Migration research in ‘play space’: joyful encounters, empathic unsettlement and refusal in arts-based ethnography

This paper introduces joyful embodied encounters, empathic unsettlement, agentic acts of refusal and ethical and personal tensions as key dimensions of narrative ethnographic research. Grounded in a study of asylum migrants’ experiences in a Finnish city, we employed a playful, arts-based methodology within a ‘play space’ to foster relaxed, transcultural and translingual interactions. This creative framework opened new pathways for engaging with the lived, embodied experiences of asylum seekers. Yet, these methods also foregrounded the complexities of researcher–participant relationships, challenging us to critically examine the limits of empathy and the power dynamics embedded in arts-based inquiry. As we examined embodied encounters, we critically considered how empathy functions, and sometimes falters within arts-based ethnographic practices. Our findings underscore that participants’ agency often emerges most powerfully in moments of refusal and unsettlement – sites where participants assert voice, boundaries and presence. We argue that attending to these often-overlooked moments can deepen our understanding of how migrants are encountered, recognized or rendered invisible in everyday contexts.