Headnotes, Heartnotes and Persuasive Ethnography of Thai Migrant Workers in Singapore

Abstract

During my academic appointments at National University of Singapore between 2004 and 2006, I had spent a great portion of time to carry out ethnographic research on Thai migrant workers in Singapore. In this article, I rethink my multiple “field roles” and reflect on my fieldwork experiences. I argue that ethnographic research is deeply embedded in complex human relationships, which demand some committed and engaged endeavors from the fieldworker through the works of headnote and heartnote. The headnote, which refers to mentally recorded sets of information produced out of the fieldworker’s being-there experience, is essential to make the fieldnotes, while the heartnote, or the inner voice from the heart, urges  the fieldworker to uphold his or her professional ethics and moral responsibility. Both headnote and heartnote form a strong foundation for the ethnographer to write persuasive ethnography filling with human sensibility. The human stories, which I had collected through the cultivation of the head and the heart, present some compelling angles of marginal and transient life of migrant workers in their transnational acts of border-crossing and of working and living away from home.