Voyageuse suspecte. L’expérience d’une chercheuse porteuse de stigmates

Abstract

This article deals with my condition as a researcher with stigmata and my difficulties in entering my doctoral research field, conducted in the West Bank between 2011 and 2014, and dedicated to the preservation and the enhancement of Palestinian urban heritage. Through an analysis of the crossing of Ben-Gurion airport, a dreaded passage where arbitrariness and uncertainty are at stake, which can lead to interrogations with Israeli security agents, I will first present the anticipated or spontaneous micro-strategies that I set up in order to escape categorizations at the airport. Then I will develop two passages about the interview I had to undergo, with the fear that my past activist involvement would be discovered and that I would be expelled. The risk of my research being interrupted if I no longer had access to it, led me to make methodological choices, between precaution and resignation, taking care both to protect myself and not to harm the respondents.

Keywords

• Field research
• Borders
• Researcher
• Stigmata
• Stress
• Methodological pathways