This panel session is based on chapters from the upcoming anthology ”The politics and ethics of representation: Moments of discomfort” (Routledge, forthcoming). The qualitative research process is often filled with moments of discomfort. These can appear during all stages of the research: when choosing the subject of your research, during fieldwork, in the process of analysis and when presenting research findings to different audiences. We take these moments of discomfort seriously and use them productively as a starting point for reflections on the politics and ethics of the research process. Starting from our experiences in carrying out eight different research projects as PhD-fellows, we analyse moments of discomfort as sites of knowledge production that help us gain important analytical insights into methodological, theoretical, ethical and political issues that are crucial for the fields in which we engage. We argue that moments of discomfort relate to an anxiety of representation. Hence, the main questions that we address during the panel session are: How can we create an ethical representation of those with whom our research is concerned? What can be said or not in certain contexts? What are the tensions between aims of what we wish to represent and how this representation is understood by different audiences in specific contexts? The chapters presented during the panel session correspond to three areas that are crucial for issues of ethics and politics: (1) writing and naming; (2) power and silences; (3) stories and audiences. The session addresses different issues such as the practices of anonymisation, acts of rejection in relation to informed consent, silences in the fieldwork and in relation to representation, and considerations of representing stories from the field for different audiences.

By taking departure from the work of the No Border Musical and the Asylum Rally, based in Malmö in the south of Sweden, the purpose of this paper is to explore the notion of political agency. Having in common making visible and questioning migration policies, the Asylum Rally and the musical are constituted of people with and without legal status. The musical was founded in 2011 and has since then worked with writing a manuscript, shaping the ensemble and performing in the cities of Malmö, Stockholm and Norrköping. The Asylum Rally started its work of organizing in the beginning of 2013 and in the following summer the 34 days long march from Malmö to Stockholm was carried out. The aims of both organisations can be understood as making visible the consequences of migration control in contrast to the otherwise dominant discourse of refugees and undocumented persons as apolitical, universal victims in desperate need of help, entirely separated from the political, social and historical context within which they exist. In this paper we ask ourselves what these two organisations can teach us about political agency. The question that has guided this paper is: How can political agency be made possible in a society where citizenship is seen as a prerequisite for political participation? By interviewing and participating, underpinned by an activist oriented method, we conclude that perceptions of who can be a political agent are dynamic and constantly subject to challenges. Our findings show that to perform and be acknowledged as a political agent is not static and fixed but rather a redefinable and transformable process. We are also reminded that even if undocumented persons have constituted themselves as political agents, given the temporality and fluidity of political agency, they are still subject to deportation.

Regeringen föreslår nio åtgärder för att hitta och utvisa papperslösa. Det kommer att slå hårt och främst gå ut över redan svaga och jagade människor. Vi uppmanar därför regeringen att ta tillbaka åtgärderna, skriver 43 forskare.