Qualitative interviews

An initial review of existing literature (chapters two and three) concluded that the legal subject that is implicated in the concept of the British-Muslim legal field has been under-researched. To explore this potential new insight, I decided to focus on subjectivities and how they construct and are constructed in the legal field by using the method of qualitative interviews. I conducted eighteen interviews in total. In line with the focus on legal professionals’ role in this process, the interview participants were mainly either solicitors offering some form of Islamic legal services and clients of such services, as well as a small number of other actors in the field such as a scholar sitting on the board of a Sharia council and people who considered using a council or a solicitor, but had not done so yet at the time of the interview. The

interview participants included eleven professionals (solicitors and one scholar sitting on a Sharia council board; eight women, three men), and seven clients of solicitors (five current and two prospective clients, all of them women). I conducted interviews with solicitors sometimes specialising in slightly different areas of law (Muslim inheritance, Muslim divorces/marriages, forced marriages, child welfare) and in varying career settings (independent start-up, solicitors in large firms, junior and very experienced people). The interviews took place over several years with the first scoping interview with a solicitor offering Islamic legal services taking place in late 2012. The majority of interviews were completed in more intense periods in 2013 and 2015. I conducted interviews in a variety of locations in the UK and one interview over the phone. The locations of face-to-face interviews included London (five), Milton Keynes (four), Luton (two), Birmingham (two), St Albans (one), Manchester (one), Leeds (one), and Glasgow (one). In all interviews either a voice recording was made or notes were taken during the interview. A transcript of the interview, where recorded, was produced shortly afterwards. In one case an interview was conducted in Arabic and a working translation into English was produced for purposes of data analysis.

The interview format remained open to a large extent. As subjective experiences and meanings needed to be described in detail, the interview design had to give space for reflection by the interview participant as well as space for contradictions and open questions. Guiding questions prepared in advance and tailored to the specific subject position of the individual in the legal field (i.e. legal professional or lay) were used only to keep the flow of the interview in a direction that would allow me to address

the meanings of British-Muslim family law as it is relevant to different areas of study as derived from the literature review. These were (1) legal plurality: plurality of normative systems available to individuals; (2) legal fields: personal professional trajectories and practices in British-Muslim family law; (3) legal subjectivity: personal experiences of using Islamic legal services both by clients and providers. The

following types of questions prompted interview participants to address each of these broad areas of research:

(1) Questions asking about the importance of the English legal system, Muslim law and other normative systems such as customs to get an idea of the role they play in people’s lives.

(2) Questions asking about personal, educational networks and career paths as well as detailed descriptions of legal processes in order to learn about possible new legal market practices being established.

(3) Questions regarding personal experiences with solicitors’ firms, Sharia councils, or online will writing services, and motivations and outcomes of cases including questions about friends or family members who use similar services. The questions focused on personal experiences of using Islamic legal services and explored how the interview participant felt at the time.

In order to allow me to reflect on my own position as a researcher, especially during the more intense periods of interviewing, a research diary also formed a part of my research methods. Before and after each interview I gave myself about fifteen minutes to reflect on my position as interviewer; my expectations of the interview; what I was hoping to get out of the interview; what went well and what went badly; unexpected answers or turns in the interview; the need to change questions, set-up or the terms I used; and any other observations. I studied the research diary in connection with each interview once I was analysing the data collected. For example, on one occasion two women at very short notice decided to attend the interview together rather than attending each on their own. In the research diary after the interview I noted how my initial reservations about the set-up proved to be right. The flow of conversation was difficult to follow at times as both were good friends, and although knowing each other well neither of them was able to speak as freely as during the other one-to-one interviews. As a result, the data gathered was not as useful and detailed as in other

settings, a limitation that was easily addressed by making sure that future interviews were scheduled as one-on-one and in a setting comfortable for the interview

participant and myself. However, other limitations, restrictions and challenges proved to be more complex, which will be discussed in section 4.4.