My personal approach and positionality

While I am aware that I will never be able to fully understand the influence of my personal approach and positionality on my relationship with my research participants, the process of gathering data, as well as on my interpretation and analysis of it, in the following paragraphs I will elaborate on some of the factors that I consider to be the most evident and which might have had the most impact in this study.

With regard to my personal approach, two main aspects that influenced this research were my own life experience as a migrant, and my background as service provider and migrants’ rights advocate working in the non-governmental sector for approximately 10 years. During my role as a service provider, I developed knowledge, experience and a proactive problem-solving approach when supporting migrants’ efforts to integrate into their host communities. This professional and personal commitment created an ethical dilemma while in my researcher capacity. On more than one occasion I was faced with situations where my interviewees were in need of legal advice, information about access to jobs or a relevant service. For most researchers, this would not be an issue as they might not have had the ability to do anything about it. However, I was not only a researcher but also a practitioner and I possessed both information and networks that I could make use of to support my research participants. Despite the need to act as a researcher (and receive information) and not as a service provider (who could provide information), ultimately my

identity as a psychosocial worker overcame the researcher identity and I decided to either provide my interviewees with the information they needed, or support them to access the required services.

As for my experience as a migrant, living outside of my country of origin for more than seven years has given me what Carling and colleagues have called an ‘insider’ perspective (2014). The fact that my participants could see me as another migrant like them (an insider) was particularly useful in those cases where people felt the need to criticise Mexican culture or Mexicans in general. Specifically, in the case of Huaquechula, this co-migrant (insider) perspective was also helpful to lessen my image as an outsider from Mexico City. Furthermore, as a migrant I have experienced being undocumented, detained, deported and having to return to Mexico at a time and under certain conditions that I did not expect. Despite this experience not being comparable to those of some of my participants while in the USA, it has enabled me to develop a better understanding of the personal (especially emotional) process people go through when faced with a forced return, and how this affects their post-return lives. Furthermore, this experience allowed me to manage delicate interactions with research participants and to better anticipate ethical considerations. While my experience of deportation was not something I shared with all participants, in order to ease the interview process, I did share it with those deportees who struggled talking openly about their experience.

The aspects of my identity that I consider having potentially influenced my data collection are being a highly educated (doctorate student) Mexican woman who was visibly pregnant while conducting the fieldwork. As diverse scholars have already pointed out, the researcher holds a privileged position of power by having (an apparent) control of the process by deciding the research questions, directing the flow of the interactions, interpreting the data, and deciding where and in what form it should be presented (Kvale and Brinkmann 2009). Being a woman and holding this position of power in a patriarchal society such as the Mexican one is a factor which separated me from my interviewees, particularly the men. While my role as researcher could have portrayed me as an intimidating person, I became aware that being pregnant had a neutralising effect. Pregnancy is a physical condition with broad cultural meanings. In the Mexican culture there is the perception that pregnant women are vulnerable and in need of protection and care, therefore the intimidating image described above might have been lessened. In addition to this, I consider that the fact that my pregnancy itself disclosed personal information without me having any control over it,

combined with my open attitude to further inquiries regarding my family life, positioned me in a similar or, at least a closer, situation to the one of my interviewees who were being questioned by me (see Reich 2003). A final aspect to highlight is the fact that by being pregnant, I was no longer sexualised in a way that invited flirtation. Particularly, I found it useful in a more traditional setting such as Huaquechula where my interest in men’s lives and my willingness to spend long hours talking to them in private could be misinterpreted by the community as ‘romantic’ interest. I can conclude that this experience as a pregnant woman allowed me to reflect upon my own body, on how I interacted with my research participants, and informed my interpretation of our interactions.

3.8. Conclusion

Throughout this chapter I have discussed methodological considerations that are relevant to my research. These considerations include my fieldwork approach, selection of participants, the technicalities of the data collection and its analysis, as well as how ethical considerations, my personal approach and positionality have influenced this study. Moreover, throughout the writing process of this thesis I kept methodological and ethical considerations in mind, aiming to produce research based on the principles of integrity and quality, and avoid misrepresentation and over-simplification of my participants’ life experiences. Additionally, during this chapter I had the opportunity to reflect on my positionality and concluded that this has been in constant flow and shifted from being a ‘practitioner’ to a being a researcher and advocate of migrants’ rights, to an ‘insider co- migrant’, to a ‘vulnerable pregnant student’.

Through this reflexive process I also developed my awareness of how these multiple positions were in interplay during the whole research process, having a different impact at various times. Specifically, with regard to my fieldwork phase, considering the reluctance of people to participate and the situation of insecurity in the country, I can conclude that these identities provided me with access to my research sites and participants which may have otherwise been impossible. With regard to my writing phase, these positions and experiences have been complementary by widening my perspective and hopefully making me stronger academically.