. Regular visits to the villages allow people to create or maintain their notable status, as I observed when staying with the couple of former migrant workers. Most of their trips to Western Thrace are spent visiting people or receiving visitors. They had a certain aura of prestige due to their economic success and the husband’s (we will call him Tanıl) past experience as an association activist in Germany. But, while Thrace is now the nerve centre of identity mobilization, Tanıl’s status as a worker and emigrant meant that he was not part of the locally influential elite. Despite the summer heat, Tanıl never went visiting without a shirt and tie and without




polishing his car. He and his wife sometimes changed clothes between two visits. The fact that a foreign researcher was his guest clearly provided a boost to his moral and social stature.

The visiting ritual is also a hidden facet of election campaigns. Elected officials are expected not only to receive voters, listen to their grievances and record their job searches, but also to be present at weddings and circumcision ceremonies, and simply to pay visits. When it comes to women, they go from house to house, using the codes of sociability to promote their husbands’ or relatives’ candidacy.

Just before the 2004 legislative elections, the outgoing Muslim deputy had to address criticism about not having sufficiently visited the villages of his constituency during his mandate. Six months prior, his wife had offered – ‘to help with my research’ – to introduce me to the mayor of a rural municipality where she needed ‘to make a few visits’. I quickly realized that she was actually campaigning for her husband. On the day of our trip, she stopped the car in front of a patisserie and emerged bearing several large packages. Letting a shade of annoyance transpire, she alluded to the purchases she had just made: ‘You can write in your thesis that in Western Thrace we work for the people’.

As planned, the first stop was a visit to the mayor’s home. I asked a few questions about migration in his municipality, but quickly the deputy’s wife redirected the con-versation. She asked different questions about ‘the right wingers’ in the village (her husband was a PASOK [Greek Socialist Party] deputy) and about their ‘allies’. The deputy’s wife had another set of visits to make in a neighbouring village. She first stopped briefly to visit a young bride and offered her some pastries, saying that her husband was sincerely sorry not to have been able to attend the wedding. We then went to visit another family that was busy stringing up tobacco in their courtyard. The dep-uty’s wife admired their work, calling the ‘journalist’ that I was to take note and sug-gesting that I take pictures.

The visits that I attended, as well as the more official ones described in the local media (notably those made by the Turkish Consul General), allowed me to identify the patently political side of the ‘oppressed minority’ discourse – political in the sense of being an access key to the sphere of Turkishness and to the local political sphere.

My guest status was heuristic in the sense that although I clearly played the straight man role during visits, once such visits were over, I again became part of the domestic sphere and someone before whom people spoke freely. It thus became apparent that the discourse of the oppressed minority is less used to voice demands as it is to reaf-firm the group’s unity and the position of individuals within the group. As such, dur-ing a visit to Tanıl’s parents, I heard him explain to a neighbour that it was unacceptable that minority primary schools be closed in rural areas and that such action was a reflection of ‘Greek assimilation policy’ (an common trope in the rhetoric of the Turkish identity movement). At home the next day, Tanıl conversely stated that it was absurd to demand that minority schools be kept open in villages deserted due to rural exodus.

On a similar topic, a government policy established in 1993 aims to encourage Muslim access to university (they are penalized due to their weaker grasp of Greek and the very difficult admissions examinations) by exempting them from the entrance exam based on




a quota system. During a conversation, the deputy’s wife stated that she was in favour of the previous system and was surprised to learn that in France ‘everyone’ (‘even ignora-muses?’) can go to university. Another telling example involves the election of muftis,6 one of the primary demands of the Turkish identity movement, which would symboli-cally allow the head of a religious community to become a leader of the Turkish move-ment. This is a legal headache in the European context since Western Thrace’s muftis have privileges in terms of civil jurisdiction (an Ottoman legacy). Mostly, though, the strength of this demand within the movement seems to hinge on the fact that its actual application has never been debated: when I asked two of my very active and influential contacts in the identity movement – the editor-in-chief of the largest local Turkish news-paper and the secretary of the Graduates’ Association – concretely how this demand could be implemented, they both admitted that they had no idea and suggested that I contact one of the movement’s leaders who would surely be better informed.

Based on this, I observed something else: the ‘oppressed minority’ discourse approved by European authorities is, locally, a trait of the dominant position of Turkish actors in the local political sphere. The type of relationships I established in the field allowed me to avoid the pitfall of either promoting or invalidating the Turkish political and cultural claims advanced amongst the minority. I was not interested in checking the veracity of my contacts’ statements or the sincerity of their actions, but rather I wanted to identify what such statements and actions said about local social hierarchies and the rules of political competition.

Indeed, local actors and external observers use their mastery and command of the discourse of the ‘oppressed minority’ to ensure the reproduction of a local Turkish elite amongst the minority. While this elite is co-opted by the Turkish Consul General and celebrates Turkish national holidays, it also shares the codes and practices of high Greek society: its members speak fluent Greek, send their children to public secondary schools rather than to the minority schools, and holiday at the same coastal resorts in the same region. This double positioning is necessary to ensure the maintenance of social benefits and guarantee their electoral success, the apex of prominence, in a region where the pro-portion of Muslims in the population influences electoral outcomes.

Increasing the number of field sites observed allowed me to develop an analysis based on the notion of a public arena (Cefaï, 2002: 53), meaning a transnational space in which references, myths and heroic figures tied to contemporary Turkey circulate. Access to this symbolic space is restricted and the issues it is built on are prescribed and arbitrated from Turkey, by association, political and governmental actors. This arena occasionally enters the political sphere in Western Thrace where the minority’s politics manage to become central issues. While in the 1990s, Muslim candidates were not allowed to cam-paign in Turkish, this is now permitted for municipal and legislative elections. Further, in the context of municipal elections, non-Muslim candidates adopt a discourse of legiti-macy within the Turkish arena.7

The heuristic revisit in Western Thrace was inspired by the culturalist interpretation of the trans-border configuration found in most existing research. While Sri Lanka has also been the topic of much research due to the ongoing war, Sri Lankan Tamil migration8 has been the focus of very little work. Here, it was the ‘valedictory revisit’ that was heuristic, pointing to the political advantage for Sri Lankan Tamil migrants of remaining a blind spot in social science research.




II. Reconstructing the political dimensions of the Sri Lankan Tamil migrant community

When I began my research in 2005 there were only three books (Fuglerud, 1999; McDowell, 1996; Steen, 1993) and a dozen academic articles on Sri Lankan migrants. This research was either from the field of ‘refugee studies’, with a focus on ‘integration’, or from ‘diaspora studies’, with specific interest in the ties maintained with the region of origin and sociability within the diaspora.

In terms of research into the Sri Lankan conflict, while some seek to document the totalitarian and terrorist nature of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Tamil guerrilla separatist movement opposed to the Sri Lankan government, others seek to legitimate their action. The LTTE are also of great interest to journalists, intelligence agencies and human rights NGOs, which regularly publish reports, essays and articles condemning their violent acts. This has affected research into Tamil migration. Books on the subject regularly mention the LTTE’s coercive practices within migratory spaces, but they avoid actually analysing the political aspects of the phenomenon.

I began my fieldwork wishing to avoid focusing on the war and LTTE. Gradually, however, I realized their influence on part of the Sri Lankan Tamil migrant commu-nity and the great polarization this caused. Most of the very numerous Tamil associa-tions9 are part of a transnational nationalist movement committed to promoting the creation of an independent state of Tamil Eelam. I begin by showing how an informal approach to research allowed me to reach this conclusion. The publication of my first analyses before I had even finished my field research resulted in my gradual exclu-sion from the field. The reaction of those interviewed, analysed in the second section below, allowed me to perform a valedictory revisit which furthered my understand-ing of the internal processes at work and highlighted the impact of external phenomena.

Informal research in an opaque field

When I began my fieldwork in the Paris region shortly after the December 2004 tsunami, it was extremely easy to approach the leaders of Tamil associations. Such associations were the focus of an outpouring of sympathy and compassion for the recent victims. Their leaders regularly invited me to participate in their activities and gladly told me about how their organizations were run. The stated purpose of these associations is the promotion of Tamil culture and the integration of their members into French society. They present themselves as places of sociability which accompany new arrivals, offer tutoring, as well as Tamil language, dance and music lessons.

The concept of diaspora struck me as problematic due to its homogenizing nature given the implicit gender, generational and caste hierarchies that exist. Even more so, it involved turning a blind eye to the political dimensions (Dufoix, 2003), which seemed increasingly unavoidable. Indeed, several clues pointed to the fact that the goals of many of the Tamil associations were connected to the war in Sri Lanka. First, the sheer number of organizations and activities made their overall running opaque. Many appeared to work together but I was unable to clearly identify how they were divided by activity sec-tor. The mystery surrounding them dissipated when I began to notice the numerous signs




of allegiance to the LTTE observable during so-called ‘cultural’ events: Tiger flags and portraits of the leader Prabhakaran were the most obvious, as well as halls decorated in LTTE colours. These associations in the Paris region supported the LTTE and claims for an independent state of Tamil Eelam. This realization helped me understand their overall organization (see Box 2).

Box 2. The Eelamist associations in the Paris region in 2008

The Sri Lankan Tamil associations in the Paris region that support the separatist move-ment are grouped together in the French Federation of Tamil Associations which is overseen by a Tamil Coordinating Committee (TCC). Two other associations play a major role in leading the movement: the ORT (organization for the rehabilitation of Tamils), a humanitarian association, and the OJT (Tamil youth organization). The Federation also has a committee of Tamil women, Tamil schools (Tamil Cholai) and local associations generally called ‘Franco-Tamil’ groups which are often defined by their geographical implantation (for example, the Franco-Tamil Association of La Courneuve, etc.).

This was a first ‘constructivist moment’ (Burawoy, 2003: 669) during my field-work. For one, it led me to think about the conditions under which I gathered data and encouraged me to change my approach to the field and how I presented myself: I nar-rowed my focus to the Eelamist associations and I sought more specifically to obtain information about my contacts’ opinions on the LTTE and the war. Further, it became essential to find a theoretical framework that would allow me to include the political dimension underpinning pro-LTTE activism without reducing it to the terror exerted by the Tigers.

Not having an obligation to get the formal approval of those interviewed for a clearly defined research project left me a great deal of freedom in how I presented myself and my goals to those with whom I met. The fact that I was young, a student and a woman were advantages as I was perceived as inoffensive. That is why I never told any of the Eelamist activists that I could speak some Tamil. Yet my status as a doctoral candidate had a flip side and I was not deemed ‘worthy’ of interviewing the movement’s senior leaders (who speak only Tamil and are protected by different intermediaries). I was slowly able to take part in political events where I was sometimes the only non-Tamil amongst hundreds or even thousands of people.

I was as such able to improvise by constantly adjusting my behaviour based on my analysis of interactions with those interviewed. With regard to the theoretical framework, seeing the Tamil associations supporting the LTTE as a nationalist movement rather than simply as defenders of a ‘terrorist’ organization allowed me to avoid taking an accusa-tory stance. Through the multiplicity of activities they offer, the Eelamist associations provide an opportunity for cultural reproduction and advantages. The concept of long-distance nationalism (Anderson, 1998: 73) proved most appropriate for describing and analysing the Eelamist movement in France. The attraction of the Eelamist associations is indeed tied to the way they address the heteronomy and disintegrating effects of




migration (Anderson, 1998: 70–72): in the new country, the native country’s family norms and social hierarchies are undermined. Social mobility then becomes tied to fac-tors such as people’s legal status or mastery of French. Taking the marginalization of migrants as an explanatory factor, the theoretical framework of long-distance national-ism provided a means to better understand the allegiance Tamil migrants felt towards the Tigers.

The unexpected outcome of exclusion from the field

My analysis of the field evolved alongside the rejection that I gradually faced from activ-ist Tamil circles between 2007 and 2009 following the publication of my first articles. This unanticipated ‘valedictory revisit’ forced me, via a second ‘constructivist moment’, to review my research method and interpretations.

The publication of this research occurred within a particularly difficult context for the Eelamist associations. In May 2006, the LTTE were added to the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations: it thus became illegal to support them. In France, the anti-ter-rorist sub-directorate of the police began investigating Tamil associations, which they suspected of racketing migrants to support the LTTE. In 2007, several association heads were arrested for extortion of funds. Alongside this, the civil war in Sri Lanka had resumed as of late 2005. The successive victories of the government’s armed forces over the LTTE and the massacre of Tamil civilians – at their worst in 2008 and 200910 – helped radicalize Eelamist activists. Their goal was to raise awareness about the plight of Tamil civilians amongst the media and public authorities, but their support for the Tigers, by then labelled a terrorist organization, did not make for an easy task.

The publication of a researcher’s work reveals the distance taken with native catego-ries. My research helped clarify the symbolic and material connections between the Tamil associations and the Tigers’ separatist ideology. It showed that beyond the different activi-ties organized by the associations, they had a shared goal of promoting the separatist cause. Describing them as a ‘nationalist movement’, I also showed how the leaders took advantage of gender and caste divisions (as well as of the atomizing effects of migration). The fact that I did not mention the ‘Tamil genocide’ or present the LTTE as a ‘liberation movement’ or movement for the ‘defence of Tamil rights’, or the fact that I mentioned caste were interpreted by some leaders as proof of my hostility (Dequirez, 2011).

In 2008, one association leader asked me to send him one of my articles that he had seen mentioned on the internet, as well as my bibliography. Thereafter, when I contacted them for interviews, other OJT and TCC activists asked me to send them my publications before agreeing to meet with me. Some of my contacts no longer answered my requests; others indefinitely postponed our meetings; they remained polite whilst all the while distancing me from their milieu. Analysis of this exclusion from the field allowed me to flesh out my understanding of the movement’s internal logic and of how the political context influenced leaders’ attitudes towards me. Indeed, the way those interviewed interpret our actions sheds light on their own interpretive frameworks and on the resources available to them (Venkatesh, 2002: 106–107). It notably points up their expe-rience with other ‘information seekers’ (Venkatesh, 2002: 107) such as journalists and government staff.




Regularly confronted with questions and judgement from such sources, those inter-viewed adapt their discourse in order to counter negative presuppositions and correspond to what they believe are the expectations of those with whom they deal. When, starting in 2008, association leaders felt that that the dramatic situation in Sri Lanka was not being sufficiently covered in France, they undertook a campaign targeted at the media and elected officials. The campaign focused on topics like the defence of the Tamil popu-lation’s rights and the humanitarian emergency; they as such hoped to encourage French intervention or at least for the country to take a stand on the subject. The campaign’s success hinged on the ability to frame events through something other than the lens of terrorism. To do so, they felt it necessary to avoid mentioning their support for the LTTE or the topic of castes, for example, which they deemed poorly perceived by the French population.

Given this, I analysed how the Eelamist organizations interacted with their politi-cal environment. The Tamil associations I studied rarely presented themselves as political organizations, instead insisting on ‘Tamil culture’, ‘integration’, etc. Elected municipal authorities needed to contact people in the community first because they had trouble identifying the specific problems of the population (notably due to the fact that very few Sri Lankan Tamils speak French) and also because in some cities they represent a potential electorate. As such, associations with political ambitions and which supported a terrorist-labelled organization established or maintained con-nections with local political representatives using strategies adapted for stigma man-agement (Goffman, 1963) and thus managed to borrow halls, participate in local events and even receive grants.

Moreover, I managed to circumvent my exclusion from the activist sphere by diversi-fying the field sites observed and my sources of information, and by using everyday interactions. First, I met with professionals from the health and social services sector who could introduce me to Tamil asylum seekers and refugees. I also volunteered for six months in a centre that provided asylum seekers in the Paris region with a postal address.11 I as such noted that Eelamist activists offered to accompany new arrivals in their social and administrative procedures and often acted as interpreters and intermediaries in help-ing them find accommodation and employment. These activities allowed them to iden-tify the Tamils living in the Paris region and create a symbolic indebtedness that was useful when it came time to collect funds for the Tamil Eelam cause.

I also conducted fieldwork in Switzerland, Great Britain, India and, most notably, Toronto and this further shed light on the movement’s transnational organization since I discovered the same organizational structures and divisions of labour as in France. I as such elaborated on the notion of long-distance nationalism, showing that the marginali-zation processes of migrants caused by the administrative technologies of states are one factor amongst others in the embracing of the nationalist project. The symbolic indebted-ness and social control exerted by a structured and hierarchical organization also encour-age Tamil migrants to become loyal to the Eelamist associations. Confronting those interviewed with my results thus forced me, on the one hand, to analyse the reasons why I was excluded from the field and, on the other hand, made me change my research approach, once again, by improvising. Although trying for both parties, it allowed new analyses of Tamil political space abroad to emerge.




Conclusion

This article has attempted to engage a discussion between French political science and American political ethnography. The authors’ university education in political science was rooted more in the tradition of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) and the ‘tricks of the trade’ (Becker, 1998) than on a statistics-based approach. This approach is marginal within international political science and has trouble finding any forum for debate in most of Europe.12

Improvisation is part of ethnographic work, with or without an ethics protocol; that does not mean that the heuristic influence of informality should be ignored: it allows for a detailed analysis of social and political facts which would otherwise only be studied superficially or within the confines of the trendy analytical frameworks of the time. Finally, while it may be impossible to dissociate ethical considerations within a research relationship (Mondain and Sabourin, 2009), their legal and administrative codification and the hypothetical/deductive principle underpinning their formalization make it more difficult to take an ethnographic approach. Above all, they may simply be poorly adapted for certain fieldwork contexts where access is possible only informally.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Jocelyne A.L. Serveau for the translation of this article. Ms Serveau is a French to English translator specialized in the social sciences and humanities, interna-tional development and international relations.

Funding

This research was supported by a 3-year bursary (Bourse d’Aide à la Recherche) from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs granted to Jeanne Hersant as a member of the Institut Français d’Etudes Anatoliennes in Istanbul (2002-2005). We also received funding from the Deutsch-Französische Hochschule (grant ANW-08-10).

Notes

1. ‘Social research based on the close-up, on-the-ground observation of people and institutions in real time and space, in which the investigator embeds his/herself near (or within) the phe-nomenon so as to detect how and why agents on the scene act, think and feel the way they do’ (Wacquant, 2003: 5).

2. Ethics protocols are not standard practice in France, particularly in political science. The Turkish authorities that grant research authorizations did not require an ethics protocol either.

3. Exempted from the population exchange with Turkey in 1924, this minority was de facto rec-ognized as Turkish until the 1960s when the conflict over Cyprus made the Greek authorities fearful of Turkish irredentism.

4. Western Thrace was the poorest region in the EU until the 2004 enlargement. 5. The villages of Western Thrace are difficult to access via public transportation. 6. Appointed (for life) by Greek authorities based on recommendations from the Muslim

community. 7. ‘Yes, during election campaigns, our Turkishness is recognized’ (Gündem, 1 October 2002)

(in Turkish). 8. Between 700,000 and 800,000 Sri Lankan Tamils currently live outside their native country;




that is roughly 40% of the island’s native Tamil population before the start of the civil war in 1983.

9. According to the Official Journal, roughly 100 Sri Lankan Tamil associations were created between 1996 and 2010 in the Paris region, which is home to some 60,000 Sri Lankan Tamil migrants.

10. The Sri Lankan army’s final offensive caused the death of at least 20,000 Tamil civilians according to a UN Experts’ Report released in April 2011.

11. These centres provide a postal address, necessary to apply for asylum status. Asylum seekers come to get their mail, providing an opportunity for volunteers to monitor how their adminis-trative and social procedures are progressing.

12. The panels on political ethnography within the European Consortium for Political Research (Reykjavik 2010) were either composed solely of French researchers or were cancelled due to a lack of participants.

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Author biographies

Gaëlle Dequirez holds a doctor of philosophy in political science from the University of Lille 2. She is the author of ‘Processus d’appropriation et luttes de représentation autour du Little Jaffna parisien’, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 26(2), 2010. She has also published ‘L’histoire de Sri Lanka vue par les associations nationalistes tamoules en France’, Hommes et Migrations, 2001, 1291: 72–81. She co-edited with Delon Madavan and Eric Meyer, Les Communautés tamoules et le conflit sri-lankais (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011).

Jeanne Hersant spent two years (2011-2013) as Director of the Department of Sociology branch at the Universidad Andrés Bello in Viña del Mar, Chile. She is now a researcher at the Centro de




Estudios Avanzados (Centre for Advanced Studies) at the Universidad de Playa Ancha in Valparaiso. She is the author of ‘Mobilizations for Western Thrace and Cyprus in contemporary Turkey: From the far right to the lexicon of human rights’, in Beinin J and Vairel F (eds) Social Movements, Mobilization and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). She is in charge of a three-year research programme entitled ‘The Sociology of Chilean Public Administration: Court Clerks and Criminal Procedure Reform’ (Fondecyt Iniciación No. 11121171).

Résumé

Les relations interpersonnelles dans la recherche en sciences sociales sont de plus en plus codi-fiées du fait des procédures formelles établies par les comités d’éthique. Cet article examine les vertus de l’improvisation sur la base de deux enquêtes de terrain réalisées dans des pays qui n’ont pas institutionnalisé les protocoles d’éthique laissés à l’appréciation des seuls chercheurs. Le pre-mier travail s’intéresse à la minorité turque de Grèce par le biais de sondages effectués en Grèce, Turquie et Allemagne. Le second projet se penche sur l’immigration tamoule en France et dans l’Ontario. En se fondant sur la comparaison entre les deux approches distinctes de ces deux mou-vements identitaires, nous montrons que nous avons été en mesure de reprendre le ques-tionnement ethnographique sur ces deux sujets et de mettre en évidence leurs dimensions politiques.

Mots-clés

Mobilisation identitaire, nationalisme à grande distance, reprise du questionnement eth-nographique, protocole d’éthique, tamoules du Sri Lanka.

Resumen

Las relaciones de investigación en las ciencias sociales se están volvendo cada vez más cofigicadas por procedimentos formales estabelecidos por comités de ética. Este artículo enfatiza las virtudes de la improvisación vasadas en dos experiências de campo en países donde los protocolos de ética no están institucionalizados y son liberados al critério de los investigadores. El primer caso se relaciona con la minoria turca en Grecia, en una investigación realizada en Grecia, Turquía y Alemania; el segundo, refiere a la migración Tamil de Sri Lanka estudiada en Francia y Canadá (Ontario). Basada en la comparación de nuestros respectivos enfoque sobre movimentos de doble identidade, mostramos como es posible llevar a cabo una relectura etnográfica de estos tópicos y señalar sus dimensiones políticas.

Palabras clave

Movilizaciones basadas en la identidade, nacionalismo a distancia, revisión etnográfica, protocolo de ética, Tamiles de Sri Lanka.



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