Representing refusals: Dilemmas in making photo-based research with migrant youth

In writing this chapter, we spent time re-reading the first edition of this book, The Methodological Dilemma: Creative, critical and collaborative approaches to qualitative research (2008). For many months, the book was moved from surface to surface in Eve’s office in Tkaranto, Ontario: splayed open on the circular table, stacked beneath and then on top, and then beneath a wealth of other books on the little stand that also holds the tea kettle, cracked to certain pages and passages on the corner of her desk, which faces north to view the trees and little playground where sometimes her children play, just beyond where workers have finally finished (noisily) repaving the driveway to the apartment building. When visitors come to the office, they have picked up the book with excited interest. Oh! I need to read this! I need to read about methodological dilemmas! Person after person has shared some mixture of relief, of hope that a book like this exists. That there is somewhere, at least, that this conversation is happening.