DATA COLLECTION

For this research I conducted 20 semi-structured interviews and two focus groups consisting 3 and 10 participants each. There were 4 participants in the pilot stage, following which I interviewed another 16 women in the later stage. The first focus group consisted of 3 participants who were recent arrivals to the UK. I was able to spend a considerable amount of time with these 3 participants and gather a lot more personal data from them. Although it was a focus group, I have included their names in the main list of participants (Appendix 1, page 273) as I was able to identify their narratives well as individuals. The second group consisted of 10 participants from elderly cohort, whose personal details were not collected but were given pseudonyms in the data for identification purposes. There is no overlap of participants as all 33 participants are different individuals. Personal profiles of participants are presented in table D (Chapter Four, Participants’ Demography, D1 and D2 page 89-91). A brief life story of each participant is included in the Appendix 1 (page 273).

Three distinct approaches were taken to collect data from the participants; namely, a short written personal information questionnaire done either by the participants or by me (depending on their literacy skills); semi-structured personal interviews; and focus group discussions. In addition, I collected data from my own involvement in the research process, in the form of extensive field notes and a journal, which I kept to record my thoughts and discoveries, my ideas for how the project should proceed, and electronic exchanges about the project that I had with colleagues and supervisors.

During the initial phone contact, I gave participants a brief summary of the research project and objectives and addressed any general questions. I offered participants interview appointments at their convenience and the majority indicated a preference to be interviewed in their homes as well as their ESOL classrooms after class hours. One of the participants preferred to sit in her car while waiting to pick up her daughter from school in the car park. Incidentally, I was also able to interview a woman travelling from Heathrow to India on our flight to Mumbai. As the sole researcher I interviewed all participants in the study. All interviews were conducted face-to-face and were audio taped with the expressed and voluntary consent of the participant. The first interview was an open-ended

unstructured interview and lasted between 60 and 90 minutes (see M: Protocol for Interviews, p. 256). Participants were asked to respond to the following question: "Tell me about your migration to England? What prompted the move? How did you feel about it?” Minimal prompts (i.e., tell me more ....) were used to encourage participant stories.

Using an open-ended question in the interview forms a fundamental component of feminist interviews where the interviewer is concerned with gaining access to the voice of the marginalised. A fundamental assumption of qualitative interviewing is that a participants' perspective is meaningful and a valid source of knowledge (Fontana and Frey, 2000) Interviewing offers researchers access to people’s ideas, thoughts, and memories in their own words rather than in the words of the researcher. This asset is particularly important for the study of women because in this way learning from women is an antidote to centuries of ignoring women’s ideas altogether or having men speak for women. (Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2007). Many of these participants were ESOL learners. Drawing on from my experience as an ESOL teacher, I was able to keep the right pace of English depending on the English speaking level of the participants. The participants were able to switch code as per their desire during interviews.

Semi-structured interviewing offers the researcher some control over how the interview is constructed and still be open to form new questions throughout the interview. This structure helped as there were areas that I had not anticipated would open up , such as the participants’ feelings about being ‘deficient’ mothers. I decided to let the participants speak a bit more on those topics as they seemed very passionate about them. Prior to beginning the interview, I asked participants to complete a demographic information sheet (see I, p. 249) and two copies of a consent form (see L, p. 255). The first copy of the consent form was kept in each participants' file, whereas the second copy was given to participants for their personal records. If participants had any questions about the project after completing the consent and demographic information sheets, they were addressed prior to beginning the interview. There were only two participants who took their time to read the information sheet and wanted to know more about this documentation. All other participants trusted

me as an ‘insider’ and accepted the information sheet as ‘unavoidable paper work to be completed’ before we began.

I started the pilot in May 2012, initially interviewing 4 participants. My first two participants were attending ESOL entry level courses at that time, , whereas other two participants were long term residents, one of them younger and the other one much older, who had never attended any English language courses throughout their residence in the UK. After the initial data collection, I was at first concerned that I was sometimes falling short of a ‘correct’ researcher stance; I was looking at their lives through my middle class lens and in my mind I expected to receive the information that would express their frustration, anger and despair against the system and their oppression. For the participants however, it was a just way of life that one has to accept and fight against and find a way to progress. As many postmodern theorists explain (Fontana and Frey, 2008,) there is no neutrality in this type of research. Upon reflection I realised that I am ultimately far more interested in the data that was co-created owing to my background of active participation in social issues in India, and I needed to withdraw the activist part of me and turn into a neutral researcher. I decided to revise my questionnaire to make it more open-ended to allow them to narrate and focus on various social aspects of identity and language learning rather focusing centrally on the process of learning the language. Most of the data was collected during the period of October 2012 to April 2013. October 2012 was the festive season of Diwali, which was a busy period for most Gujarati women but they were happy to include me in their celebrations. A number of candidates were recruited by the snowballing method. From my cultural knowledge of South Asian women, I knew that it would be easier to communicate with women if I went to the places where they visit regularly on their own and where we would be able to establish a rapport with each other. I went to a local temple in Southall and randomly spoke with some women and asked them if they would like to participate in this research. I succeeded in recruiting a few participants this way. As I am not a regular visitor at the temple, the women wanted to know whether I have any particular days that I frequent the temple. Although I have hardly visited any temples in the UK, I did not want to jeopardise the sense of empathy and belonging we had created by my physical identity. I wanted the women to trust me and share their narratives without them having any preconceived notions about my religious beliefs or my social stance on religious issues, I had

to assure them that my local temple was in a different area and I go there only on festive occasions. As Bhopal (2001) argues, our gender and racial identity can and does affect the research process and in some cases women who have some shared experience with researchers are more willing to speak to researchers who reflect this.

To recruit candidates for qualitative interviews, I approached a Further Education college in Wembley, an area in north-west London heavily populated with Gujaratis. I liaised with the ESOL Programme Manager, incidentally a Gujarati female, at a local authority funded further education establishment, who took interest in my project and arranged to interview a few participants before or after their class time. I was allowed to use one of the classrooms at the centre for this purpose. I visited their ESOL classes while they were in progress and explained my project and invited Gujarati women to participate in the research. I had a very good response to this and we agreed to meet before according to the convenience of the participants. Some of them wanted to see me in the morning before their classes and some were available during afternoons.

For the purpose of triangulation of data, it was also decided that, alongside individual interviews, focus groups would be conducted in order to elicit further data, the major appeal being the ability to access ‘subjugated voices’ (Hesse_Biber and Leavy, 2007). Research in the field has shown that in focus groups, public discourses are frequently reproduced in ways they do not appear in individual interviews. This method also allows researchers, to challenge their own preconceived ways of thinking and categorizing experiences by adding diverse voices (Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2007). When I met with the elderly cohort for focus group session, one of the participants, who was wearing the traditional Gujarati sari, said she had to leave early because she had a swimming session to attend. I was rather surprised at my preconceived notion of somehow not being able to associate swimming activity with her because of her traditional gear. It was as if to highlight the purpose of my research; to show that immigrant women are not “passive victims”, lacking in autonomy, but on the contrary exercise agency in the diaspora. Similar to the thoughts arising from this one incident, further findings of this research concur with Stuart

Hall’s view that identities are “fluid and constantly negotiated in the `interaction’ between individual and society (1990).

Focus groups are thought to be an extremely useful tool for understanding the daily experiences of individuals whose experiences are largely invisible. The group effect or group dynamism can have positive and negative outcomes by opening up conversation around difficult topics and producing important discussion. The group creates a comfortable level around personal subject matters, as well allows us to challenge some personal beliefs, which is an important aspect of feminist research. (Edwards, 2014)

Participants can help each other figure out what the questions mean to them, and the researcher can examine how different participants hear possible vague or ambiguous questions. This is important in studying gender because certain issues are “naturalized” to such an extent that it is very difficult to recognize one’s own preconceived notions, much less challenge others’ taken-for-granted assumptions. The expansion of the roles available to women in a group interview, beyond the strict separation between “interviewer” and “interviewee” allows for interactions that are likely to reveal and even challenge these taken-for-granted assumptions. (Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2007)

For my research, I was able to hold my first focus group of 3 recent arrivals, a group of mothers learning English. As I wanted to interview candidates from various social backgrounds, I changed groups with members who are dissimilar and more diverse. It allowed me to recruit members from marginalized backgrounds as well as those with more established or privileged voices. This comparative dimension of differently positioned within the same culture generated rich data. To recruit participants for my second focus group, I searched the internet to find active local centres for Gujarati women and approached them. Most responses I received were positive. I managed to hold the second focus group at a Yoga Centre for senior Gujarati ladies. There were 10 participants in this group, most of them long term settled, twice migrants. I was asked if I would like to join the session to practise yoga with them to which I happily agreed as I saw it as an exercise to bond with the participants before the meeting. The ladies seemed to like the fact that I took interest in

their activity and started opening up. I was allocated the session after their yoga routine, during which they have their tea and informal chat. I was not expecting more than 7 or 8 women for the focus group session. However, when the women heard about the topic, many more wanted to join the session. I had to restrict the number of participants to 10 to keep it under control and manageable. Their enthusiasm to participate in the discussions was overwhelming. The women were at ease while talking to me about their life stories and experiences of transnational migration because during the yoga session they were able to communicate with me and knew the purpose of my visit. And because they were fully convinced about the purpose of my research, they were more than willing to participate. Some of them kept chatting with me even after the tea club meeting and focus group session, which also provided me with further insights into their lives. I was asked personal questions about my marital life, family, work and ethnicity. Since this second focus group which consisted of 10 Gujarati women, and most of them were above 50, I found them more curious about my social and cultural status and background.

The style of moderation I adopted with this group was linked to my research questions and theoretical framework. Since it was a large group, I had to control the discussion in various forms, to guide conversation, letting people speak and ensuring each member had an opportunity to participate. For my action research for my MA in TEFL, I had submitted the dissertation on the topic of ‘improving classroom interaction with effective pair work and group work’. (Ray, 2007) The theoretical knowledge of effective group work and practical experience of teaching ESOL was helpful for me to effectively moderate and navigate the discussion. I was flexible with the language use in this communication, which kept switching to different languages such as Gujarati, Hindi and English, for example, speaking of their experiences of racism they chose Gujarati rather than English or when they thought something very important that me as non-Gujarati should understand, they used Hindi. I wanted the participants to share the topics that were important to them freely, and as I am fluent in all three languages, I did not see it as a problem. In fact, it provided another dimension to my observation, i.e. the language preference for the topics that they considered important, which I have discussed in chapter six.

I was able to gather personal details of 20 participants that I interviewed one-to-one. As the first focus group consisted of only three participants, I was able to get their personal details as well. I couldn’t get all the personal details of the focus group participants. I learnt names and life stories in brief, of three participants from the focus group during informal chats, which I have discussed where I found them to be relevant.

In conclusion, this study has attempted to understand the challenges for a particular fragment, i.e. Gujarati community, of larger South Asian community. It aims to comprehend how the women understand themselves as they try to learn English, and how through the negotiations of ethnic and cultural social identifies they reinvent their self within the structures of family, neighbourhood and larger social networks. These data will be looked at in greater detail in the next four chapters and will allow us to situate the 23 women within the context of the larger South Asian population. The stories of their language learning and the impact of this on the construction of identity will be discussed and the research will show, groups and individuals of unequal power and unequal access to resources and to dominant ways of being try to find and produce a liveable third space (Butler, 2004).