By Dr Irene Zempi
In this blog, I will summarise some of the key issues from my
recent article on ‘Negotiating constructions of insider and outsider status in research with veiled Muslim women victims of Islamophobic hate crime’.
Following terrorist attacks such as 9/11 in the US and 7/7 in the
UK, bias, prejudice, hostility and ‘hate’ towards Muslims in the West has increased
significantly. Muslim women who wear the face veil (niqab) are particularly
vulnerable to Islamophobic attacks in public due to the visibility of their
Muslim identity. Against this background, my doctoral research examined veiled
Muslim women’s experiences of Islamophobia in public places in the UK. Specifically,
I employed a qualitative approach, which included 60 individual interviews and
20 group interviews with veiled Muslim women who had experienced Islamophobic
attacks in public in the UK.
In qualitative research, critical reflexivity is important. Both
researchers and participants have multiple identities. Critical reflexivity
entails reflecting upon how similarities and differences between the researcher
and the researched might influence the research process and the knowledge
produced. Within the framework of critical reflexivity, an understanding of the
advantages and limitations of researchers’ insider/outsider status can enable them
to better prepare for and tackle the challenges of producing reliable and
ethical research findings. As an Orthodox Christian woman, my research was
primarily from an ‘outsider’ position. An ‘insider’ is a researcher who belongs
to the group to which their participants also belong based on characteristics
such as religion, ethnicity, gender and sexual identity, while an ‘outsider’ is
not a member of that group. A common argument in the research literature is
that insider researchers are more likely to be able to understand and represent
participants’ experiences. This can be particularly important in research with groups
that have been under-represented and socially/culturally marginalised. In
contrast, some of the perceived benefits for the outsider researcher include
the apparent objectivity that being detached provides.
In light of
my non-Muslim identity, access to potential participants was initially
challenging. I found that participants were keen to establish my motivations
for researching their experiences of Islamophobia before agreeing to take part
in this study. I found that being open, authentic, honest and deeply interested
in their lives encouraged openness and trust between the participants and
myself, and helped to assuage any suspicions about my motives. Also, the fact
that when interrogated about my faith, I answered that I was an Orthodox
Christian seemed, in the majority of cases, to contribute towards the idea that
I was a person with good morals who followed a religious code, and therefore,
could be trusted. Therefore, I was a partial insider not as a Muslim but as
someone who holds strong religious beliefs.
Moreover, I
found that during the interviews and group discussions participants were
willing to explain things in detail, and voluntarily ‘educated’ me about their
lives because of my non-Muslim status. Relatedly, some participants told me
that they were keen to talk to non-Muslims in order to dispel myths about
Islam. In this regard, I found that many participants were concerned about the implications
of what they had to say, as they felt they were seen as representatives of
Islam. By answering my questions participants knew they were contributing in
some way to outsiders’ perceptions of Muslims. They felt the duty/burden of
projecting a good image of Islam to non-Muslims. Whilst this question of
individuals feeling representative of Islam at times affected the direction of
the interviews, in some cases this was probably the trigger that convinced some
participants to agree to participate in the study. As such, being perceived as
an outsider has a value in terms of encouraging individuals to take part in the
study.
Nonetheless, although
I was an outsider in terms of my religious identity, I was an insider in that I
was a woman. This is important because it highlights one of the ways in which
the categories insider and outsider are not necessarily clear-cut and fixed. Despite
explicit religious differences between me and the participants, I empathised
with them through our shared identity as women. In this sense, I used my gender
identity to establish rapport and trust with the veiled Muslim women who took
part in the study.
Throughout
the study, critical reflexivity enabled me to work towards a deeper
understanding and awareness of my own identity and how this interacted with the
identity of my participants. Through the process of critical reflexivity, I
regularly questioned my methodology and deconstructed my interactions with the
veiled Muslim women who took part in the study. Similarly, I questioned my
understanding and representation of veiled Muslim women’s lived experiences.
Critical reflexivity also helped me to continually re-evaluate methodological,
analytical and ethical research processes as the research progressed. Ultimately,
critical reflexivity proved to be a very useful methodological tool in the
knowledge production in this study.
Dr Irene Zempi is a Lecturer in Criminology
at Nottingham Trent University. Irene is the co-author of the books Islamophobia:Lived Experiences of Online and Offline Victimisation (Policy Press, 2016
with Dr Imran Awan) and Islamophobia, Victimisation and the Veil
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 with Dr Neil Chakraborti).
