Seeing Bensheim’s refugee tent city: reflections on researcher- and respondent-generated photo-elicitation of the spatial dimensions of racial discrimination

This article explores the spatial dimensions of racial discrimination in a refugee camp in Bensheim, Hesse, Germany, using three photo-based methods. In response to the growing adoption of visual methodologies in refugee research, it critically examines the potential and limitations of each method, as well as contested academic assumptions that become visible through their combined application. I conceptualize photography as an embodied practice in the co-production of academic knowledge. Employing a layered framework, this article proceeds through three distinct methodological steps, examining in turn an aerial perspective using maps, researcher-generated photo-documentation during a “go-along” with a political representative (etic perspective), and auto-driven photo-elicitation with five refugees (emic perspective). The findings show how different perspectives on the tent city in Bensheim reveal the intersection of spatial dimensions of racial discrimination, including territorial stigmatization, peripheralization, and internal zoning. Photographs taken by female refugee respondents further emphasize embodied experiences of gendered and ethnicized discrimination within a space designed to contain and surveil “young Muslim men.” I emphasize the importance of researchers’ reflexivity regarding both epistemological frameworks and locale when employing photo-based methods.