Chant Down the Walls: Exploring the Potential of Video Methods in the Study of Immigrant Politics and Social Movements

In this chapter I draw on my fieldwork experience in Los Angeles to discuss the potential of video for qualitative research on migration and political action. I focus specifically on three aspects: access to the field, research respondents and data; video and the study of micro-social interaction; video as a tool to generate new insights and data. I argue that video has facilitated, enriched and expanded my understanding of migrant political action in several ways, some of which were entirely unexpected at the beginning of this research. Within the field of migration studies, video appears particularly suitable to research the terrain of politics and culture, since it provides the means to study a key social aspect that is difficult to investigate in detail only with other types of methods: interaction. Hence, video as both a tool and a method proved a useful complement to interviews, artefacts and archive documentation.