The (He)art of doing research with undocumented migrants: a duoethnography on positionality, emotion and moral conflict

Building on the reflexive turn in migration studies, this article examines how ethnographic researchers negotiate moral conflict during and after fieldwork with undocumented migrants. As an important, yet often-overlooked, dimension of migration research, we conceptualise moral conflict as the tension between professional expectations, institutional constraints, and researchers’ own moral convictions. To explore and examine this issue, we adopt the innovative methodological approach of duoethnography, treating the authors’ dialogical encounters as the primary site of inquiry. Drawing on conversations about our experience conducting ethnographic research with undocumented migrants in the Netherlands and Belgium, we jointly analyse how moral conflict is negotiated across four interconnected domains: roles, care, knowledge, and change. Our findings show that moral conflict is not merely an individual emotional construct, but also a relational force shaping positionality, ethical decision-making, and knowledge production. Rather than treating emotions and vulnerability as threats to scholarly rigour, we argue that collaborative reflexivity can deepen ethical sensitivity and analytical insight. By introducing duoethnography to migration studies, this article offers both a conceptual vocabulary for researchers’ moral conflicts and a methodological framework for more reflexive, caring, and ethically engaged scholarship.