The margins “in-between”. A case of multimodal ethnography

The paper presents a case of engaged ethnography developed by a group of geographers from the University of Cagliari focusing on the everyday experience of urban marginality by the residents of Sant’Elia, a low-income district in Cagliari, Italy. Stigmatised for being ‘at the margins’ of the city, the district reveals on the one hand, degraded socio-economic conditions and, on the other hand, a strong sense of identity and belonging among its inhabitants. The main aim of the study is to discuss and contrast the stigma affecting Sant’Elia through the direct involvement of a group of women living in the district in participative fieldwork utilising a mixed set of both quantitative and qualitative tools and aimed at collecting a multilayered reality of ideas, emotions, perceptions, experiences and images of the district as perceived by its own inhabitants. By presenting the different phases, methodologies and results of the study, the paper operates at two different, albeit interconnected, theoretical and methodological levels. From a theoretical standpoint, it deconstructs the concept of marginality, showing what it means to live in a ‘difficult’ district on a daily basis. From a methodological point of view, it proposes a wider reflection on the politics of multimodal ethnography, by focusing on how the different positionalities of researchers and residents have been challenged by the fieldwork activities.