Make a name for yourself.

Dilemmas and tensions in fieldwork with activists and emerging militants

Abstract

This article consists of a reflective exercise by three female researchers in the field. Specifically, three field studies are recovered that have as a common characteristic the fact of recovering actors that are not the most usual or consecrated within security studies: security activist neighbors, relatives of detainees and harassed youth. These actors share a double invisibility: on the one hand, in the academic field and, on the other, within the spheres where they operate, since they are not institutionally accredited actors, nor are they immediately identifiable. We will analyze the theoretical and methodological implications that it entails, then, to investigate this type of actors who do not have a name but who strive to exist and be named; as well as the implications of carrying out field work with actors who develop a particular type of activism where, among other issues, they seek to achieve visibility and relevance in their spheres of action.