Diversity of each research encounters 76

During the course of my fieldwork, I was invited to participate in other social events important to my study group. A few examples included: summer meal at a fish and chips shop on the coast in July 2015; in September 2015, I attended a funeral of one member of the community; in November and December, I attended several fund raising dinner-dances organized for charity purposes in neighborhood community center (in Ponteland and Jarrow); Christmas dinner at a restaurant in Newcastle city center; Saint Valentine dinner; and Easter mass in the Italian language at a Catholic church in Newcastle city center. I also attended a talk about the Italian process of migration in Newcastle in the 19th century given by one of my participants, at a Senior Gentlemen’s Club in Ponteland in April: I was there to attend the talk (despite my gender and my age, I was welcomed) and gave a short talk (5 minutes) to introduce my PhD project. Other events I attended included: a celebration of the 50th anniversary of an Italian commercial activity in May and a 25th _{anniversary wedding} of one member of the community in July 2016. Following every research encounter, I wrote down extensive field-notes in order to capture the relevant data. Furthermore,

24 The need to document visual aspects of the interactions, impossible to capture otherwise, led to my intention of creating the documentary 'Age is just a Bingo Number' in 2017/2018.

25 _{This video material is one of the first scene in the film ‘Age is just a Bingo Number’ when the}

my participation at social events that involved my study participants, became interesting opportunities to meet new potential participants and reinforce relationships with existing ones.

Participant observation was also conducted when I was invited to spend time with some of the research participants in their homes, generally on occasion of the interview. This enabled me to feel part of the context and share some of my perceptions or ask for clarifications. Here, I provide some examples of the activities I was involved in during household–based ethnography: cooking, setting the table and dish washing when in participant’s home and sharing a meal; assisting in baking a traditional English sweet; watching television together on the sofa during the evening, and commenting on some Italian TV programs; helping (or trying to) fix some broken objects; helping to move heavy items from the loft of the home to the living room; talking on Skype with some of their family members abroad; touring their gardens and learning from their knowledge of plants and trees; and going from one participant’s house to another, in the same neighborhood, to bring some fruits.

There is nothing extraordinary in what I participated in, but it was the natural result of being immersed completely in the participants' daily lives. Participating in these activities was part of the data collection process, since these encounters often generated rich information about participants’ everyday lives. Hence, the mutable character of household–based ethnography is explored in the ethnographic work of Gregson (2007), based on 16 houses in a coal-mining village of the North-East of England. Her study showed the situated nature of participant observation in these contexts by the active involvement of the researcher in the flow of everyday life. Gregson reflected on how the researcher is involved in actually doing things alongside research participants and these actions are effects of the ethnographic practices. She stated that by the act of doing, the researcher should acknowledge the body as a research tool, as she stated that the aim of this kind of ethnography is to access practices, not to only talk about practices.

Similarly, all the activities I was involved in alongside my participants, allowed me to reflect on my role and the kind of contribution I could make during the research encounter. Moreover, often the intentions of participants to teach me how to do certain things was a key component in the process of initiating narratives, sharing thoughts and memories. In the context of my ethnography, these practices could

even be seen as a way to interpret the generational relationship I established with my participants, as I felt I was seen as the younger newcomer who had to be educated on how to do things (i.e., cooking in the English style, setting the table in the English manner, etc.).

It was hard to close relationship with participants after the 12 months fieldwork. We were attached to each other, on a personal level. I made clear that I was not able to go and visit them in the Bingo Club on a weekly basis. However, this was not well received by the community setting. They continue inviting me also for personal (Birthday parties, Anniversary of wedding, Sundays lunch) or public events (such as Christmas Dinners or fundraising events organized by the community). I withdraw several times, but I felt this was perceived as a sort of offence. Plus, my social and everyday life was so much embedded around these networks (having an Italian hairdresser, being a customer of several Italian restaurants), that my change of habits was noticed and these people were wondering if I was not happy any longer with their services. I explained that it was only due to working reasons, but this was not always understood. I kept continue having conversations though phone with some. Toward the end of my PhD project, I decided to visit the community to the Club in important occasion and spend quality time together, as we used to do. This revealed to be positively perceived.

To summarise, I would like to comment on the complexities and diversities involved in this data collection. As mentioned above, research encounters differed for many reasons: different techniques were adopted (participant observation, semi-structured or in-depth interviews); the number of people engaged in the process of data collection differed; conversations took place in different locations (indoors/ outdoors); different levels of relationships with participants were cultivated, some built before the interviews; and different languages were spoken (English, Italian or a mix of both). A combination of all these factors influenced the kind of data generated.