EXPERIENCING THE FIELD

I spent eighteen months in total conducting fieldwork in Mumbai. The field methods that I employed follow the grounded theory tradition and were relatively structured, including theoretical and purposive sampling of participants and semi- structured interviews. These data collection techniques were however not devoid of challenges brought about by my race, class, nationality and gender. In this section I discuss the methods that I used to conduct research in terms of recruitment, sampling and interviewing. I also reflect on my subjectivity as a researcher and ethical issues raised by conducting research in a postcolonial society. Following grounded theory methods, the research process can be broken down into three broad steps: recruitment and sampling; interviewing; and transcribing and analysis. It should be noted that, while the research is discussed here in ‘steps’, many of these processes overlapped and occurred simultaneously.

Recruitment and sampling

In line with Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) concept of theoretical sampling, the participant sample was initially purposive and then shifted to theoretical sampling. Three groups of formal participants were initially proposed, with a fourth (returned students) added during the fieldwork period after the first round of interviews and early stages of analysis had been conducted (explained below). This decision was spurred by several prospective students in the sample who had studied abroad previously, whose experiences seemed to inform their interview responses. I therefore decided to include returned students to gather a broader range of responses, which also marked the theoretical stage of sampling (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). It also became apparent during fieldwork that the perspectives of key industry informants (group five) would be valuable to thesis to understand the structures shaping student mobility beyond the perspectives of individual students and their families. The five groups are as follows:

1. Prospective students

Young people from Mumbai, aged 18-30, who were planning international education at the tertiary level. Participants in this group were living in Mumbai and unmarried. Prospective students could be embarking on a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree or PhD. Most were privately funding their degrees, though some were applying for scholarships.

2. Parents of prospective students

Parents of prospective students were approached to participate in the study. 3. Education agents/counsellors

Professionals working in the international education industry in Mumbai. Education agents/counsellors were interviewed with the purpose of providing personal insights from someone with a professional background in international education. They were not interviewed as formal representatives of their organisation.

4. Returned students

Young people aged 18-35 and raised in Mumbai who had returned to Mumbai in the last five years after completing their international education at the tertiary level. 5. Key informants

Government and trade officials, bankers in the student loans department, academics and university representatives.

I chose to focus initially on prospective students and their families because there is a lack of attention to these groups in the ISM literature. For instance, Raghuram (2013) argues that more research needs to be conducted with prospective international students as not enough is understood about their aspirations, imaginaries and experiences prior to departing from the home country. Similarly, little is known about the role of parents and families in the pre-departure phase of student migration (Raghuram, 2013), or about the return migration experiences of international students (Collins et al., 2017), or about how the international education industry operates in Mumbai (Tuxen & Robertson, 2018) – all of which I also seek to address in this study.

Reflecting instructions in key grounded theory methods texts, participants were recruited in a number of ways (Charmaz, 2006). Several prospective students (8) and parents (2) were recruited using education agents and counsellors as a starting point, then snowball sampling was used to widen the sample. Returned students were all recruited via a snowball sampling method with either agents or counsellors or prospective students as the first point of contact. Prior to departing for fieldwork, I compiled a list of education agents/counsellors operating in Mumbai with an online presence using online local directories and search engines. I then contacted agents/counsellors directly via phone or in person at their business address as per the details they had listed online.

A purposive sampling approach was used to recruit education agents and counsellors. I assumed that agents and counsellors located in different parts of the city would offer fees and/or services that reflect the socio-economic status of those who tend to live in that area. For example, agents and counsellors located in South Mumbai would logically target the affluent families who live in the area, whereas agents and counsellors located in the suburbs would target the ‘new money’ in those areas. I first encountered potential participants at the office of an education agent or counsellor, with the permission of the agent/counsellor. After an introduction and explanation about the study, if the potential participant was willing to be interviewed, I would provide my contact details in order to arrange for the interview to take place. Snowball sampling was then employed after the interview by asking the participant to pass my contact details on to anyone in their network who may be interested in participating (see Figure 1 below).

Figure 1: Visualisation of example recruitment process

I used purposive sampling to ensure that a range of views were reflected in the study (Barbour, 2001). The two student participant groups (prospective and returned) were purposively sampled using the same factors: gender, area of residence, community and religion. An even gender split was the only factor that was strictly adhered to when sampling student groups, while I used the other factors as a guide to ensure that I was cognisant of obtaining as wide a range of participants as possible. Gender was considered a particularly important feature of sampling because men and women have vastly different experiences, especially in a patrifocal society like India. Women in India are often understood to experience less mobility than their male counterparts (Still, 2011; Walton-Roberts, 2015a; Brosius, 2017; Ali, 2007; Karupiah, 2018), which is also reflected in international student numbers wherein 27% of India’s outgoing students are female (UNESCO, 2010; also see Chapter 6), so I aimed to ensure that women’s voices were equally represented in order to capture their experiences.

I also considered a participant’s area of residence important because it potentially reflects the socio-economic status of the participant’s family. Based on my prior knowledge of Mumbai as well as information collected during the pilot interviews, I drew

approximate lines on a Google city map and divided the city into three zones (see Figure 2 below). Zone One represents the ‘old money’ area of South Mumbai, Zone Two the ‘new money’ suburban areas, and Zone Three the ‘up and coming’ outer areas and satellite towns attached to Mumbai, connected by local public transport networks. I ultimately found that responses were generalisable across two zones rather than three: South Mumbai and the Suburbs. I discuss the empirical evidence relating to this divide in Chapter Four. Community, religion and/or caste can often be discerned upon learning an individual’s surname, however I rarely used these as a sampling method – the only exception was when I was reaching saturation and wanted to increase my chances of recording ‘outlier’ experiences (Charmaz, 2006).

Figure 2: Map illustrating approximate zones used in purposive sampling (adapted from Google maps)

While an even gender split was sought in both student participant groups, this was not applied in the other three participant groups as gender was not anticipated as a factor that would significantly influence information provided by participants, nor was it as easy to access the other groups so I was more restricted in being able to filter participants according to gender. As previously stated, agents and counsellors were purposively sampled according to the area in which their office is located. Parents were purposively sampled to some extent by virtue of the sampling process undertaken with students and the subsequent recruitment process, however, I do not believe this had any crucial impact on the data collected from the parent group. Key informants (Group 5) were located and

approached through personal and professional networks, usually involving an email introduction from a common acquaintance to which the participant responded if they were interested or willing to participate, from which a meeting or phone call would be arranged.

Table 1: Overview of Student participant groups

GROUP NAME TOTAL AGE RANGE GENDER SPLIT

RELIGION ZONE COMMUNITY

Prospectiv e Students 26 18-27 years 50/50 Hindu: 61% Jain: 4.5% Parsi: 7.5% Sikh: 7.5% Catholic: 7.5% Buddhist: 4.5% Atheist: 7.5% 1: 31% 2: 38% 3: 31% Gujarati: 23% Punjabi: 19% Marwari: 3.8% Mangalorean: 3.8% South Indian: 11.5% Marathi: 15.4% North Indian: 3.8% Keralan: 3.8% Goan: 7.7% Zoroastrian: 7.7% Returned Students 20 22-29 years 50/50 Hindu: 45% Jain: 25% Sindhi: 10% Catholic: 5% Buddhist: 5% Atheist: 10% 1: 65% 2: 35% 3: 0% Gujarati: 30% Punjabi: 15.5% Marwari: 10% Sindhi: 15.5% South Indian: 5% Marathi: 5% North Indian: 5% Gujarati & Marathi: 5%

It must be noted that the data presented in Table 1 reflect information provided by participants based on their self-defined identities, sometimes resulting in a lack of precision. For instance, Sindh is a geographic region, not a religion. There are Sindhi Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, but many participants recorded only ‘Sindhi’ as their religious identity. Similarly, North India includes Punjab, but some participants explained that their families originate from multiple states in North India and hence were North Indian, while others were solely of Punjabi heritage. The same trend occurred in relation to South India, which includes the states of Kerala and Goa, and the city of Mangalore.

Interviewing

Interviewing is an established and popular data collection method for grounded theory research (Holstein & Gubrium, 2003). I utilised semi-structured interviews, guided

by open-ended questions and a brief paper-based survey at the end of the interview to collect additional basic demographic information (see Appendix A). The interview guides (see Appendix B) used to shape data collection reflected assumptions drawn from the literature on class in India, international student mobility and international education, and to a lesser degree from my personal and professional experiences (outlined above and in Chapter One). Questions were grouped around broad themes of aspiration, motivation, gender, risk, and class, with some small variations between the guides used for different participant groups.14 Using a predetermined but not rigid series of questions allowed me to raise topics as organically as possible over the course of a conversation with the participant. Focusing on a narrower set of topics also helped to set boundaries within the research, reach saturation of categories, establish relationships between categories and refine emerging theory (Charmaz, 2006).

Semi-structured interviews provided an ideal platform for participants to talk openly and at length about topics that I raised, whilst also allowing me to follow tangential topics raised by the participant. This method also allowed me to probe for clarity and explanation, which frequently revealed rich data. In the course of the current research, a total of 80 interviews were conducted. The majority took place at coffee shops around Mumbai (46), with others occurring in private offices (22) or homes (8), and some interviews with bank loan officers and academics took place via phone due to geographical distance (4). Before the interview commenced, each participant was asked to read the Participant Information sheet and sign the Consent Form (Appendices C and D). At the conclusion of each interview, student participants would complete a short paper-based survey (Appendix A). The interviews varied in length from 40 minutes to two hours and thirty-five minutes, with the average lasting approximately one hour.

The majority of interviews were informal in tone. I adopted a conversational approach, which was effective given that a majority of participants (46) were approximately my age. My age and conversational approach, and possibly my gender,

14 _{Key informants, Group 5, were interviewed without a guide because I was typically seeking} specific information based on the participant’s expertise. For example: information about how the student loan process works within an Indian bank, or information on how the Australian government promotes Australian education in India.

were important factors in being able to develop a rapport with participants. While building a rapport with participants is crucial in qualitative research in order to garner information, it is also fraught with ethical and moral dilemmas (for example, see seminal feminist texts Oakley, 1981; McRobbie, 1982; Hochschild, 1983; also, Duncombe & Jessop, 2012), which I will discuss further below.

Reflections on Conducting Research

The issue of how researchers come to ‘know’ and possess ‘knowledge’ is a crucial epistemological question (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). I argue that research practices are influenced by one’s tradition and cultural position (also see Ashworth, 1997). I therefore adopt a constructivist epistemology that understands knowledge as constructed by the researcher and participants alike (Charmaz, 2000, 2006). There are some objective truths – like gravity, or the occurrence of a tsunami, a war, and so forth – however the ‘truths’ that this research is concerned with are subjective because they evolve from reporting of personal experience and opinion. Charmaz (2000, 2006) makes a convincing case for adopting a constructivist epistemology, arguing that constructivist grounded theory recognises “the mutual creation of knowledge by the viewer and the viewed, and aims toward interpretive understanding of subjects’ meanings” (2000: 510). Following this assertion, Charmaz espouses that “we are part of the world we study and the data we collect. We construct our grounded theories through our past and present involvements and interactions with people, perspectives, and research practices” (2006: 10, emphasis in original). The researcher therefore cannot be removed from the research and reporting processes. The researcher is responsible for ‘composing a story’ about the data or “an image of a reality, not the reality” (Charmaz, 2000: 523, emphasis in original). Narratives “[do] not simply unfold before the eyes of an objective viewer. The story reflects the viewer as well as the viewed” (2000: 510).

In relation to my own research and corresponding researcher subjectivity, race, gender and class are key axes of power when conducting qualitative research in a postcolonial, patrifocal society (Andersen & Collins, 2010). Whilst conducting and analysing interviews, a researcher must be mindful of their positionality, especially with regard to how social and historical considerations “mediate both the meanings of questions that are asked and how those questions are answered” (Dunbar, Rodriguez &

Parker, 2003: 132). It is impossible to neutralise the nuances of identity however it is possible to be cognisant of how one’s identity as a researcher, but also as a person, may have influenced the study. Furthermore, the position of the socio-cultural ‘other’ (in this case, myself) is not fixed. Rather it is fluid and shifts according to a variety of contexts that one encounters when conducting fieldwork (Thapar-Björkert, 1999). My race, gender and class, combined with the fieldwork context, mean that remaining ‘neutral’ or keeping my ‘self’ out of the interviewing and analysis process is unrealistic – if not impossible (Holstein & Gubrium, 2003).

At the time of data collection I was a white, unmarried, middle-class Australian woman in my late twenties. All of these traits may be factors in how I was perceived by participants and how successful I was in recruiting participants – especially considering a large number of my participants were young men approximately my age (see Winchester, 1996). Many scholars have identified the possible advantages of being a woman interviewer, namely that ‘femaleness’ is less threatening and less ‘official’ than ‘maleness’ which can facilitate women researchers’ greater access to participants’ thoughts and opinions (Winchester, 1996; Wax, 1986; Smart, 1984; Schenk-Sandbergen, 1998; Bernard, 2011). However, in the Indian context, this can also mean that men dominate the interview (Thapar-Björkert, 1999; Miltiades, 2008), though I found that my gender, race, age and class were generally positive attributes that assisted in the collection of data.

As both a researcher and an individual, I am also acutely aware that I embody a historical and contemporary position of privilege, relative to a spectrum of global possibilities (Milner, 2007). However, while my privileged ‘other’ position accorded certain advantages, the power dynamic during interviews was typically very complex. Importantly, my race, age, class and gender often allowed space for reciprocity during the interviews (Oakley, 1981, 2016). For example, my race and nationality were generally advantageous in securing initial participants. When cold-calling education agents and counsellors to recruit them as participants, my Australian accent was an instant foot-in- the-door. Agents and counsellors would often agree to meet me, possibly because they perceived there may be some personal or professional advantage in knowing an

Australian in Mumbai or possibly because they were curious about an Australian doing research in India.

My gender was also, I believe, an advantage when conducting interviews (less so in the broader context of living in India, however). For example, the lingering male gaze is something that many women encounter in India on a daily basis and was often something that female participants and I bonded over, which was further facilitated by approximate age similarity. Additionally, the fact that I was in a long-term relationship with an Indian man from Mumbai (who I later married) was also a topic that frequently arose during the interviews because marriage was an area covered in almost all interviews. While I did not specifically enquire about what effect this fact may or may not have had, it was palpable that some participants perhaps treated this a token of my legitimacy as a resident in Mumbai. They did not seem to perceive me as a fly-in-fly-out expatriate but rather as someone who is invested in their culture and country in a way that many other ‘outsiders’ are not. As Dunbar et al. (2003) suggest, credentials that demonstrate an intimate knowledge of the society under study can inform participants’ views of the researcher.

The ways in which my class status may have impacted the research are less obvious than race and gender. In particular, my relatively ‘normal’ middle-class economic status in Australia was often obscured by my whiteness as well as my education level, nationality, mannerisms, way of dressing, and so forth. These forms of capital are, in many social contexts, more potent and visible than economic capital. For instance, I was particularly cognisant of my dress, which was a sensibility that I had developed when I lived in Mumbai previously and my work required me to engage with very different areas of the city. Participants explained that ‘Western’ clothes are a marker of upper- middle-class status in Mumbai, whereas the middle and lower classes tend to wear ‘Indian’ clothes (see also Gilbertson, 2014b). I would thus wear ‘Indian’ clothes when I interviewed participants in the outer reaches of Mumbai and ‘Western’ clothes when I was meeting elite South Mumbai-based participants. When I wore ‘Indian’ clothes participants would often comment on how ‘nice’ I looked in them – my dress did not go unnoticed. While wearing certain clothes can be read as a performance of class status (Gilbertson, 2014b), in my case it is possible that wearing Indian clothes also

communicated my participation in the ‘local culture’. This relates to the previous point