Approaching the Other “Other” in International Political Sociology Through a Photo-Essay of Home, Mundaneness, and Migrancy

This article contributes to the International Political Sociology literature by rethinking the ways and means of knowledge production concerning Southern communities in geographical and epistemological territories of the Global North. The research proposes to take up the methodological and ontological discussion through a photo-essay and to engage in an inter-legible dialogue that emphasizes the immediacy, simultaneity, and possibility of home, international, and transnational relations. The paper makes two points. First, it is vital to acknowledge Southern migrants’ right to move and to stay, such that the photo-essay serves to normalize mobility and border movements and to visualize Northern urban spaces as constituted by and integrative of ordinary, everyday migratory processes. Second, the photo-essay opens a window onto fieldwork dynamics and invites questions of other “other” learning in the case that the researcher is a Southern scholar embodying a set of sociocultural references dissimilar from that of her informants. When used as a conduit for knowledge generation and sharing, the photo-essay allows International Relations to join ethnographic debates in other university departments.