In this piece, I discuss anthropologist Ruth Behar's self-reflexive writing and how it has inspired me to think about my own personal experiences within the context of my research. Behar urges for a writing that is vulnerable-a self-ethnographical writing which takes us somewhere we couldn't otherwise go and moves us to identify intensely with those one is writing about. In this manner, I explore Behar's notion of vulnerable writing to approach issues and experiences from my own life history which inform my research on migration and identity. Expulsion, departure, exile and return-recurrent themes in her writing-have likewise been central in my reflections on my family's experience of migration from Colombia to the United States and have sparked my interest in the migration of Japanese to Colombia. My desire to tackle this little-known episode of Colombian history from the experience and point of view of the descendents of this migration, using life history methodologies, stems from the hope of drawing deep connections between personal experience and the subjects under study, between the responsibility of speaking from the margins and understanding the privileged position I occupy-a position which was the product of my own migration experience. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Borderlands Migration Identity imaginary homelands vulnerable writing

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