interview
Nanneke Winters talks about her PhD project
Contested connections:
mobility and migration as
development experiences of
translocal livelihoods
in Muy Muy, Nicaragua
I
n her PhD, Nanneke Winters further develops the notion
of mobility and migration as development experiences.
Taking people’s translocal livelihoods as its starting point,
the thesis shows the relevance of integrating a diversity of
interconnected (non)migration experiences for understanding
global human mobility and its development implications. Her
thesis focuses on migrants and their families in Muy Muy, a
Nicaraguan village where livelihoods take shape in a volatile
context and traditionally involve different migrations. These
migrations include destinations in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and
other Central American countries, the United States, and
increasingly Spain. Nanneke explored the ways migrants
and their families organise their translocal livelihoods, the
diversity of migrations they engage in, and the developmental
dimensions they deem important. Her analysis rests on multisited ethnographic research that extends, along the livelihood
connections of migrant families, to Costa Rica and Spain. The
three translocal livelihood domains of carework, ‘illegality’, and
remittances served as empirical examples of how mobility and
migration experiences materialise and provided the basis for
proposing the framework of a mobility spectrum.
10 Exchange to change June 2016
During your PhD defense, you were
praised for your strong relationship
with your respondents. Can you
describe what is so unique about
this relationship?
Nanneke: Actually, I don’t think it’s
that unique to maintain strong field
relationships, at least not in the
context of ethnographic research. But
yes, I did try to establish personal
and sustained connections, out of a
dedication to the topic and because
I thought this would give me greater
insight into people’s experiences. My
research was interesting to me on so
many levels that it would have been
difficult not to get close to the people
I was regularly talking to. I felt
this closeness helped me to let the
research develop in the most relevant
way and to do justice to people’s own
views. What perhaps is still quite
unique, is that I tried to maintain
contact over time and across
distance, although I’m sure that
many ethnographers who are unable
to spend long periods in the field also
try to do so, especially in migration
research. A key aspect of the type of
strong field relationships we maintain
is to acknowledge how much people’s