Introduction

Towards the latter part of 2008, when I travelled to Sri Lanka to start this research, I did not envisage that I would be continuing this work for almost a decade. My initial approach was to a large degree dictated by the methods I had outlined for an Economic and Social Research Council–funded research project. Hence, like many others before me, I too followed the well-trodden track of carrying out interviews and located ethnography in a way that fell well within the project timeline. However, for a variety of factors recounted later, I also returned to do further research on the topic, maintaining connections with a number of workers, labour rights activists and managers. In this chapter, I try to capture the unbounded nature of field research and provide a sense of the processual nature of my research over the past decade.

I also aim to discuss the various methods that I deployed, especially as the fieldwork was not conducted during a singular research trip but, in the end, was a prolonged process carried out over several visits and years. This extended timeline was not one that I had anticipated at the start of my three-year project but one that ensued nonetheless. Partly, my motivation for continuing to have an association with a select number of workers had some connection with my feminist and solidarity politics and an upbringing infused with Buddhist empathy. Recurrent visits also involved using and deploying multiple methods at various stages, as the extended field research necessitated an evolving research design schema. In this chapter, therefore, I will detail the progress of my research methods over time. An extended field-research schedule meant that I was able to gather and reflect upon unanticipated changes and different embodied tempos, methods and processes.

Multiple Belongings: Doing Fieldwork Back ‘Home’

The year 2008 was the starting point of my fieldwork and, like the experiences of countless others, my initial time in Sri Lanka had its ups and downs. The cyclical process of doing research back ‘home’ was undoubtedly linked to my shifting subject position as an insider (Sri Lankan born and bred) and outsider (residing and working in the United Kingdom).