Methodological Challenges of Traditional and Virtual Anthropological Fieldwork in Migrant Integration Research: the Case of Chinese-Hungarian Interethnic Partner Relationships
Methodological Challenges of Traditional and Virtual Anthropological Fieldwork in Migrant Integration Research: the Case of Chinese-Hungarian Interethnic Partner Relationships

Summary/Abstract: The paper is based on a piece of anthropological research on Chinese-Hungarian mixed partner relationships. This qualitative research on the intimate relations between members of a highly transnational migrant population and members of local Hungarian society posed a number of methodological challenges. A substantial segment of the data was collected through ethnographic fieldwork where the otherwise non existent ethnographic field (i.e. no community formed by mixed couples; the lack of a geographical or an online locality) was defined by the initially formulated research questions. Fieldwork was complemented by the collection of diverse data from computer mediated communication carried out by members of Chinese-Hungarian couples and their family members, however, combining information available in online space with data gathered through face-to-face interaction has proved to be problematic.

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