Mexico – Denmark, Return: Narratives on Cultural Differences

Mexico – Denmark, Return: Narratives on Cultural Differences

By Maria Lauridsen Jensen, student 20116208 Subject: Ethnographic Methodology with Rane Willerslev Master Anthropology June 10 2015

Photos by Rafael, Paulet and Rosina

I send my gratitude to the Mexicans who made this project possible

Maria L. Jensen: 20116208 Ethnographic Methodology with Rane Willerslev

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Contents Mexico – Denmark, Return: Narratives on Cultural Differences ..................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 3 Access, Rapport and Language ..................................................................................... 3 Ethics ............................................................................................................................ 5 Interviews and the Use of Photo Elicitation ................................................................. 7 Lessons from a Misunderstanding .............................................................................. 10 Narrating Cultural Differences ................................................................................... 11 Knowledge Packed for Mexico................................................................................... 12 References ................................................................................................................... 13 Project Description: Meeting Denmark: Narratives told by Mexicans .......................... 15 Problem Definition and Objectives ......................................................................... 15 Scientific Contributions........................................................................................... 15 Research Questions ................................................................................................. 15 Time Plan ................................................................................................................ 17

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Introduction In the fall of 2015 I am going to the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico to do fieldwork for my master’s thesis. According to the anthropologists Jeffrey Sluka and Antonius Robben (2012) and George Marcus (1998) as well as sociologist Karen O’Reilly (2012:3) there is no recipe for fieldwork; fieldwork is something you learn by doing. Hence, I have been wondering how to prepare myself. Since conducting a pilot study in Mexico has not been an option, I started playing with the thought of studying Mexican migrants in Denmark. Mexican migrants would not only be able to give me methodological experience, they could also give me knowledge about Mexico, enlighten me in the differences between Denmark and Mexico, and provide me with information on how it is to move to another country. I attempt to bring what I learn from the migrants to my fieldwork in Mexico. This study aims to smoothen my way into doing participant observation in Mexico. Participant observation is the hallmark of ethnographic methodology; it is a method where the ethnographer uses her body as a vehicle for collecting data. The ethnographer becomes one with the field, but is still able to distance herself analytically (O’Reilly 2012:96-100; Spradley 1980:57). The ethnographic data for this paper has been collected during the spring of 2015 through seven semi-structured interviews, four participant observation sessions, one blog post, and one e-mail correspondence. My fieldwork can be seen as multi-sited because the limits of the field is determined by a type of people instead of by a particular location, and because information has been collected online as well as by meeting people in person (see Hannerz 2012). My problem statement is as follows: What role does narrative play when moving to a new country? In this paper I will account for the methods I have used to conduct the study, and I will present and analyze my findings.

Access, Rapport and Language The first challenge of this project was to find Mexicans in Denmark, and preferably near the city of Aarhus. Currently, Moesgaard Museum has an exhibition about día de los muertos (a Mexican holiday), and Mexicans from the area of Aarhus has participated in 3

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making the exhibition. My first step was therefore to ask the museum inspector if she could help me get in touch with the Mexicans. I wrote a letter in which I briefly outlined the project in both Danish and Spanish, and she passed it on to the Mexicans who had collaborated with the museum. Meanwhile, I used Facebook as a tool to find informants. On the Facebook webpage you can search for names of individuals and groups. I typed in different keywords in both Danish and Spanish and found several groups such as “Latinos in Aarhus” and “Mexicanos en Aarhus”. Some of the groups were closed, so I applied for becoming a group member. In each group I accessed, I posed the same letter as I had sent to the museum inspector. I also contacted the International Student Center at Aarhus University (AU), and they passed the letter on to the ten Mexican students enrolled at AU. I was not contacted by any of the Mexicans who had helped creating the exhibition at the museum. Facebook was, however, a fast way to get in contact with informants. Through Facebook I found six informants within a week. It was also very efficient to contact the International Student Center; within two days I had four informants. One of the students, Alejandro, was already back in Mexico, but he sent me links to a blog he had written about Danes and Mexicans, and he asked if he could help me in other ways. Alejandro explained his eagerness to help me as follows: “it would be like a way of thanking Denmark of what your country gave me, so believe me, I would be very happy to do it”. I also believe that my informants’ willingness to participate in the project can be explained as an outcome of the difficulties in establishing contact with Danish people. “We want Danish friends”, Mario for example told me (own translation. February 17). I figure that my letter seemed as an invitation to talking to a Dane. All the way through the project, I have found it important to communicate with the informants in Spanish. By communicating in Spanish, I have prepared myself linguistically for my fieldwork in Mexico. By using the informants’ native tongue, I also aimed to set up a comfortable situation for them. The effect of the method is confirmed in following quote by Ana who studies in Denmark for one semester, “it is very nice to speak Spanish, because with English… with every word… er …that is not how it is” (own translation, March 27: 9.39). In the same vain, both Tiziana and Rosina

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told me that most of their friends are Latinos, because it is easier to express themselves in Spanish, and because with Latinos they can relate to the same food and music (March 2; March 4). Using the informants’ native tongue is a method to build rapport which means to establish a relationship based on trust and mutual respect (see Marcus 1998). Since my Spanish is not completely fluent, speaking Spanish emphasizes my role as the ignorant and childlike student and the informants’ role as knowledgeable teachers. Thus, language made me seem humble and the informants superior, and it was a way for me to show them that I want to learn on their premises. My role as a student was also established in the first letter, whereby I have been open about my role as a researcher right from the initial contact to the informants. Furthermore, in this study my choice of speaking Spanish can be seen as participant observation. I have put myself in a position where I could not express myself as well as I would have been able to do in Danish, and I felt the frustrations connected to this experience, even though the Mexicans were kind to help me find the words I was looking for. Ana drew a parallel between her English skills and my trouble with the conjunction of Spanish verbs (March 27: 9.50), and several of my informants told me that they had a hard time expressing themselves when speaking Danish or English.

Ethics This project follows the American Anthropological Association’s Code of Ethics that stresses overt and sustainable research (AAA 2009). As already mentioned, my role as a student researching Mexicans living in Denmark has been pointed out right from the first contact. Openness about my role and the purpose of the project makes this research overt (see O’Reilly 2012:64). I have begun each interview by asking for permission to record it and for verbal consent to use the data. I have asked all informants if they want to be anonymous, I have let them know that they can tell me if there is part of the data that I cannot use, and I have asked for consent to use the photos shown in this paper. In interview settings, I had a pen and note book present to make my role clear, and when doing participant observation, I verbally reminded informants of my research. I have also given the informants small photo exercises, both as a means of collecting data and

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in order to keep reminding them that I am researching them. Reminders of my role are particularly important when doing participant observation as the line between friend and researcher to some extend fades out. Among anthropologists, it is considered ethically correct to pay back the field (Sluka and Robben 2012:29). As anthropologist Marcel Mauss argued in the The Gift from 1954, giving, receiving and giving in return is the foundation of social alliances. Paying back the field is, thus, a way to do sustainable research. It is a way to establish rapport during the meeting, but a good experience for the informants also helps in keeping the field open for future research. By participating in this project the informants help me out, and I therefore want to pay them either one way or the other. When I have visited the informants in their private homes, I have brought flowers to show my gratitude. I arranged tea and cookies for the interviews I did at the University, and I paid for the informant’s coffee when I held an interview at a cafe. I also looked after the toddler of my informant Tiziana while she was at a consultation with her doctor, and the informants I had met twice or more, I invited to my birthday party. It can also be argued that I have paid back the informants simply by taking on the role as a listener: What generally happens when we tell a story from our own life is that we increase our working knowledge of ourselves because we discover deeper meaning in our lives through the process of reflecting and putting the events, experiences, and feelings that we have lived into oral expression. [Atkinson 1998:1] This partly explains why in the morning of April 11, I found a long and detailed letter in by e-mail inbox. The letter was from Ana. She explained in the first line, that our meeting two weeks earlier, had made her think, and therefore she had been wanting to write me for a while. Besides from listening, I paid back Ana by helping her fill out a job application and by looking into the Danish rules on residency – task that gave me insight in the difficulties of living in Denmark when not speaking Danish. Thus, paying back Ana became a way to do participant observation, but it simultaneously signaled that I did not expect her to tell me her personal story without receiving something in return.

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Interviews and the Use of Photo Elicitation In order to establish a foundation for the project, I conducted semi-structured interviews. Semi-structured interviews have elements of the structured interview, where all questions are planned ahead, and the unstructured interview, where the interviewer merely has a topic (O’Reilly 2012:120). I prepared an interview guide with open questions. Since the interviews were in Spanish, designing the interview guide was a good way to prepare a vocabulary for the topic of the study. I made the questions openended, because I wanted to avoid influencing the informants with my own ideas and words (see O’Reilly 2012:122). I used the interview guide to direct the interviewee into the topic I was investigating, but the open-ended questions made me able to make up additional questions when the interviewee introduced information I found interesting. For the initial meetings, I did a regular interview sessions followed by photo elicitation. Photo elicitation is a method where photos are used to elicit data from the informant. I asked the informants to bring five photos that represent Mexico. In the interview with respectively Vladimir and Paulet the photos clearly brought up passion in their eyes, but in all interviews the photos generated narratives. The photos helped me understand or envision what my informants referred to in their stories. The photos reflected the topics the informants found interesting, and they brought forth memories of places, people and senses. The power of a photo in evoking memories and senses has been described by among others Roland Barthes (1982). Photo elicitation can, nevertheless, be exiting but time consuming and unfocused if the ethnographer does not set a limit. Vladimir and Paulet did for example use the internet to show their photos, and in their eagerness to teach me more about Mexico they far exceeded the five photo limit. I moreover experienced that whereas some informants opened a river of information when exposed to photos, others seemed to find words irrelevant when a photo was present. It can thereby be risky for an ethnographer not to have other methods at hand. In

the

second

round

of

interviews,

I

used

autophotography.

Autophotography is a method where the informants visually portrait aspects of their own life (O’Reilly 2012:169). I asked informants to take five photos of the differences between Denmark and Mexico and five photos of how they adapt to Danish society, and

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I asked to have them by e-mail before the interviews. By having the photos beforehand, I knew if the informant had done the exercise, and I could sort out the photos if there were too many. Rosina sent me three photos of activities she had recently undertaken and 15 photos of the differences between Denmark and Mexico. I chose seven of them for the interview I conducted with her. I began the photoelicitation after about 15 minutes of chatter. Though we were in a relaxed atmosphere in her apartment and spoke Spanish, I found it rather hard to make her reflect on her experiences in Denmark. Her answers were generally rather short. This, however, changed when I displayed the photos she had sent me. One of the photos showed a pot of coffee and two porcelain cups stacked on top of each other. When I first saw the photo, I did not find it that interesting. Surprisingly, when I showed Rosina the photo, she told me a story about her experience with finding a Mexican brew in a cafe in Copenhagen. The photo elicited her nostalgia for Mexico, which can be seen in the following quote: It is not the same coffee as we drink in my home, but the memory of Mexico, you know… The truth is that it was very good. I was together with a friend – also from Mexico, and thereby I felt as at home although I was far from home. We were talking Spanish; we were eating breakfast together… I know her from the university. […] I was back again, but I was in Copenhagen [own translation. April 29: 20.39-21.22] Thus, in working with Rosina, autophotography was an effective method to understand the sensual aspect of living far from home. Rosina had also taken a photo of a plate with a scone and a piece of rye bread with peanut butter and jelly. She told me that in Denmark she has changed her diet, so now she eats bread with marmalade or cheese in the morning. In Mexico she had fruits, juice and coffee for breakfast. When I asked her why she has changed her

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diet, she explains that it is difficult to find the fruits she eats in Mexico, and that the variety of fruits in Denmark is poor especially during winter. She has asked around, and found out that many Danes eat sandwiches. She tells me that she did find a bread that looks like one she knows from Mexico, but since she does not like the taste, she finds it better to adapt to rye bread (April 29: 2.40). The longing for the taste of Mexico was a theme all of my informants brought up. I had also asked Tiziana to do the photo exercise for our second meeting, but she never found time to do it. As a go-along interview (see Kusenbach 2003), I followed her in some of her weekly routines. She, her toddler and I met at her doctor’s office and afterwards we went to a playground in a department store. While we were playing, Tiziana told me that that would be a situation she could take a photo of for the exercise. I asked what she found special about the situation, and she told me that in Mexico the playgrounds are not in as good a condition as in Denmark, and that you would never see a room for breast feeding. As her comment revealed, the photo exercise I had given Tiziana made her reflect on her life as she lived it, whereby it is evident that the information I got was constructed in collaboration between the two of us. Collaboration is what characterizes an ethnographic interview (Atkinson 1998:2; O’Reilly 2012:118). The comment also let me know that she was aware that though we had fun, I was there to research her life. I do not have the opportunity describe my experiences with auto photography further here. Suffice it to remark that the photos in all cases assisted the informants in finding stories about what they find strange or interesting, and stories about what changes they have made in order to adapt to life in Denmark. According to Marcus Banks (2001:95) photos initiates a chain reaction in the interview setting by making the interviewee reflect on life. Drawing on the case from the playground, I will add that the chain is already started when the informants are asked to select or take photos to show the researcher.

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Lessons from a Misunderstanding In choosing to work with Mexican migrants in Denmark, there has been no naturally limited physical place to conduct participant observation. The informants’ daily routines are diverse, and a specific Mexican community is almost nonexistent in Aarhus. I have relied on semi-structured interviews besides from the go-along interview with Tiziana mentioned above, and taco meals in two different homes. I have already argued that in this project speaking Spanish and helping informants with paperwork are ways of doing participant observation. In this chapter I will argue that the meetings I have had with informants in their private homes also are participant observation, because, as the following case shows, by being a Danish visitor in a migrant home, I have experienced how Mexican and Danish cultural values interact: When I set up a meeting with Rosina through e-mail, I asked her if we could meet to talk about the photos she had sent me, go for a walk on the route where she does her exercise routine, and then eat together. The time we agreed upon was 2pm. She wrote me that she had a great idea for a Mexican meal, and asked me to bring cheese. In my mind, I had no doubt that we were going to cook and eat dinner together when we had finished the other activities. When I showed up in her apartment at 2pm on April 29, she asked me if I was hungry. I told her that I was not. I anticipated that she asked me, because she had not yet had time for lunch herself. I told her that she could go ahead and eat. During the conversation, I gradually realized that whereas I had understood that we would eat dinner together, she had understood that we would eat lunch. This initiated a conversation about meal times, types of meals and heaviness of meals in respectively Denmark and Mexico. She then told me that she would have other guests over for dinner. I therefore had to cancel what was supposed to have been a goalong interview, and I had to eat lunch twice since I felt it would be rude not to taste what she had made. Besides, I had really looked forward to taste a bit of Mexico. We ate the tasty tacos she had prepared while she told me a lot about food in Mexico and the difficulties of finding the ingredients for Mexican food in Denmark. The misunderstanding has taught me to be more precise when setting up meetings, but it has also given me valuable information about how small cultural differences mean that the ethnographer always must be prepared for a change of plans.

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The situation also reflects how migrants and natives can misunderstand each other because both take their cultural norms for granted. I argue that I did participant observation in the meal situation, because I experienced the interplay between Mexican and Danish culture through my own body.

Narrating Cultural Differences Facing cultural differences is part of moving to a new country. Differences can be perceived as interesting, fascinating, strange, annoying or frustrating. According to psychologist Jerome Bruner (2004:692) narratives are a form of “life-making”. In this chapter I will bring light on different ways my informants talk about the Danes. Paulet and Rafael both let me know that one’s new country should not be compared with one’s natal country. Paulet gives following advice to newcomers, “Never view this culture with your own eyes; instead look at it with the eyes of this culture” (own translation. May 8). Paulet tells me that some of her friends criticize the Danes for smelling like sweat and for not dressing properly. She tells me that in Mexico etiquette is important; most schools and workplaces have dress codes that forbid tennis shoes. According to Paulet the Danes’ smell and outfit is understandable because Danes use bikes for transport and are conscious about being green and therefore perfume free. Now, after having lived in Denmark for three years, she prefers tennis shoes herself because they are comfortable and practical (May 8). Rafael explains that life will be a constant fight, if you do not accept Denmark as it is. If you instead accept things as they are you will adapt and make friends faster he explains (May 1: 59.00). According to Rosina you have to know the Danes before they open up to you. Danes are willing to show you the way or help you with a question, but that is about it. Mexicans on the other hand are easy-going and warm to friends as well as to strangers. Rosina finds it strange that she is not entitled to have a tutor, when AU brands itself as an International University. She tells me that the tutor program only is for those who studies at AU for one semester, whereas she will be here for two years. She describes the program as a gateway to a social network (March 4).

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Ana had heard stories about the “cold Danes” before she came, but she is surprised to find that the Danes are not as cold as she had expected. Yet, she mostly hangs out with international students, and it does not bother her. Ana says that she understands that the Danish students have their routines, career related concerns, and established friendships. She tells me that it is the same thing in Mexico. International students hang out with international students rather than with the locals (March 27). Rafael admits that it is a bit hard to make friends in Denmark, but explains: When you have them, you have them for a long time […] The Danes are like a bottle of ketchup. You need to keep trying until it comes out […] but when it opens, you have them. You have them for many years [own translation. May 1: 59.39] Telling narratives is as a way people construct and make sense of their lives. The constructions partly arise from the individual’s structural position, partly from the individual’s agency (Bruner 2004). The migrants I have worked with are structurally situated partly in Mexican culture partly in Danish, whereby they to some extend compare the cultures with each other. Each migrant is further situated in substructures. Rafael, Paulet and Tiziana are in relationships with Danes and they are planning to stay here, whereas Rosina and Ana as international students only are in Denmark temporarily. The international students experience some degree of structural pressure to get immersed in Danish society as fast as possible and simultaneously do well academically, whereas the informants who plan to stay gradually can work their way. The structural position, however, only determines part of a person’s story. According to Bruner (2004:694), we become the stories we tell about ourselves. As this paper shows, even people with similar backgrounds frame similar experiences differently, and even dominant narratives such as the one about “the cold Danes” can be turned around.

Knowledge Packed for Mexico For this project I have collected data about the lives of Mexican migrants in Denmark. The project does not aim to evaluate how migrants should view Danes or Denmark, nor does it aim to judge if their narratives are true; instead it aims to bring light to different ways of making sense of cultural differences. I initiated by asking what role narrative plays when moving to a new country. According to my findings each individual, though 12

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imposed to structural considerations, more or less has the power to construct a narrative that makes cultural differences understandable. I also initiated by saying that I will bring the knowledge from this project with me on my upcoming fieldwork in Mexico. The Mexican migrants have taught me that it is useful to have patience, be flexible, and to perceive cultural differences as interesting and challenging in an exciting way. Moreover, I have learned to be flexible in regards to methods, because an interview situation can change. In regards to photo elicitation I have learned that it is a good idea to find a strategy to limit the number of photos. Last but not least, I have learned that it opens doors to speak the informants’ native tongue even if I do not do it fluently.

References AAA, American Anthropological Association 2009 Code of Ethics of the American Anthropological Association. Electronic document, http://www.aaanet.org/issues/policy-advocacy/upload/AAA-EthicsCode-2009.pdf, accessed 5/26, 2015. Atkinson, Robert 1998 The Life Story Interview. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE. Banks, Marcus 2001 Chapter 4: Research Strategies . In Visual Methods in Social Research. Pp. 73-109. Delhi, London, New York: Sage Publications. Barthes, Roland 1982 Camera Lucida : Reflections on Photography. London: Cape. Bruner, Jerome 2004 Life as Narrative. Social Research 71(3):691-710. Hannerz, Ulf 2012 Being there... and there... and there! Reflections on Multi-Site

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Ethnography. In Ethnograpic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader. Jeffrey A. Sluka and Antonius C. G. M. Robben, eds. Pp. 399-408. Chichester: WileyBlackwell. Kusenbach, Margarethe 2003 Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool. Ethnography 4(3):455-485. Marcus, George E. 1998 The Uses of Complicity in the Changing Mise-En Scene of Anthropological Fieldwork. In EThnography Though Thick and Thin. George E. Marcus, ed. Pp. 105-132. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mauss, Marcel 2002 [1954] The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translation 1990 W.D.Halls, ed. London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis e-Library. O'Reilly, Karen 2012 Ethnographic Methods. 2nd ed. Oxon: Routledge. Sluka, Jeffrey A., and Antonius C. G. M. Robben 2012 Fieldwork in Cultural Anthropology: An Introduction. In Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader. Jeffrey A. Sluka and Antonius C. G. M. Robben, eds. Pp. 1-47. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Spradley, James R. 1980 Participant Observation. Belmont, USA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

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Project Description: Meeting Denmark: Narratives told by Mexicans Problem Definition and Objectives Contemporary Denmark inhabits people from just about every corner of the world. In this paper I will look into Mexicans living in Denmark. Mexican migrants are here more or less voluntarily. I will investigate why they have chosen to live in Denmark (for a shorter or longer period of time), and how the expectations corresponds to praxis. I will also look into the differences between the two countries in regards to daily life. Scientific Contributions -

My interest is to use the data to prepare myself for fieldwork in Mexico, by getting an understanding of the country and its people. I will to some extend reverse the data, and thereby avoid assaulting potential informants or the like.

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The study will shed light on life as a migrant in Denmark.

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The study gives an external view on Danes, whereby we can question what we as Danes find ordinary. A reflection on the ordinary life in Denmark might make us think about alternatives.

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A comparison between the data of this study and the data I will find in Mexico can shed light on whether or not migrants’ perception of their home country differ from the perception of Mexico by Mexicans living in Mexico, or if there is a difference between Mexicans within the country. This brings insight to the relationship between (returned) migrant and home community. Likewise it can shed light on the question of values in regards to internal migration.

Research Questions -

Why did the informant choose to move to Denmark? o What expectations did the informant have?

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How do the expectations correspond to the informant’s life in Denmark?

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Which values does the informant ascribe to Mexico? o What is considered important to Mexicans? o What do they miss about Mexico

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Which values does the informant ascribe to Denmark after having lived here for a while?

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How does Mexico differ from Denmark?

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Maria L. Jensen: 20116208 Ethnographic Methodology with Rane Willerslev -

How does Mexican differ from Danes?

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Would the informant consider to stay in Denmark – why (not)?

summer 2015

Analytical Framework -

The project will be situated in the analytical frame of migration studies, and possible lines of focus can be: transnationalism, ethnic migrants, elite migrants.

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Identity: cultural/national/regional/multiple/social class/religion – what matters?

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Integration

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I will focus on narratives, and therefore include theoretical aspects of the genre.

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Official or institutionalized Danish discourses on migrants can also be included and related to the migrants’ narratives.

Method 

This project will primarily rely on semi-structured interviews, because I’m interested in how the migrants narrate their experiences of living in Denmark. I will consider attending a gathering of Mexican migrants, if I can find one, in order to do participant observation.



I will use the method Photoelicitation, by making informants bring photos to the interviews. This will make the interviews livelier, support the informants’ memories, and make the informants think and reflect upon about selected themes before the interviews.



I will use the method of Autophotography (O’Reilly:169) to get a visual understanding of the life of Mexican migrants in Denmark, and to make the informants reflect upon their everyday life. Informants will be asked to take 5 photos that show the difference between their life in Mexico and their life in Denmark and 5 photos of what they do to adapt to Danish society in order to initiate conversation of potential difficulties and obstacles.



Language: I will only correspond with the informants in Spanish. This will help me practice my Spanish skills, and to build up trust in myself in regards to using Spanish in a work context. I furthermore believe that communicating with the informants in their mother tongue will make them more relaxed and comfortable.

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Role: I will take on the role as a student researcher and a friendly and interested listener. I will also act as a student who knows almost nothing, and therefore needs to be taught. It is in the role as a student researcher I will have most authority. My authority will e.g. been shown when it comes to setting up meetings and steering the interview.



Access: I have written a letter outlining my project in both Danish and Spanish. I have used the word “conversation” instead of “interview” to make it less frightening to participate (O’Reilly 2005:144). The letter has been sent to: o

Ane from Moesgaard Museum who has been involved in the exhibit about Days of The Dead where Mexican migrants have participated in recreating the scene.

o

Facebook groups: “Latinos in Aarhus”, “Mexicanos en Dinamarca”, and “Comunidad de Mexicanos en Dinamarca”.

o

International Student Center at AU

Ethical considerations This research will be overt. I will initiate all interviews by explaining this project as well as the fieldwork I will do in Mexico the fall. I will tell the informants that the conversations will turn into an exam paper, but also that the conversations will help me prepare for my fieldwork. I will then ask for permission to record the conversation. I will tell all informants that they at any time can let me know if they say something I should not pass on. If I receive sensitive information I will ask whether or not the person wish to stay anonymous. If I decide to use the data for other purposes than the exam paper, I will ask for permission to do so. Time Plan February: grand tour interviews. Establish trust and a network. Photo elicitation by using photos the participants have selected. April & May: follow up interviews. Photo elicitation based on Autophotography. Maybe a focus group interview on advice to Mexicans who move to Denmark.

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