Autoethnographies of Precarity: Risky Business,Uncertain Futures,and … the Work Continues

Abstract

This article serves as the introduction to the special issue “Risky Business, Uncertain Futures, and ... the Work Continues.” The special issue emerged from the preconference of the Autoethnography Special Interest Group of the International Association of Qualitative Inquiry meeting in 2025. The article presents autoethnography as inherently risky and as a methodology that can sustain us through uncertain times and events that call us to reflection, advocacy, imagination, and world(re)making. Collectively, we address the question: how do we autoethnographers continue our work in the context of risk and uncertain futures? The answers gesture to resources already inherent in our methodology: the ability to step across borders and boundaries of identity, affect, and subjectivity; the power of imagination and creativity to perceive possibilities that reach beyond the stuck-ness of now; the courage to turn reflexively upon ourselves, to reveal our vulnerability and brokenness as both self-sacrifice and self-compassion; and writing, always writing, as an assertion of community and communitas, an invitation, and an outstretched hand.