Intimacy, shared experiences and evening out the power relations between researcher and the participants play an important role in feminist methodology. However, as highlighted in previous research on studying ‘up’, such methods might not be appropriate when studying privileged groups. Therefore, studying privileged women challenges fundamental assumptions in feminist methodology. When researching privileged women, the assumption that the researcher is almost always in a superior position within the research process becomes more complicated. The article seeks to contribute to the feminist methodological literature on how to study privileged groups by exploring how class, gender and whiteness are produced in three fieldwork situations with women who hold privileges in a postcolonial and capitalist landscape. Drawing on interviews and participant observations with white Swedish migrant women, the article argues that researchers need to turn the problems, fears and feelings of being uncomfortable into important data, in order to study privileged groups of women.

What are the gendered aspects of Swedish return migration? About 15.000 – 20.000 Swedes emigrate every year. Presently, up to 550 000 Swedes live abroad and most Swedes chose to return to Sweden after having lived a period abroad.

This makes Swedes the largest immigrant group to Sweden. This paper investigates re-constructions of national identity and gender among Swedish migrant women returning to Sweden after living abroad. Drawing from participant observations and individual interviews with women who can be described as an economically privileged group, gendered and class hierarchies in contemporary migration are discussed.

The aim of this paper is to develop an intersectional understanding of Swedish women’s narratives of return migration. What kinds of connections are made between return migration and notions of gender and Swedishness? How do Swedish women experience re-integratation, in relation to norms and values of gender equality in the Swedish society?

The paper explores the gendered dimensions of return migration and develops theoretical discussions on belonging. In order to understand these questions, I argue that the analysis of women’s narratives about return migration can be developed using feminist and postcolonial theory in general and the concept of belonging in particular.

This involves linking the individual narratives with larger societal processes; the lived experiences contextualized through structural processes are in focus.