Where is the Field?: The Experience of Migration Viewed through the Prism of Ethnographic Fieldwork

Laura Hirvi is a doctoral student at the Department of History and Ethnology at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland), who is about to submit her dissertation in which she explores how Sikhs with a migration background living in Helsinki (Finland) and in Yuba City (California) negotiate their identities. Hirvi spent the academic year 2009–2010 as a Fulbright visiting student at the Center for Sikh and Punjab Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Her latest publications include ‘The Sikh Gurdwara in Finland: Negotiating, Maintaining and Transmitting Immigrants’ Identities’ published in 2010 in the journal South Asian Diaspora and a chapter on the work and migration

histories of Sikhs in Finland in an edited volume on Sikhs in Europe, which

was published by Ashgate in 2011.

Hanna Snellman is Professor of European Ethnology at the University of Helsinki (Finland). She has carried out studies on migrant workers in Finland, Sweden and North America and on fieldwork methodology.