Semi-structured in-depth interview

The recruitment of interview participants

Before proceeding to the phase of formal data collection in 2016, a preliminary research was conducted. At this stage, to familiarise myself with the research subject, I approached a range of people who were likely to inform me about the Chinese Christian communities in Britain, including local (Chinese) Christian leaders and laypersons, university chaplains, and scholars. In the meantime, I read extensively on not only sociology but also Christian theology and history which enabled me to understand terms and categories that would emerge along with the continued interactions with Christians. Having familiarised myself with the research subject and established a personal social network among the (Chinese) Christians, I started recruiting participants for semi-structured interviews in January 2016 using purposive

snowball sampling.

Snowball sampling, as a ‘nonprobability sampling strategy’, also known as ‘chain referral sampling’ or ‘respondent-driven sampling’, is one of the most frequently practiced sampling strategies for qualitative researchers (Berg, 2007: 44). It is ‘sometimes the best way’ to locate potential participants ‘with certain attributes or characteristic necessary in the study’ (ibid.). The development of snowball samples is based on a referral chain, which is driven by the referral by one respondent to another. However, recognising the particularities of the sampled participants requires the researcher’s ‘special knowledge or expertise’, which I have gained through the preliminary inquiry (ibid.). In other words, snowball sampling is often driven by particular purposes of the research. Through the preliminary research, a number of potential participants with traits that are directly related to my research were identified. These traits can be summarised under two rubrics: Chinese migrants and converts to Christianity. In Chapter Two (Section Three), I have listed three key criteria to characterise Chineseness, namely familial Chinese bloodline, cultural Chinese identity, and ancestral roots in China. Concerning the status of migration, I have included in my sample persons who have migrated

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to Britain and stayed in the country for at least five years14_{, who may have been granted}

British citizenship or permanent residency in the country. This practical criterion excludes a large number of Chinese students at British colleges and universities, who in some cases can be counted as migrants but will not necessarily stay beyond the time of their studies. In addition, the migration experience of current students might be rather limited compared with people who have lived and worked in Britain after being students (many of my participants are student-turned immigrants)15.

A similar criterion, namely that the participants need to be Christians for five years, is also applied in identifying them as Christian converts. I reckon that being a Christian for five

years is likely to allow a person to have relatively sufficient experience of Christianity,

enabling him or her to provide quality information on his or her conversion experience. Further, I follow Yang’s (1999: 71) advice which is to use receiving water baptism as an ‘operational indicator’ to identify Christian converts, other than self-identification. This is a practical criterion to identify committed Chinese Christians. As will be discussed in Chapter Five and the empirical chapters, the majority of Chinese Christians in Britain can be

categorised as Protestant Evangelicals, for whom baptism is mostly practiced among the adults as a public declaration of their Christian identity indicating their commitment to the faith.

In my research, 32 participants were recruited for semi-structured interviews from January 2016 to March 2017. Among these participants, 30 are Chinese. Two are English Christians experienced in missionary and ministerial work among Chinese migrants. The interviews with the two English Christians was intended to gather information on their opinions of the Christian evangelical ministries and their experience of the growing Chinese migrant communities in Britain. I classify the 30 Chinese participants into four groups according to the range of their age as a marker of their experience of migration16: Group 1. aged between

14 _{According to British law, those who have lived and worked in the UK for at least 5 years are eligible to apply} for British citizenship (c.f. https://www.gov.uk/british-citizenship).

15 _{A subtle distinction needs to be made between those Chinese migrants who have gained permanent residency} in Britain and those who have gained British citizenship. Presently, the P.R. China does not recognise dual citizenship. This means that those who have taken the British passport must give up their Chinese citizenship. Instead, many Chinese migrants only hold permanent residency that guarantees their legal rights of working and living in the UK.

16 _{This marker is widely applicable but not definitive. I assume that those who migrated earlier tend to be older.} However, there are exceptions. For example, a senior participant in my study (aged 73) migrated to Britain as a dependent of her child in 2008. However, her child has been studying and working in the country for over twenty years.

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17 to 24, Group 2. Aged between 25 to 45, Group 3. Aged between 46 to 65, Group 4. Aged 66 and above. The majority of my participants fall into Group 2 and 3. Three people are in Group 1. And six people are in Group 4. In terms of the educational level, most of my participants are as well-educated, with bachelor’s degrees or above. The majority of my sampled participants are Christian pastors and lay leaders, academics, professional workers in managerial positions, and self-employed entrepreneurs.

I would argue that my sample of participants reflects the characteristics of a larger social group, the new Chinese migrants, whose migration has usually taken place in the 2000s. This group of Chinese migrants contrast with the old generation of migrants in many ways (cf. Pharoah, Bell, Hui & Yeung, 2009). The distinction between the old and the new Chinese migrants will be discussed in Chapter Five. As a preliminary summary, the old generation of Chinese migrants is less well-educated than the new generation, working in manual-labour- intensive industries such as the catering business. Some may have been and can remain undocumented workers and asylum seekers. Among my participants, I have interviewed two male Chinese migrants who do not have university degrees and workable English language skills. They migrated to Britain and have worked in Chinese restaurants for over 10 years. One of them remains an undocumented worker until this day. Further, during my field

research, I also observed that there are many female homemakers, who in terms of the time of migration (migration after the 1990s) can be categorised as the new migrants. Some of them have low levels of education and their English language skills can be lower than

conversational level, as Liu (1992) has found (see Chapter Five). I have interviewed one such female Chinese homemaker and documented her conversion testimony given in public church gathering settings (Field Note, March 17, 2016).

In summary, 32 participants have been recruited through purposive-snowball sampling for in- depth interviews from January 2016 to early 2017. Apart from the two English lay Christian ministers who are experienced in evangelism among the Chinese migrants, all 30 participants are new Chinese migrants who have converted to Protestant Evangelical Christianity. To demonstrate the diversity and the characteristics of the subject population, a range of sub- criteria including age, level of education, and profession have been used along the way of sampling. A gender balance is kept intentionally in the recruitment of participants. The gender dimension is not examined particularly in this study. In Chapter Five (also in Chapter Nine on future research direction), I draw on previous literature and my observations to provide an account of gender issues among Chinese Christians in Britain. As there is no

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definitive guideline determining the exact sample size for a qualitative project, the size of my sample was informed by the concept of saturation in qualitative data analysis (cf. Guest, Bunce, & Johnson, 2006: 59). A list of my participants containing pseudonyms, gender, age, education, occupation, year of migration, and time of interview is attached in Appendix I.

The interview

Interviewing is one of the most important strategies for qualitative inquiries, and it can simply be defined as a ‘conversation with a purpose’ (Berg, 2007: 90). Denzin (2001: 26) notes that people live in a ‘performance-based, dramaturgical culture’. Qualitative

interviewing in this sense can be considered a type of social interaction (cf. Goffman, 1959) performed in a complex, dramaturgy-like setting, where meanings of discourse, narrative, and culture converge and inform conversational actors. In terms of the different manners in which interviews can be conducted, qualitative interviews can be categorised into three types, the structured, semi-structured, and unstructured (Bryman, 2012: 210-213, see also in Berg, 2007: 92-97). Structured interviews are often highly standardised with the exact ordered and worded question sets for all participants; whereas unstructured interviews are completely unstandardised with no preconceived questions. Semi-structured interviews have been employed in my research.

The semi-structured interview is with a set of questions prepared by a researcher for the investigation of a series of issues with the other person. It requires the researcher’s

experience in discerning real-life scenarios in the interview setting, through which he or she can add or delete questions and probe certain issues further with the participant. My research investigates the lived experience of religious conversion and migration. Lived experience is by definition a kind of highly ‘personal knowledge’ gained through a person’s ‘direct involvement’ in everyday events (Lived experience, 2011). This knowledge can be accessed by others through verbal representations by the person. The manners in which people verbally represent their lived experience can vary from one person to another. Given the diversity and variety of data on people’s lived experience, I consider semi-structured interviews the most appropriate method for collecting the relevant data for my research.

An interview guide was developed to address the research question on Christian conversion of the Chinese in the context of their migration to Britain. The guide contains three sets of questions covering issues of migration, experiences of religion, faith, belief, conversion experience, and identity. Questions concerning the participants’ personal information, such as

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their age, educational level, job, and migration status, which often function as conversational starters, are merged into the interview practice. For example, my interview often starts with asking the participants about their time of migration. Following the lead of this question, many of my participants would provide a narrative of their study, work, and life experience in Britain, sometimes without me asking probing questions. The revealing of my personal identity as a Christian often facilitated conversations about the participants’ own experience of and opinions about their religion-related issues (see Section 4 in this chapter for

reflexivity). Both English and Mandarin Chinese were used in my interviews. The interview guide is attached as Appendix II. To answer the second research question concerning the relation between the individual experience and institutional and contextual influence, a method beyond the individualistic method of interviewing is needed; hence the participant observation.