ABSTRACT
In this chapter I aim to show how ethnographic research can enhance our understanding of immigration adding value to broad generalizations through the discovery of details at the microlevel. How immigrants process information, define themselves vis-à-vis mainstream populations, and adapt to conditions of tolerance or hostility constitute relevant questions in the production of knowledge and the design of policy. Because immigration amplifies ordinary experience, it accentuates phenomena of general interest, including changes in family composition, multiple adaptations to external pressures, mobility in the labor market, and evolving ideas about race and ethnicity. Thus, the ethnographic study of immigration yields knowledge that illuminates the experience of multiple groups, not solely immigrants; its relevance is substantive and practical; theoretical as well as instrumental. Research about immigrants may be regarded, in the words of Robert K. Merton, as a “strategic site” for broad sociological analysis (Merton 1987). The chapter is divided into two parts. The first one, comprising four sections, gives attention
to the evolution of ethnography noting that it first emerged as part of a mission to design rigorous approaches to data collection. In the second part, also comprising four sections, I offer an example from my own research to illustrate ways in which ethnographic research may be applied to the understanding of immigration. I also suggest ways in which findings from that exercise may illuminate equivalent phenomena in other social contexts. In the concluding section I briefly revisit the central argument of the paper.
