Abstract
How might the ethnographer conduct research on health and suffering among populations who would rather remain hidden? Drawing on my research with female sex workers in southern Morocco, I suggest and demonstrate an approach that allows interlocutors' discretionary practices to guide ethnographic inquiry. I show how boundary work--as a politics of visibility founded on practices of discretion, concealment, and distancing--emerged as central to my interlocutors' livelihood strategies and their efforts to enact moral personhood, integrate themselves into networks of solidarity, and articulate social critiques. A methodological focus on discourses and practices of boundary drawing, I argue, was essential for conceptualizing and representing the suffering of the women with whom I worked. Using boundary work as a guide, the ethnographer does not give voice to suffering, but learns how suffering is already voiced as part of attempts to survive, aspire, and become.