Positionality and intersectionality in environmental debates: duoethnography as a method to know (from) the margins

The Balearic Islands (Spain) are one of the main tourist destinations in the world. Since the 1950s, the tourism industry has had a considerable impact on the environment, resulting in a strong tradition of environmental activism. Balearic environmental movements have engaged in the production of knowledge and technical evidence to sway debates for legislation in favor of protecting the environment. We argue that the limited involvement of migrant populations in such movements reflects the class and ethnolinguistic barriers that inform the creation of human–environment attachments. Our work reveals two methodological precarities: the lack of access in migrant populations to know the environment and our own capacity to track such histories. To tackle them, we rely on duoethnography as a method, using our own intergenerational experiences as descendants of migrants as empirical material. With them, we reflect on how our participation in public debates is mediated by our positionality as determined by the intersection of class, ethnic, and linguistic identities. Using the notion of environmentality, we illustrate the onto-epistemic openings and limits linked to identity that historically characterize environmental struggles, in turn showing the potential of duoethnography to contribute to scholarly debates in contexts of methodological precarity.