Feeling the Field: An Exploration of a Multisensory Positionality in Migration Research

Translocational Positionality and Reflexivity in Migration Research

Positionality, today a well-established concept in social sciences, originates with Alcoff (1988), who rejected essentialist definitions of womanhood based on fixed traits, instead framing identity as shaped by situational, external, and relational contexts. She also emphasized individual agency in interpreting these contexts, advocating for womanhood not as a fixed attribution but as a shifting position shaped by both structure and agency. Closely linked to this is the concept of intersectionality (Yuval-Davis, 2006), which emerged from the lived experiences of women of color and highlights how race, gender, and ethnicity intersect to produce distinct forms of marginalization (Crenshaw, 1993). More broadly, intersectionality examines how overlapping social categories such as gender, race, class, ethnicity, and disability interact to shape individuals’ experiences within specific spatiotemporal contexts. Originally developed in Critical Feminist Studies and focused on women and women of color, the concepts of positionality and intersectionality have since been adapted more broadly across the social sciences and humanities (Yuval-Davis, 2006).

In migration studies, a fruitful development in this area was offered by Floya Anthias’ (2002, 2008) spatiotemporal perspective on positionality through her notion of translocational positionality. Building on the development of critical feminist studies, Anthias criticized the static notion of identity, coining an analytical concept of translocational positionality that can be applied to approach all people who migrate, regardless of their gender. Translocational positionality “addresses issues of identity in terms of locations which are not fixed but are context, meaning and time related and which therefore involve shifts and contradictions” (Anthias 2008, p. 9). Translocational positionality thus refers to the positions an individual possesses within varying and multiple social, cultural, economic, and spatiotemporal contexts. Spatiotemporality of positionality is conveyed through Anthias’ (2020) concept of translocations, adding a vital dimension to intersectional analysis of positionality:

The term “translocational” denotes the ways in which social locations are products of particular constellations of social relations, and in terms of relationality and experience at determinate points in time; it considers them within a spatial and temporal context. (Anthias, 2020, p. 108)

As such, translocational positionality offers a comprehensive, spatialized framework for understanding the situational identity of migrating people, allowing for an analysis of the diverse ways their positions are expressed and acknowledging that some dimensions of positionality may at times conflict.

The positionality lens on the experiences of migration by people is today further developed and utilized (Iliško et al., 2021; Nikielska-Sekuła, 2018; Pechurina, 2014), helping recognize the heterogeneity of migrant groups (Schiff, 2021) and hence differentiating experiences of migrating people according to their individual constellations of positionalities (Alba et al., 2017). It informs social research methodologies, where both researchers’ and participants’ positionalities are recognized as influencing findings and requiring critical reflection (Clarke, 2021; Mason-Bish, 2019; Nikielska-Sekuła and Desille, 2021). For instance, Carling et al. (2014), using their own experiences from the field, created a categorization of a researcher’s position beyond the insider-outsider dynamic, providing a useful tool to describe the relationship between the researcher and the researched community. Ganga and Scott (2006) questioned the concept of an insider in qualitative research on migration, exploring the intersection of gender and generation in co-ethnic researcher-researched encounters. In a similar line, Ryan (2015) introduced a concept of multiple positionalities, theorizing the researcher’s positionality while going outside the insider-outsider dichotomy. She showed how shifting positionalities challenge, but also facilitate the research process in the context of her research on Polish and Irish women in London. Irgil (2021), based on her research regarding migration conducted among mainstream communities in Bursa, Turkey, explored her positionality as a member of the host society, conceptualizing it as an assigned insider. While doing so, she problematized the researcher’s positionality in a migration research context, yet in a study that targets the host population. Baz (2024) discussed her positionality as a young British Pakistani researching Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim mothers and introduced the concept of intersectional reflexivity. Moralli (2024) focused on intersectional positionality in her research on migration in Italian shrinking areas, connecting it to the emotional aspects of fieldwork theorized through a notion of research as care.

Discussions on non-reductionist approaches to identities, expressed through the presented theoretical concepts, align with the aims of an ongoing reflexive turn (Amelina, 2021) in migration studies. The suggestion of demigranticization of migration studies, voiced by Janine Dahinden (2016), is gradually more often echoed at top migration conferences in Europe and in the leading migration studies journals. It proposes a questioning of categories created and used in migration studies to demigranticize the field (Dahinden 2016), with a special focus on its core category of a migrant. What is more, the reflexive turn challenges dominant epistemologies in the field of migration studies, calling for alternative modes of knowledge acquisition, production and dissemination. This much-needed attention to the intersectional and located perspective on migrants’ identity (Anthias, 2002, 2020), the complexity of the researcher’s positionality and its impact on the findings (Baz, 2024; Ryan, 2015), along with a reflection on the power relationships behind migration research (Amelina, 2021) provide a reflexive lens to critically discuss the complex positionalities of both researchers and research participants when studying migrations. At the same time, the way positionality is constructed in these discussions gives limited attention to the feeling body, and I address it in the next section.

Multisensory Positionality

As indicated, while contributing extensively to migration studies, the assumptions of the reflexive turn, along with widely utilized approaches to positionality and intersectionality in migration studies, pose some limitations. With exceptions (Vacchelli, 2018; Desille & Nikielska-Sekuła, 2023; Moralli, 2024), they give scarce attention to the multisensory body as part of the reflexive positionality of people. The feeling body, the way the senses and sensory impressions and expressions are interpreted and translated into mediators of positionality in a context of migration, are often taken for granted and omitted in the way positionality is conceptualized in reflexive research.

This article attempts to address this challenge by theorizing positionality through the lens of what Stoller (2010) termed as sensuous scholarship—a theoretical and methodological approach situating the perspective of a sensing body at the center of analyses of social relations and social processes. As Pink indicated:

Preparation to do ethnography in a way that attends to the senses includes considering how one might use one’s own body and senses alongside and in combination with both more classic and contemporary innovative digital research. (Pink, 2015, p. 51)

Building on this quest, this article attempts to extend the spatialized conceptualizations of positionality of the experiences of the sensory body. While doing so, it develops further, rather than overturns, the presented reflexive approaches to positionality in migration studies.

The sensory turn, which prompted the advancement of sensuous scholarship, is now reaching adolescence in social sciences (Howes, 2022); however, its postulates have not yet been seriously considered in mainstream migration studies. “[T]he ‘sensory turn’ centres the sensuous, bodied person—participant, researcher and audience/reader—as the ‘place’ for intimate, affective forms of knowing” (Hurdley & Dicks, 2011, p. 277). It has brought an acknowledgment of the living, feeling, and multisensory body as part of social processes. It also introduced the concept of intersensoriality (Howes & Classen, 2013): “the multi-directional interaction of the senses and of sensory ideologies, whether considered in relation to a society, an individual, or a work” (Howes, 2020, p. 9). Intersensoriality connects with the idea of multisensoriality, which encompasses a full range of interconnected embodied sensory experiences—auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, haptic, and emotional. The sensory impressions and expressions of the body were approached as meaningful elements of social relations, cultural practices, multi- and intercultural encounters, identity creation, and more (Seremetakis, 2019; Stoller, 2010). Senses were recognized as hierarchized and tightly connected to social orders (Howes, 2020, p. 10). They were also seen as careers of memory (Low, 2023; Synnott, 1991). Importantly, sensory anthropologists have argued that the senses are culturally situated systems of meanings (Howes & Classen, 2013; Low, 2023), breaking with the naturality of sensory experiences and suggesting that the interpretations of sensory impressions always rely on cultural norms. This is especially relevant in the context of international migrations, where intercultural encounters involve also encounters between different sensescapes (Low, 2023). Moreover, Howes (2020) situated sensory scripts in geo-spatial and sociocultural environments, the body is entangled within using the concept of emplacement, widely popularized in migration studies as part of the spatial turn (Glick Schiller & Çağlar, 2016). He conceptualized emplacement as “the sensuous interrelationship of body-mind-environment [which] (. . .) is both physical and social (Howes 2020, p. 7).

Despite recognition in some recent studies (Low, 2015; Vacchelli, 2018), the multisensory nature of migration and sensory experiences assisting migration research demands greater attention of scholars. To address this quest, this article bridges the discussions on the reflexive, translocational positionality developed in migration research (Anthias, 2002, 2008, 2020) and the sensuous scholarship (Howes, 2020; Pink, 2015; Stoller, 2010), joining the discussion on the knowledge production at the intersection of embodied positionalities of the researcher and research participants (Vacchelli, 2018). In doing so, it proposes the concept of multisensory positionality—a holistic, translocational approach to positionality, which recognizes the embodied sensory experiences as a meaningful dimension of positionality that actively participates in the negotiation of meaning between people, spaces and places in migration contexts. In short, multisensory positionality situates the sensory body at the center of broader positionality frameworks developed in migration research, which include structural, sociocultural, economic, gendered, racial, ethnic, spatiotemporal, and other aspects of individual identities.

Researcher’s Multisensory Positionality as Part of Methodology

Researchers’ positionality with their intersecting class, ethnic, racial, and sociocultural characteristics is widely recognized as shaping methodological choices in the field. It is often used to access targeted groups and build trust with participants, sometimes by emphasizing certain aspects of positionality strategically (Carling et al., 2014). I argue that sensory scripts, mediated by our structural and sociocultural roles and positions in social hierarchies (Howes, 2020), also influence methodological choices and can be mobilized in the research instrumentally. I call these embodied aspects of positionality multisensory positionality and suggest that they can be useful, for example, in mapping the presence and connecting with members of closed or hard-to-identify communities in an urban setting.

This is illustrated through the first vignette coming from the study on belonging, urban presence, and cultural heritage engagement of the members of Norwegian-Turkish communities in the Norwegian city of Drammen. This research employed visual methodologies, and more specifically, the walking and photographing method (Krase, 2012), along with ethnography and in-depth interviews. Norwegian-Turkish communities were seen as closed and hard to access, partly because many members had blended into broader Norwegian society—despite their visible imprint on Drammen’s urban landscape (Nikielska-Sekuła, 2018). Lacking direct contacts in the community, I relied on multisensory aspects of my positionality to map their presence in the city. Rather than depending solely on visible signs—often misleading, like “The Real Turkish Kebab” run by non-Norwegian-Turks, I followed multisensory impressions: smells, tastes, and atmospheres of places and neighborhoods that hinted at the possible presence of Norwegian Turks. How did I assess this?

Years before researching in Drammen, I lived, studied, and worked in Turkey in two contrasting settings: a secular, upper-class university and a religious, working-class community from rural central and eastern Turkey. These experiences gave me situated cognitive knowledge of diverse social groups in Turkey and emplaced (Howes, 2020) me in the sensescapes of their everyday life—its smells, tastes, gestures, speech patterns, body language, and ambient sounds. As I was temporarily part of these communities, these sensory experiences have quickly become part of my translocational positionality, constituting what I call here a multisensory positionality. I activated it during research in Drammen. Early on into the research, cognitive knowledge proved limited. Instead, what guided me through the city were sensory cues pointing to the possible presence of Norwegian-Turks. Following these sensescapes offered an initial entry point into the community. While not providing a complete picture of Norwegian-Turkish presence in the city, they were invaluable in the research’s early stages.

The similarities of sensecapes in Drammen to those encountered in Turkey, which I assessed thanks to my translocational multisensory positionality, were used to map and document via photographs the places and districts that were later, upon entering into contact with people, confirmed cognitively as meaningful arenas of everyday life-making by Norwegian Turks. However, moving between a multisensory and cognitive mapping of businesses run by Norwegian Turks in the city, I encountered places that I initially omitted, which suggested a diversity of sensory scripts adopted by those identifying as Turks and living in Norway—the initially omitted places simply did not fall into my embodied understanding of Turkishness, moreover, some of them felt into what I assumed as Norwegian. These sensory observations interpreted through my multisensory positionality were systematically documented in field notes and analyzed, offering insight into the complex practices of Norwegian-Turks through the senses. The interplay of sensory familiarity and difference between what I encountered in Drammen and what I embodied in Turkey proved valuable for mapping and assessing how individuals aligned with or diverged from dominant cultural and sensory norms in translocational (Anthias, 2020) settings of their positionalities, referring to both Norway and Turkey. It also confirmed connections between senses and broader sociocultural orders (Howes, 2020), linking structural, sociocultural, and sensory aspects of positionalities of people.

Data gathered through multisensory experience and interpreted via my reflexive multisensory positionality were documented and integrated into the analysis, supporting conclusions about the unique cultural scripts of the Norwegian-Turkish respondents. These scripts were shaped neither exclusively by Turkish nor mainstream Norwegian norms, but by the urban spatiality of a diverse city of Drammen (Nikielska-Sekuła, 2018, 2019, 2021). Reflections on the researcher’s multisensory positionality not only guided the research direction but also became an integral part of the methodology at the data collection and analysis stage.

Multisensory Positionality as Data

The reflexive turn in migration studies has introduced a more nuanced and critical approach to the categories used to describe research participants. Frameworks such as translocational positionality and attention to intersecting identities have been emphasized (Anthias, 2020; Moralli, 2024). In this article, I propose to expand these perspectives through the inclusion of multisensory aspects of positionality, which can offer valuable insight, for example, into translocal belonging and the evolving emplacement of migrants. A second vignette focusing on the multisensory positionality of research participants exemplifies it.

The HerInt research project, ² which informs this and the following section, focused on cultural heritage engagement among Poles in Norway and Ukrainians in Poland. Its methodology aimed to convey the multisensory experience of heritage—tastes, smells, ambience, landscapes—primarily through images. Photo-elicitation interviews were conducted, where participants brought images reflecting their heritage engagement. These photographs served as prompts for discussing other multisensory dimensions of migration. This was enabled by what Howes and Classen (2013) term intersensoriality—the constant interplay of sensory expressions.

Anastasia, a Ukrainian woman who arrived in Poland after February 2022, invited me for an interview at her home. She prepared her phone as a source of images she intended to show me. During our conversation, she told me about her multisensory experience of being in Poland and how it related to her experience of home in Ukraine. She shared that some of these local sensescapes made her feel as if she was back in Ukraine. She mentioned smells of agricultural farms, certain flowers, and familiar foods. Anastasia showed me a photo of a grape hyacinth from her walks in Poland and said, “It smells like Ukraine” (Figure 1). Her multisensory positionality navigated her feeling at home in Poland, relying on sensory cues that connected her past life in Ukraine to her present surroundings. Observing these translocal interconnections conveyed through senses led me to theorize elsewhere the concept of embodied transnational belonging (Nikielska-Sekuła, 2023), illustrating how individual interpretations of sensory impressions can transcend space and time, linking distant places through familiar multisensory scripts (Tolia-Kelly, 2004).

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Figure 1.

Grape Hyacinth Smells Like Ukraine.

As is therefore evident, multisensory positionality plays a crucial, yet rarely discussed, role in migration processes, and the employment of visual and multisensory methods helps grasp it. In the early stages of settling in Poland, Anastasia relied on recreating and rediscovering sensescapes present in her Ukrainian homes. She did it to satisfy the feeling of familiarity recognizable to her multisensory positionality, and it helped her develop a sense of belonging in Poland. My research, however, has shown that multisensory positionality changes with time spent in new places. People advance sensory emplacements in new localities, conveying “the sensuous interrelationship of body-mind-environment” (Howes, 2020, p. 7), adopting new sensory impressions (Nikielska-Sekuła, 2023). Anna, a Pole living in Norway, found it extremely difficult to accept the tastes and smells of Norwegian Christmas cuisine upon her arrival in Norway. With time, however, these exact smells started bringing her a warm feeling of approaching Christmas, indicating a stark change in her multisensory positionality associated with her broader adjustment to the new society she is now part of.

Multisensory positionally shapes migration experience in this case, in the realm of migrants’ spatial belonging, and might be an indicator of their broader adaptation to the new society. Why, therefore, is it so rarely problematized? I suggest this arises from limitations in both researchers’ and participants’ ability to discuss sensory experiences. Often, researchers and participants come from sociocultural contexts where rational forms of knowledge are prioritized over embodied ones, creating a bias in both methodology and participants’ modes of engagement in research. A way to overcome this bias is by designing methodologies that encourage reflection on the sensory aspects of migration and capture how multisensory positionality shapes these experiences. Visual and multisensory methods are effective for this purpose, as they offer alternative knowledge acquisition techniques that can foster discussions on bodily experiences.

In the HerInt research, photo-elicitation interviews, through intersensorial connections (Desille & Nikielska-Sekuła, 2023; Howes & Classen, 2013; Nikielska-Sekuła, 2023), helped respondents bridge the cognitive and embodied dimensions of their migration experience. Using visuals in the discussion activated other sensory experiences, allowing respondents to interpret them within the context of their migration. The research team systematically collected the data emerging from “a multisensory event” (Pink, 2015) of an interview and analyzed it with both the researcher’s and participants’ multisensory positionalities in mind, contributing to theorizing migration processes with the recognition of the role of the senses.

Multisensory Positionality Bias in Data Analyses

In qualitative research, data analysis often starts already in the field (Clarke, 2021). As a matter of fact, researchers make decisions about interpretations of what they see and experience in the field ad hoc. As Hurdley and Dicks (2011, p. 278) claim:

Meanings are made in situ through the full spectrum of sensory phenomena with which actors engage—from what can be seen with the eye to what can be heard, touched, smelled, tasted—but also reverberate within webs of signifiers (e.g. the connotations of colours and plastics in the domain of children’s toys) beyond the immediacy of unfolding interactions.

What is done post-fieldwork is a re-interpretation of these initial, immediate insights.

Visual and multisensory methods that are of interest to this article often produce visual outcomes such as still and moving images, drawings, and collages. These outcomes are interpreted collaboratively with research participants, who may have different multisensory positionality than the researchers, having alternative sensory perspectives, feeling different emotions the images induce, and representing different aesthetic approaches. It’s essential to consider the negotiations of meaning between researchers and participants as an outcome of their different multisensory positionalities to better address positionality bias in data interpretation.

In the HerInt interviews, Zlata, a Ukrainian woman living in Poland, shared an image of what appeared to be traditional Polish dumplings. My initial impression, induced by ethnic and sensory aspects of my positionality, linked the visual to the expected smell and taste of Polish cuisine, leading me to conclude it represented Polish heritage adopted by Zlata. However, the image depicted Ukrainian vareniki, which Zlata identified with her cultural background and stated tasted different from their Polish counterparts (Figure 2). Multisensory positionality shapes our assumptions through rehearsed intersensorial scripts connecting visuals with tastes, smells, and other senses, and mediating their interpretations by cognitive rationalizations coming from our sociocultural positionality. This further guides the interpretation of the collected data. While sometimes helpful, it can also lead to misinterpretation of the field. Interpreting images produced in research requires attention to their context (Becker, 2005) situated within respondents’ multisensory positionalities. Their meaning must be negotiated in communication between researcher and research participants, and this process can be supported by attempts to emplace (Howes, 2020) oneself within the sensory words of research participants—a task never fully possible, but recommended as part of the learning about the field in preparatory stages of the research.

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Figure 2.

Vareniki.

However, negotiating the meaning of visual and sensory research outcomes with participants does not eliminate bias in post-fieldwork analysis, where multisensory positionality still influences data interpretation. Emotions tied to our sensory impressions from the fieldwork—visual, gustatory, olfactory, and more—resurface in our offices during post-fieldwork analysis. These associations can shape findings, leading us to draw conclusions through the lens of our embodied experiences mediated by our sociocultural and multisensory positionality. While visiting a Ukrainian couple living in Poland for an interview as part of the HerInt project, they offered me breakfast. The unfamiliar taste and smell immediately triggered embodied childhood memories of rural Poland, where heavier, greasy meals supported farm labor. My multisensory positionality stirred feelings of guilt and othering, echoing past experiences of being unable to consume food offered in these areas as a gesture of hospitality. This embodied sense of othering shaped my immediate interpretation of the couple’s sociocultural background as likely rural and strongly rooted in pre-migration traditions, given that their breakfast differed from mainstream Polish norms. To my surprise, I learnt during the interview that the couple extensively engaged with new cultural practices in Poland, was very well integrated into Polish society, spoke advanced Polish and had urban lives both before and after relocation. Yet the initial sense of othering, triggered by my multisensory positionality, drew a line between the couple and the Polish society I identified with, one that was hard to overcome. In short, I assumed their sociocultural positionality based on my own sensory experiences interpreted through my multisensory positionality. Only through time and reflection did I come to see their lifestyle and heritage as deeply intertwined with, if not assimilated into, Polish cultural practices.

In contrast, HerInt interviews with Poles in Norway, especially those from similar socio-economic backgrounds to mine, fostered mutual understanding, with few clashes in multisensory positionality. It was due to our shared experience of being Polish in Norway and emplacement into similar sensory, cognitive, and spatial scapes (Howes, 2020). The way they spoke, ate, and smelled felt neutral to me. I initially assumed they were well integrated into Norwegian society, only later realizing that some lived in an ‘expat bubble’ in Oslo, with little connection to mainstream Norwegian cultural practices.

The bias of multisensory positionality is always present—sometimes subtle, sometimes striking. Without reflection and acknowledgment, it can distort findings. What may seem trivial, such as feelings of othering or familiarity with sensory scripts encountered in the research situation, significantly influences how we interpret our results at the cognitive level. Bias during fieldwork is well-known, often linked to class, cultural background, and education, with strategies proposed to address it (Bourke, 2014). However, few tackle the embodied dimension of knowledge acquisition as a source of this bias. I suggest reflexively addressing this sensory bias in our research processes, as visual and sensory methods generate multisensory data through image production, participatory workshops, cooking together, and more, amplifying the significance of multisensory positionality in data interpretation.

Multisensory Positionality as Part of Research Methodology

The senses carry memories by linking sensory impressions with cognitive scripts (Synnott, 1991). This capacity of the senses forms the basis of multisensory positionality, and when reflexively integrated into methodology, it enhances the research process. For instance, multisensory positionality, through the interplay of familiarity and difference, can guide researchers early in the research process. Sensory cues may help identify relevant communities, provided the researcher has developed the capacity to perceive them. This capacity can emerge informally or be intentionally cultivated as part of learning the field, being inscribed in the research methodology. Embodied immersion or sensory emplacement (Howes, 2020) in communities we intend to research can significantly deepen understanding of the field.

Why is this particularly important for visual and multisensory methods? These approaches are often image-centered, and as Pink (2004) notes, viewing images inherently involves connections to other sensory impressions. In researcher-generated visuals, what we choose to photograph and how we interpret these visuals reflect our broader multisensory experience of the field, mediated by our multisensory positionality. In the case of respondent-generated photographs, the contextual understanding of what the images depict, the meaning-making of the images, always involves reflections and reconsiderations based on the negotiations between the meanings induced by the multisensory positionality of the respondents and the researcher. Therefore, the multisensory positionality of the researcher, but also of research participants, must be consciously and critically reflected upon, with particular attention to the sources of embodied familiarity and difference. This involves reflection first at the level of the body and second, focusing on the processes of connecting embodied impressions with cognitive associations grounded in broader social positionalities. The impression people derive from the field based on their multisensory positionality should therefore be systematically controlled throughout the research process for possible biases they may bring at the interpretation level.

Multisensory Positionality and the Negotiation of Meaning

When retrieving data through sensory means, such as engaging with visuals during research, we attempt to emplace ourselves into the sensory worlds of participants to better grasp the meanings they convey through these sensory messages. We do this because the senses are inherently interconnected—knotted together—each one triggering or enhancing the other (Howes, 2020).

However, because senses are shaped by structural, cultural, social, and spatial contexts people who feel them are entangled with, the meaning we derive is always negotiated between our multisensory positionality and that of the research participants. People’s responses to an image, the sensory and cognitive associations it evokes, are rooted in their past experiences and the cultural nets of significance they have been socialized into. Researchers must therefore understand the emplaced sensory scripts participants operate within to fully grasp the meanings conveyed. Without this, interpretations reflect the researcher’s encounter with the field rather than the life worlds of the participants—a limitation critiqued by Atkinson et al. (2007, pp. 179–180).

Still, fully emplacing oneself into the sensory experiences of participants is never entirely possible as these experiences always occur through the lens of the researcher’s own multisensory positionality. Both the researcher’s and participants’ sensory impressions are embedded in and shaped by their sociocultural roles and hierarchized positions across dimensions such as class, culture, gender, ethnicity, race, and more. Interpretation of outcomes of visual or sensory methods produced in the field is, therefore, a negotiated process, and the researcher’s reflexivity should center on how their own multisensory positionality shapes these negotiations. In other words, they must ask: why do I feel what I feel when engaging with, for example, visuals produced by participants, and how do these feelings influence my interpretation of the findings? The aim of this questioning is to reduce the multisensory positionality bias in meaning negotiations.

Multisensory Positionality as Data

The vignettes and discussion above lead me to conclude that multisensory positionality is not only an important setting, facilitator, or context of the research but can also be data that deserves collecting and interpretation (Low, 2015; Vacchelli, 2018; Desille & Nikielska-Sekuła, 2023; Nikielska-Sekuła, 2023). This applies to both the researcher’s and the respondents’ multisensory positionality. For researchers, the impressions and expressions they register and produce in the field can yield valuable insights if they are critically situated within an awareness of their own multisensory positionality biases. Questions such as ‘Where did my sense of othering or familiarity come from when encountering certain cultural practices?’, ‘Was it rooted in my personal history, or did it reflect something meaningful about the participants’ sociocultural background in relation to the local context?’ are helpful in reflecting on the factors influencing the interpretation of findings and supporting research design.

Regarding the multisensory positionality of respondents, it plays a key role in processes like developing a sense of belonging in new places, particularly in migration contexts. By examining the relationship between respondents’ everyday practices and their multisensory positionality, and reflecting on how this changes over time, we can gain valuable insights into their adaptation process. Systematically collected and analyzed reflections around multisensory positionalities of both the researcher and the participants can serve as data and support to theorize the research findings.

A Way Forward

Hurdley and Dicks (2011, p. 278) criticized sensory studies for a too narrow approach to senses, which ignores the way structural relations of power influence life-words of people:

Qualitative researchers have long acknowledged that what participants say and do needs to be interpreted alongside the material and sensorial settings in which they say and do it, and which play an active role in the shaping of emergent situations and encounters. Nevertheless, insufficient attention is often paid to the extent to which this emplaced and materialized meaning-making also mobilizes qualities that are displaced from our immediate sensory perceptions, in that they inhere in signifiers (objects and materials) embroiled in wider organizations of cultural value and meaning.

Bringing together structure and power-oriented theories of translocational positionality (Anthias, 2002, 2008) from migration studies with insights from sensory studies addresses this critique. The result is the concept of multisensory positionality, which links people’s sensory experiences with their structurally shaped positions, influenced by power relations and intersecting factors like social, cultural, economic, gender, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. In other words, multisensory positionality seeks to situate individuals’ embodied sensory scripts within broader positionality frameworks, confirming that embodied ways of knowledge acquisition are cognitively interpreted within the social, cultural, and structural orders in which people operate (Howes, 2020) and that they depend on the relations of power.

This is particularly crucial in migration research, where subjects are often caught in complex power dynamics arising from the clashes and inconsistencies between their individual positionalities (or certain aspects of them) and those of the people they encounter during their migration journey, including the researcher. It is not rare for both researchers and participants in migration studies to come from different parts of the world, represent different social and economic classes, and have varying educational backgrounds. These result in ongoing power relations between them, and the sensory experiences assisting their interactions are deeply embedded within these intricate structural contexts.

While this applies to all qualitative (and beyond!) research, visual and sensory methods place particular emphasis on the meaning of sensory connotations activated during the research process. Approaching these methods through the lens of multisensory positionality, and with a situated focus on the senses (Howes, 2020), has proven effective in generating deep field knowledge.

Multisensory positionality focuses on the sensory, embodied experiences of individuals, within the context of their structural and sociocultural positionalities. As an analytical concept, it provides a framework to address both the opportunities and limitations that arise during the research process due to the embodied, multisensory experiences of all research participants. Theoretically, it bridges migration and sensory studies, enhancing the understanding of positionality in migration research by situating the embodied, sensory aspects of people’s identities within their broader life-worlds, including the influence of structures and power relations. As such, the multisensory positionality perspective contributes to sensory studies by linking the senses with broader social structures, while also enriching migration studies by integrating sensory experiences into discussions of positionality in the research process.