Collaborative research practices in the study of diasporisation

Diasporas and diasporisation have lately been at the centre of interest in sociolinguistic inquiry. Literature on the inclusion of diasporic speakers in academic knowledge production in connection with diasporas is scarce, although this would be of crucial importance to achieve ‘thinking diaspora from below’ (Rosa and Trivedi 2017. “Diaspora and Language.” In The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language, edited by Suresh Canagarajah, 330–346. London: Routledge) when researching sociolinguistic phenomena. In this article, I discuss an ethnographically informed critical sociolinguistic study of diasporisation among Hungarians in Catalonia between 2018 and 2022 in which I applied collaborative research practices with the key participants. These practices consisted of the joint formulation of questions, the creation of a reflexive diasporic space, and feedback provided in the post-fieldwork phase. I address how these methods contributed to the emergence of a chronotopic approach to diasporisation. I argue that the inclusion of the emic perspectives of diasporic speakers through their involvement in the research process is a fruitful way to approach diasporas and diasporisation. Moreover, by paying attention to the needs and interests of the participants, this way of researching on, for, and with the participants also contributes to better understandings of diasporisation.