Patchwork Life: Balancing Migration, Family, Fieldwork, and an Academic Career during a Global Pandemic

Abstract

This article is based upon field notes I wrote during the so called first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, whilst I was a postdoctoral mobility fellow at the University of Amsterdam. First, I elaborate on the challenges of moving with one’s family to a new place and conducting anthropological fieldwork in a novel site during a global pandemic. I also shed light on the differences between how I had initially planned data collection and how it actually turned out in practice. Second, I reflect on how Covid-19 increased existing inequalities on a local and global level. Third, I disclose how moments of uncertainty, disorientation, and vulnerability were integral parts of our lives as home schooling and working from home made my private and professional lives coincide and blur. Finally, I argue that our lives during this global pandemic were patchworked, through a continuous bricolage of trying and retrying.