In-depth interviews

I conducted in-depth interviews with young participants, parents and employers for this study according to the developed conceptual framework (see Chapter 3: Conceptual framework). I present the process for each interview group below.

5.5.1 Interviews with young participants

In total, 27 in-depth interviews were conducted with young participants aged 13 to 21. The age breakdown of participants is illustrated below in Table 4.

Table 4: Age span of young participants included in the in-depth interviews

Age of

participants No. of participants

13 1

14 1

15 1

16 2

17 7

18 7

19 5

20 2

20-21 1

Total 27

Further details of the participants are summarised in Appendix VI (see Appendix VI: Overview of young participants included in the individual interviews). In summary, the specifics of the interviews with young participants were as follows:

• Three YPs of the total 27 in-depth interviews were girls who had participated in the group sessions.

• 26 interviews were referred via the collaborating organisations and one interview was identified via the network of the RA.

• The 26 interviews that were referred by the collaborating organisations each had one staff member, familiar to the participant, present during the interviews in case there were any signs of distress. The presence of the staff member was first approved by the YP.

• 10 interviews took place at the premises of the collaborating organisation.

• 17 interviews were conducted in the home of the YP or privately in a communal venue in the community area where the YP lived.

• The work status of the YPs involved the following: part-time girl domestic workers;

full-time girl domestic workers; live-in and live-out girl domestic workers; current

and former girl domestic workers; rescued girl domestic workers; and girls who accompanied their working mothers to work with domestic work.

• One participant was below the age of 14. This participant was, along with the sought local ethical approval, a former girl domestic worker who had been rescued out of her domestic work.

• The interviews with YPs covered the following areas of Delhi: North West; Central;

South; South West; West; and Gurugram (See Figure 3: Map of the data collection sites).

I developed a topic guide to support the interviews with young participants (See Appendix VII: Topic guide for individual interviews with young participants). I draw on different types of ethnographic styles of asking questions. For example, all in-depth interviews first started with what Spradley calls the ‘friendly conversation’ (Spradley, 1979, p.55). According to Spradley, the friendly conversation helps to loosen up the interview situation while still providing valuable information (Spradley, 1979). Thus, the friendly conversation method builds rapport and creates a soft transition to the actual questions (Spradley, 1979). I further applied Spradley’s method of using ‘descriptive questions’ including ‘grand tour questions’

followed by ‘mini-tour questions’ (Spradley, 1979, p. 62-63). Grand-tour questions are broad and general and allow the participant to reflect upon his or her experiences (Spradley, 1979).

Examples of grand tour questions were: ‘Can you describe a typical day in your life from early morning to when you go to sleep in the evening?’ I included mini-tour questions to generate more detailed accounts of a particular thing, as opposed to the rich descriptions often generated by grand tour questions (Spradley, 1979). Examples of mini-tour questions were:

‘Could you describe what you do when you feel sad at work?’ Or, ‘Can you give me an example of a person in the household giving you a difficult time while working?’

Due to the sensitivity of the study topic, we frequently switched between the friendly conversation and asking questions. By applying this approach, I aimed to prevent possible distress or re-trauma and to keep the interview dialogue away from an interrogation style.

Avoiding a coercive style was particularly important because some of the young participants had been interrogated by authorities about their situation. Thus, I applied a mix of friendly conversation and questions in each interview with YPs because it seemed to be an efficient way of building trust and rapport. One example of a sign of successful trust building was when the YP would, in the middle of the interview, lower her voice to tell us private

information beyond the scope of the research. Such information was very helpful to understand, for example, the dynamic in the participant’s family or community area.

Each interview ended with ‘advice questions,’ which are commonly applied in ethnographic interviews when seeking to understand behaviour, feelings, knowledge and opinions of participants (Madison, 2012, p. 30). The advice questions were also meant to finish the interview on an empowering note. Giving someone who is not necessarily used to be asked to offer their guidance the chance to give advice, especially to a person they perceive to be in a higher societal position, emphasised the agency of the participants and their expertise and noted the respect that the RA and myself had for the participant. This gesture emphasised that the participants were the experts and the RA and myself were there to learn from them (Driskell, Bannerjee, & Chawla, 2001).

Despite having a detailed approach and a topic guide for the interviews, we put great emphasis on encouraging the study participants to share their stories as freely as possible to nurture a situation where the participant could tell their experiences in a way that made most sense to them. I further approached each interview in a complementary manner, meaning that the interviews were aimed to build on each other, to provide a holistic view of girl domestic work in Delhi.

The advantage of conducting the interviews in the YPs’ own home was that it gave the RA and myself good insights into the family situation of the young worker and the dynamics in the variety of community areas. The in-home interviews were also an important way to get to know the parents, when they were present, as some of them were later asked to participate in in-depth interviews, as described in the following section.

The materials generated from this step were: audio-recordings, transcripts, field notes and field diary of the research team.

5.5.2 Interviews with parents

In total, we conducted nine interviews with parents of girl domestic workers below the age of 21 in the following areas of Delhi: South, South West, North West, West and in Gurugram (See Figure 3: Map of the data collection sites). All nine participants were referred via the collaborating organisations. Eight out of nine participants were parents to young participants included in the study. Among the nine participants, two were fathers to girl domestic workers and the remaining seven were mothers who all worked as domestic workers themselves.

Like the in-depth interviews with young participants, I applied Spradley’s technique of the friendly conversation to build rapport and trust (1979). I also used this technique to try to avoid making the parents feel accused by our questions, as there were often signs of embarrassment over sending their children to work. The topic guide for this activity included open-ended questions to explore parents’ perspectives about, and influences on, their daughters’ health and wellbeing. In addition, I also applied the advice technique as outlined by Madison (2012) with parents to explore their point of view, behaviour and knowledge about the situation of girl domestic work. For example, I asked what the parents’ advice would be to other parents who are considering sending their daughters to work with domestic work (see Appendix VIII: Topic guide for individual interviews with parents).

The materials collected from this stage were: audio-recordings, transcripts, field notes and field diary of the research team.

5.5.3 Interviews with employers

We conducted a total of three interviews with employers who had employed a girl under the age of 21 for domestic work in Delhi. It turned out that employers were the most challenging group to recruit. Therefore, the number of interviews with employers is much fewer than with parents. The RA and myself approached all employers by knocking on doors. The households were selected either randomly or because I had seen young girls engaged in domestic work on the premises or standing on the balconies of the house, a common phenomenon as illustrated with the below quote:

‘I was never sent out alone. Neither did they allow me to move out of the house. I never had friends or anything. At times, I used to stand on the balcony and they used to tell me to come inside.’

Source: YP013, 17-years-old, rescued live-in, full-time worker

I conducted two interviews myself without the RA and one interview was done by both of us. I developed a topic guide for the interviews (see Appendix IX: Topic guide for individual interviews with employers). I applied the method of ‘quotation questions,’ as outlined by Madison, as a way of building rapport and to facilitate trust in me as an outsider, as most of the employers were reluctant to speak to me and suspicious about the research topic (Madison, 2012, p. 30). One quotation question was for example: ‘Other people have said that you cannot trust domestic workers, what do you think about that?’

An additional technique I applied for this activity was ‘opinion and value questions’

(Madison, 2012, p. 27). This technique aims to explore a participant’s ‘conviction, judgement,

belief, or particular persuasion towards a phenomenon’ (Madison, 2012, p. 27). The opinion and value question technique was particularly fruitful in helping the RA and myself to understand the employer’s attitudes towards both domestic work as well as the workers.

One example of an opinion and value question I used was: ‘In your opinion, is domestic work a proper type of work?’ Finally, I ended the interviews with advice questions to gain further insights into the employers’ behaviour and opinions around girl domestic work (Madison, 2012).

The materials generated from this step were audio-recordings, transcripts, field notes and field diary.