The Ethnography of Imagined Communities

A shift in ethnographic vantage point from an exclusive focus on everyday worlds to the broader historical and cultural processes in which these worlds are embedded brings to light forms of politics that challenge traditional ways of understanding immigrant incorporation in modern nation-states. The author argues that the cultural politics of immigration and citizenship in the global era require this shift in ethnographic perspective. Multisited ethnography enables researchers to illuminate the more complex cultural processes of nation formation and the contradictory and, at times, incommensurate forms of cultural politics within which immigrants are made and make themselves as citizens. Viewing immigration from the perspective of nation formation, moreover, brings into question the explanatory power and political implications of traditional assimilation models of immigrant incorporation.