Walking Interviews

Apa walked confidently undeterred by the young boys on electric scooters that raced past and the sounds of construction overhead. He told me that he had hardly ever walked around a city before moving to Barcelona. He came to Barcelona 3 years ago from Nicaragua, at a time when Nicaraguan youth were taking to the streets and state repression and violence was increasing. 

I had known Apa for a few months and had talked a bit about his life in Nicaragua, however during the walking interview Apa focused particularly upon the stress that the political situation in Nicaragua had caused him before leaving the country. He told me ‘Even Fernando says that when I arrived I talked about Nicaragua all the time, I was very timid, the stress of the situation in Nicaragua wouldn't let me be’; the way in which Apa referred to a common friend is poignant, as it speaks to the way in which our socio-affective connections build networks of knowledge in a physical space; or in other words, I did not know what Nicaragua was like but referring to a friend of ours, who I trusted, gave a sort of legitimacy to Apa’s statement. 

The topic of his spatial relationship to walking arrived to the conversation through a question I asked 'If we could do a walking interview in Nicaragua where would you take me?'. This question came from a desire to capture the places and spaces that Queer migrants inhabit/ed and which are present in their absence. Apa replied immediately telling me about a Queer space in a poor part of Managua (the capital city of Nicaragua), where he had collaborated and learnt with other queer people. The main thing Apa told me about the Queer space was the difficulty that he faced with street harassment in the area surrounding the Queer space. He said ‘I don't want to be classist, as the entirety of Nicaragua is hetero-patriarchal, but these poorer kids, these boys would bother me a lot’. Apa explained that when he wasn't at the queer space, he would always drive around the city due to security risks. 

Perhaps Apa’s new found confidence and security in the Urban space of the Raval (Barcelona) can be seen as a physical marker of the Queer Migrant trajectory that he has undertaken. 

The penultimate stop on the walking interview was to a square where Apa had broken up with his first love in Barcelona; Apa walked tentatively around the benches, explaining how he hadn't able to sit down in the space; from his body language it seemed like he still struggled with the meaning which lay dormant in the environment. Do we ever loose our affective connections to space? Or is the heightened energy always there, both before and after the event?  

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While walking I regularly asked Apa to point out any sensory elements that he noticed; he told me about how the smells in the area changed with the seasons, some for the best, other not so much. I asked about the sounds and he said that he often listened to music while walking around the neighbourhood; after the interview he sent me the song featured below. He said he always plays this band when he is missing home. By listening to music which holds meaning from another space, I wonder whether Apa is compressing the time and space of his migrant trajectory, bringing both spaces closer together. Goffe (2020) describes how bringing in sensorial description to a map can be a decolonial tool of unmapping, instead 'Centering the way sound orients the human body in space'. The short clip below titled Sensorial Queerness, demonstrates how sound can orient our understanding of space through a non-visual form of mapping. The clip is taken from the walking interview with Apa; the sounds of the neighbourhood moving around us, may give the listener a kinetic understanding of the space. 

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In any ethnography it is essential to recognise one’s own positionality and relationship to the research. I myself lived in the Raval a year before conducting the interview my experience wasn't an entirely positive one. I found it too busy and loud, and decided to move to another neighbourhood. Conducting an ethnography in the space was an exercise in attempting to shift my gaze and attempt to see both through the eyes of my interlocutor and as an anthropologist. However, I wonder whether the so called anthropological gaze, which attempts to put our subjective positionality to the side, is possible when researching a topic so full of affective meaning? Does my subjectivity as a Queer Migrant myself give me more insight into the topic or does it hinder my ability to see the objective experience? (Geertz, 1988)

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The walking interview was carried out primarily in Spanish, so all quotes are translations done by the author.

The map’s twists and turns helps us to question the linear nature of our relationship to Space and Place, the messy map created by walking gives us the sensation of getting lost, which contradicts western ideas of what a map is supposed to do: help you find your way. Muñoz’s (2009) text ‘Cruising Utopia’ discusses the way in which being lost can be seen as a Queer act of protest “Queerness is lost in space or lost in relation to the space of heteronormativity. To accept loss is to accept queerness - or more accurately, to accept the loss of heteronormativity, authorisation and entitlement. To be lost is not to hide in a closet or to perform a simple (ontological) disappearing act; it is to veer away from heterosexuality’s path”. Therefore the design of a walking interview ethnographic map is itself a queer act. 

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