Whilst the primary focus of this study has been on the stories of women seeking asylum, my own role in storytelling was not overlooked. An integral part of coming to understand women’s stories and exploring the research process, reflexivity and representation has long been established in many approaches to qualitative
research (Harding, 1987, 1991; Letherby, 2000, 2002). The importance of reflexivity is premised on the recognition that the construction of all literature “always bears the mark of the person who created it” (Riessman, 1993, p.v). As a result researchers are expected to consider how they affect the different stages of the research
30 This sub-title is taken from a collection of monologues: “A memory, a monologue, a rant and a prayer: Writing to stop violence against women and girls” (Ensler and Doyle, 2007).
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process, outlining key elements of themselves in relation to statements about aspects of their identity.
Throughout the thesis I have written in the first person in an effort to resist a more traditional academic writing style which has privileged using the third person as author, as if the ‘author’ has an “omniscient voice” (Kimpson, 2005, p.74). In order to position myself as overtly as possible, the rhetorical form is intended to compel immediacy and express a sense of transparency about myself. Robinson (2002) has criticised researchers for failing to consider the specific methodological challenges of researching people seeking asylum and refugees and advocates that researchers be more reflexive about their own positionality. In this research, attention was paid to the role that I had, as a “central figure” (Finlay, 2002, p.531), in the research process, directly or indirectly, subtly or intentionally, influencing the study.
Characterising reflexivity in this study as an endeavour to become more aware of the research process and my own story about myself (Letherby, 2000, 2002), I have attempted to bring the personal from the periphery to the centre and make myself as accountable and transparent as possible within all the research relationships
involved in this study (Doucet and Mauther, 2008). Relying on reflexive accounts and listening to my own stories I was able to recognise and explain some of the ways that I came to understand the stories of the women participants. I have attempted to offer a value laden reflexive position throughout the thesis, including why particular stories may have resonated with me and the ways in which these understandings may have impacted on the research that I carried out (Letherby, 2000, 2002).
Beyond women’s stories, I also paid attention to my own interpretations of meaning across the research process (Letherby, 2002). Drawing on Doucet’s (2008)
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metaphor of ‘gossamer walls’ to explore research relationships that occur during a research process, the approach incorporates an idea of sheer, thin and tenuous gossamer, overtly linked with the solidity of walls to combine two states within which relationships can be located. In other words, the constantly shifting constructions of knowledge that constitute the relations of research, moving between “transparency and obscurity, relation and separation, proximity and distance, and moments of closure and openness” (Doucet, 2008, p.84). Through gossamer walls I formed a basis for reflexivity that was conceived through relationships: the relationship we have with ourselves, haunted as we may be with other stories and ‘ghost’ figures; the multi-layered relations between the researcher and research participants; and the location of our research (Doucet, 2008). The fluidity of gossamer walls served as a constant reminder of the changes and shifts that occurred throughout the research process, helping to expand dominant understandings of reflexivity as a means of merely turning inwards towards oneself (Harding, 1987, 1991; Letherby, 2000, 2002). The solidity of gossamer walls was a presence of the barriers and differences that prevented me from staying in relationships.
By understanding that researchers do not transcend their subjectivity in the research process (Pillow, 2003), there were times when I felt cautious and self-conscious about my on-going reflexive process of documenting my accounts. Some of these concerns came from stark criticisms about the ways in which researchers have expressed themselves in reflexive accounts. Letherby states “until recently the ‘self’
has been hidden in mainstream social research” (2000, p.94). Whilst we can all be seen to be 'storytellers' in the way that we make sense of our lives (Plummer, 1995), I was concerned that including such material would bring professional dangers (Letherby, 2000). Researchers who utilise reflexivity have been viewed as
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“narcissistic and tiresome” (Pillow, 2003, p.176), reproached for “self-indulgence”
(Letherby, 2002, 5.8), labelled as promoting endless talk of social positions as if they were badges of honour (Patai, 1994) and accused of being “intellectually sloppy”
(Letherby, 2000, p.109). There were also challenges to writing reflexively which include the restraints and rigour of academic language, as well as issues of privacy (Letherby, 2002) and my own complex feelings about my personal stories becoming a matter of public and academic record. Trinh calls for approaches which “inscribe difference without bursting into a series of euphoric narcissistic accounts of yourself and your kind” (1989, p.28). I was worried that I was potentially “fall[ing] into an infinite regress of excessive self-analysis at the expense of focusing on the research participants” (Finlay, 2002, p.532). Concerned that my reflexive accounts should not become the sole purpose of the research, I wanted my reflexive processes to
contribute to noticing, questioning and increasing transparency about the relational perspectives I brought to the research process.
Complicating the role of reflexivity were some of the concepts embedded in the Listening Guide. For example, Mauthner and Doucet argue;
“Influences may only become apparent once we have left the research behind and moved on in our personal and academic lives… our understanding … has deepened as a result of progress in our thinking” (2003, p.415).
Finding this particular statement oddly dissonant, I questioned how much I could know, understand and account for the influences that shaped my research at the specific time of conducting the research (Mauthner and Doucet, 2003). Given the partial perspectives provided by any stories, it is not tenable, as Mauthner and Doucet suggest, that “…detachment from our doctoral work has allowed us to be more reflexive” (2003, p.415, my emphasis). The implication of ‘detachment’
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indicates an absence of relationship, suggesting the authors assumed that there is something that can be known beyond the subjective stories participants told. Bishop and Shepherd have also highlighted how the term “detachment” (Mauthner and Doucet, 2003, p.415) is “peculiar” (2011, p. 2185), falling into more ‘objective’
approaches to research.
I suggest, given the relational approach of the Listening Guide, that time and
distance do not necessarily lead to deeper reflexive processes but may enable us to tell different stories about our research processes as we position ourselves
differently in relation to our studies. My research process was not intended to incorporate “degrees of reflexivity” (Mauthner and Doucet, 2003) but rather I attempted to have an overt awareness of the situations and circumstances which facilitated different accounts for different purposes and with different limitations, constraints or opportunities (Woodiwiss, 2004, 2009, 2014).
Highlighting the relational process of this study, fixing an account on the impact and role I have had as the researcher has been problematic. Bishop and Shepherd note
“it is one thing to know on an intellectual or intuitive level that we have an effect on other people - that we shape our research encounters and cannot be completely objective in our interpretations of these; it is another thing, however, to document when and in exactly what way” (2011, p.1290). I suggest that I cannot say which specific aspects of my past, social background, assumptions and stories have precisely impacted on the research process. Accounts of reflexivity had to be unpacked again and again as the research process unfolded; evaluating my own accounts (Letherby, 2002).
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Examining the positions that I held as a researcher and attempting to make them transparent increasingly made my accounts problematic. Merely making statements about social locations and positioning myself within, for example, terms such as gender, class, sexuality and ethnicity, may have little to offer the research process in terms of their effects on the research. Rather than merely comprehending the
process as reflection on myself, I elevate the notion that reflexivity included an explication of researcher subjectivity and social location as a self-conscious process of examination, largely in relation to participants’ stories and the research process (Gilligan, 1982; Harding, 1991; Mauther and Doucet, 1998; Finlay, 2002; Holland and Ramazanoglu, 2002; Letherby, 2002; Harding and Norberg, 2005, 1992).
Throughout the study process I have questioned the ways in which reflexive accounts are frequently presented as independent and objective truth about the researcher and, therefore, that reflexivity can produce ‘better’, more authentic and truthful research (Haraway, 1988; Harding, 1991; Denzin, 1997). Seen as a
guarantee that researchers’ accounts are methodologically informed, I felt there was a risk that my stories would be heard as more legitimate than the stories of research participants (Pillow, 2003; Bishop and Shepherd, 2011). In an attempt to address the point of ‘legitimatised’ accounts, I endeavour to elevate the idea that my reflexive accounts are “not intellectually superior” than the participants (Letherby, 2002, 4.3) and are no less distorted, truthful or accurate (Altheide and Johnson, 1998). Neither are they any different from other stories in as much as they are socially and culturally shaped, producing “situated knowledges” (Haraway, 1988) in relation to narrative frameworks.
Highlighting that, like all accounts, reflexive accounts are a reconstruction after the encounter, I recognised my subjectivities as “partial, provisional and perspective
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nature of knowledge claims” (Mauther and Doucet, 2003, p.416). Emphasising my own stories as constructions and accounting for the role of reflexivity in this way, I hoped to be more transparent to readers about the way the research process and thesis was constructed and to avoid self-indulgence (Bishop and Shepherd, 2011).
Subsequently, understandings of my accounts are characterised as incomplete because no stories are true for all time (Plummer, 1995; Andrews, 2008). By
implication, reflexive processes and accounts are viewed and presented within this thesis as partial, temporal and selected (Stanley, 1993) and are likely to give forth to further readings in the future.
Even though we are all ultimately unknowable and none of us can understand all the reasons for our research processes (Pillow, 2003), I have endeavoured to reflexively make explicit aspects of my biography, attempting to outline aspects of who I am in the research relationships and as part of the broader story (Bishop and Shepherd, 2011). I may be unable to fully capture my own role in this thesis but providing an account that has some insight into the partial meanings made within this research process, I have continued to use reflexivity throughout this thesis in the belief that it has the potential to throw some light on my research processes, for myself and others, making meaning about my role in the research process (Plummer, 1995).
Recognising that my own story would be extremely prominent in the thesis (Letherby, 2002), I wanted to acknowledge my role. Framing reflexivity within the Listening Guide has helped me to begin a dialogue about this important aspect of the research process, leading to a greater understanding of what may be achieved through my reflexive practice and accounts, which I hope has fully embraced honest, transparent and ethical research processes (Bishop and Shepherd, 2011). This
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approach to reflexivity can provide researchers with substantial theoretical and methodological value and insight (Letherby, 2000, 2002).
Conclusion
In this chapter I have explored how, premised on the aspiration to listen to women’s stories, the Listening Guide is distinguished from other research approaches and embraces a number of methodological assumptions. Emphasising the relational and feminist foundations (Gilligan, 1982; Harding, 1986; Mauthner and Doucet, 1998, 2003) of the Listening Guide, I have explored that using this approach was
particularly appropriate because it was utilised to place women’s stories at the heart of the study, emphasising listening to and understanding their stories while at the same time exploring the role of the researcher in shaping the research. Interrogating the ontological assumptions about the status of researcher reflexivity, I have
explored some of the principles within the Listening Guide to address reflexivity as a methodological concern and drawn specific attention to the ways in which accounts should be viewed within this thesis.
In the next chapter, ‘Doing research with women seeking asylum’, I emphasise the situational nature of ethics in relation to the context of this study and provide a detailed account of the methods I used during my fieldwork.
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