Data analysis

As part of the data analysis, data compiled from qualitative interviews, documentary and biographical research were contrasted against each other to investigate various strands of thoughts and ideas. The data was analysed with regard to whether there are patterns and similarities in accounts that point to emerging British-Muslim

subjectivities and an emerging legal field of British-Muslim family law. The analysis followed a qualitative-interpretative line, which is best suited to address the study’s research questions. For example, a similar qualitative approach has been taken by Isin who conducted documentary research in archives containing records of Ottoman waqf, which is an institution that constitutes a form of Islamic endowment. In his

qualitative-interpretative approach to analysing these historic documents the aim was to ‘consider how the responsibilization of subjects gained expression through the waqf, and how, in turn, the waqf became critical for forming legal personalities and legal positions of responsible subjects’ (Isin and Lefebvre 2005, p. 12).

As a first step in the data analysis process, the interviews were transcribed from the audio recordings. As a second step, I coded the interview data using coding terms based on main themes emerging and an assigned colour scheme for ease of navigating the transcription documents. I decided against using a digital coding and analysis software as the database was of limited size. At first, I read through the transcriptions quickly to get an overall impression of the individual interviews as well as the

relations between them. Subsequently, I went back to each interview transcription to go through a detailed line-by-line thematic coding process. This allowed me to draw out those themes and patterns that I found emerging most prominently across the different interviews. While I conceptualised each interview as an explorative study on its own, my analysis also traced differences or similarities between interview

participants’ accounts.

During data analysis the research used language and text (transcriptions

complemented by Internet-based data gathered from specialist online discussion posts) to study the variations of subjective meaning of British-Muslim family law and the formation of hybrid subjectivity. Language here is understood as referential (in the sense of communicating or conferring meaning) as well as constitutive (creating meaning) (see Dunne, Pryor, and Yates 2005, pp. 36-38).37 _{Analysing data from the} qualitative interviews, I concentrated on the descriptions by people of processes, experiences, or feelings. These personal accounts recorded in the interviews

communicated a particular meaning, which I interpreted based on my own knowledge and experience. This means that my interpretations of the stories I listened to may not necessarily have adopted the same position. This is because the thesis aims at

providing a critical and alternative narrative to hegemonic discourses on Muslim family law in the UK rather than giving voice to the voiceless. This is in any case impossible because, as Riessman rightly points out, researchers ‘do not have direct access to another’s experience. We deal with ambiguous representations of it – talk, text, interaction and interpretation’ (Riessman 1993, p. 8). This qualitative-

37 _{On the difference between language as referential or constitutive, Dunne, Pryor, and Yates explain}

that ‘postmodernist positions use discursive notions of power, where language becomes significant in understanding subject positions. Rather than seeing language as referential, as a mirror on social reality in direct realist readings, there is a recognition of people as both products and producers of the

discourses through which their subjectivity is constructed. Rather than seeing the self as caught in deterministic and hierarchical power structures, attention is focused on the way in which discourses (systems of knowledge and practices) subjectify individuals in localized contexts’ (Dunne, Pryor, and Yates 2005, p. 38).

interpretative approach to interview data meant that stories and accounts of lived experiences by my interview participants were not taken at face value (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007, p. 231). Hollway and Jefferson argue that ‘neither selves nor accounts are transparent... Treating people’s own accounts as unproblematic flies in the face of what is known about people’s less clear-cut, more confused and

contradictory relationship to knowing and telling about themselves’ (Hollway and Jefferson 2000, p. 3). This had implications for my data analysis. Interview

participants may not necessarily explicitly refer to a particular theme but I see it as my role as researcher, through interpretative effort, to navigate through different,

sometimes contradictory accounts in order to draw out crucial points in the discursive and material construction of the legal field and the subjectivities implicated therein. For this reason, the researcher cannot abstract himself or herself from the data collection and analysis process as the researcher produces interpretations of accounts collated.

Documentary and biographical data

As a first step, I used Excel spreadsheets as data grids to record the information gathered from websites, biographies and case file documents produced by solicitors in order to aid data analysis. All documents were numbered in hard-copy and

anonymised where they contained information that would have made interview participants identifiable. The grids provided the following structure as detailed below. Website data were analysed using the following grid headings: document number, types of services offered, location(s), how are solicitors’ identity and market position rhetorically constructed, (how) is imagery used for positioning, tensions or gaps in the way the solicitors represent themselves, core themes emerging.

Internet profile biographies and reconstructed CVs were analysed using the following grid headings: document number, area(s) of specialisation, education, professional experience and location(s), how is professional identity rhetorically constructed, tensions or gaps in the way the professional represents him/herself, core themes emerging.

Case files documents produced by solicitors were analysed using the following grid headings: document number, who produced the document and why, how is legal terminology rhetorically used, tensions or gaps in what the document tells the reader,

core themes emerging, any notable or outstanding features, comments on context of the case.

As a second step, I analysed the entries in the grids along three main lines of qualitative-interpretative inquiry. I would like to note here that specialist online discussion posts were analysed along similar lines of inquiry as data from qualitative interviews, focusing on themes and patterns emerging most prominently across the different contributions and any differences or similarities between accounts. As mentioned in section 4.1., this thesis does not conceptualise documentary and biographical sources simply as impartially reporting social reality. Rather, it is premised on the idea that they also construct social reality and that researchers use their ‘own cultural understandings in order to “engage” with “meanings” which are embedded in the document itself…[which] cannot be read in a “detached” manner’ (May 2011, p. 199). There is no neutral outsider who could function as arbiter over the definitive meaning of a text because ‘language does much to shape both who we are…and the ways in which we observe and construe the world’ (White 1990, p. xi). It follows that documents and biographical resources are of interest for what they

include as well as for what they exclude, or for the questions they raise. The analysis of the documentary and biographical data was thus organised around three different conceptual layers and categories of questions. I read through my comments several times and, if necessary, went back to the full text in hard-copy to remind myself of a particular detail.

(1) What is the content, structure and presentation of the document?

(2) To what extent does the language of the document follow the characteristics of legal language? How are discursive strategies employed to communicate meaning (specialist terminology, passive or active narrative style, how is text and imagery used)?

(3) What does the reader learn about the social dynamics, potential social change, production of subjectivities and subject positions? To what extent do English and Muslim legal norms interact in the production of the document?

This qualitative-interpretative approach to analysis allowed me to consider the

meaning beyond the immediate content of a document and to investigate the particular process and social dynamics underlying a document’s production.

The data analysis followed the guidelines of the British Sociological Association (BSA) on how to handle interview and documentary data for analysis and discussion. The study offered anonymity as far as possible (see limitations above). All data on personal details in both soft-copy and hard-copy files were deleted. Names in chapters discussing research findings are not the real names of people I interviewed and

personal information, such as location of residence or professional practice has been altered or removed where necessary to ensure anonymity.

To sum up, this chapter describes in more detail the research process and the methods used in gathering the empirical data. The discussion and analysis in the following chapters (five to eight) draw on the data collected using a mix of methods that I found best suited for exploring the field of British-Muslim family law as a site of citizenship from a variety of angles. Chapter five looks at British-Muslim family law as a legal field, its structures and embeddedness within wider socio-legal contexts. Chapter six investigates citizens’ rights claims and pursuit of justice in the field. Chapter seven then focuses on the figure of the British-Muslim solicitor and their professional practice. Finally, chapter eight explores different forms of belonging and the role of the state in transnational lives.

Chapter 5. British-Muslim family law as a legal field: The

embeddedness, structures and processes of legality

The relatively open-ended definition of a field as a network of objective relations provides a broad conceptual ground for analyzing both the social continuities and the construction of new practices (Dezalay and Madsen 2012, p. 439).

This chapter discusses to what extent British-Muslim family law is a legal field in its own right, by using data from websites, legal documents and biographical research in addition to interview data and by putting the specific field into context with wider socio-political developments. While the subsequent chapters make the case for looking more closely at the individual accounts of people involved and practicing in the legal field, it is nonetheless important to provide an account of the field’s

structures and processes because an over-emphasis on individual accounts makes a critical interrogation of the power relations underlying the field more difficult. Such an error, in Bourdieu’s words, ‘inclines one to recognize no reality other than those that are available to direct intuition in ordinary experience…. [however] the visible, that which is immediately given, hides the invisible which determines it’ (Bourdieu 1990, p. 125). However, rather than deciding whether structural-procedural or subjective aspects bear more importance, I critically adapt the analytical approach of reflexive sociology to enrich my research on legal subjectivity.

This chapter is inspired by Bourdieu’s theory of the field of law and its associated concern with social structures and power relations that interrelate with subjectivities in the legal field. It thus sketches out the background within which the field is

developing. Bourdieu conceptualised the legal field through its embeddedness within the social world (see section 5.1.); its tendency of professionalisation leading to a division between professionals and lay persons (see section 5.2.); and its

interdependency with a market of professional services as a crucial driver of the legal field (see section 5.3.). The chapter addresses these different aspects of the legal field in the subsequent sections, connecting them to specific examples from my research British-Muslim family law.