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Abstract

This article examines the act of ‘being invited’ by research participants to explore asymmetrical power relations and research ethics in ethnographies along migration trajectories. It uses the lens of money in research relationships to explore agency and the reversal of power through hospitality and gift-giving. I examine invitations in the research process as (a) a way for researchers to gain access to their research subject and (b) a way for interlocutors to renegotiate and invert the research process. Drawing on a 9-month multi-sited ethnography along the trajectory of undocumented migration from Afghanistan to Germany, I relied on continuous invitations to revisit interlocutors. First, I argue that invitations are the necessary entry point into research sites, but are often excluded from considerations of research ethics. Second, an examination of ‘being invited’ as a concept shows that interlocutors shape the research process and exercise agency through a moral economy of research relations.