In the new economic landscape Laos has become more open to international contacts and foreign investments. Many people from rural have moved to the cities or to other villages to search for a better life, new opportunities, find a new job and earn an income for themselves and their families. What do we know about the inner experiences on these migrants? How both experiences of informants and researchers interrogate the manifestation of power in everydays life and the intimate embodiements of different forms of unsustainable developpement ?

Our ongoing research in Laos interrogates such issues in documenting especially the links between mobilities, intimacies and infectious vulnerabilities (MIGRLAO-IRD/CRF/EF). This is a multidisciplinary community based research program that involves the participation of stakeholders (donors, developers and practitioners), community actors, activists, researchers and students at each level of the production of knowledge. Each is invited to turn one's gaze on a specific issue, to plan his field investigations in an already familiar space and where his own social network can be mobilized. Those counstraints have led to the production of scientific innovations: scientifc committee, web plateforme, film documentary. This is a space for scientific creativity negotiated in an authoritarian environment, made possible by a plurality of social ties and based on the reflexive approach imposed by anthropological practice.

This contribution proposes to retrace this path by paying particular attention to the specific conditions of production of scientific data and to the methodological adaptations required for a collection of words and facts in a context of surveillance and social control often close. It combines oral presentation and extracts of the film documentary.