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Methodological Innovations in Ethnicity and Diversity Research

7 January 2025
Sofia Vougioukalou

Sofia Vougioukalou

On 29th of January, 2025 PhD students and MEAD members, Luret Lar and Anaer Yeerjiyang hosted a hybrid methodological workshop titled “Methodological Innovations in Ethnicity and Diversity Research.” Luret presented on the topic Integration Experiences of Forcibly Displaced Migrant Women: Employing Interviews and Visual Elicitation, while Dr. Terry AuYoung, a Research Associate in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University discussed Heuristic Analysis of Digital Temporal Data: A Membership Categorisation Analysis Case Study of the British National (Overseas) Visa Introduction.

Throughout the session, participants engaged in rich discussions around three critical cross-cutting themes:

  • Ethical considerations across different methods
  • Power dynamics and participant agency
  • Innovations in qualitative research

 

Visual Voices: Empowering Displaced Women through Inclusive Research

When researching forcibly displaced migrant women, language and cultural barriers can pose significant challenges. However, employing visual methods in research can bridge these gaps effectively. Embedded in social constructionism, visual methods value and increase the voices of marginalized groups through participatory and inclusive practices. By upholding participants’ perspectives above personal opinions, researchers create knowledge within socio cultural contexts that respect and amplify these voices. A critical aspect of this process is obtaining informed consent, ensuring that the purpose and potential use of visual outputs is explicit to participants. Clear consent regarding privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity is vital, especially with traumatic or personal experiences.

While some participants initially resisted visual methods due to their perceived inability to draw, no one stated apprehensions about re traumatization. Interestingly, serendipitous insights, such as poetry and the inclusion of participant children in the co-creation process, occurred during the research. As data collection progresses, these unexpected insights are anticipated to enrich the research process, boost experience sharing, and contribute substantially to social change and advocacy for forcibly displaced migrant women.

 

Heuristic Analysis of Digital Temporal Data: A Membership Categorisation Analysis Case Study of the British National (Overseas) Visa Introduction

This presentation examines the UK’s British National Overseas BN(O) visa through the framework of Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA), offering a detailed exploration of how immigration policy is shaped by language and categorisation. Focusing on the Home Secretary’s written statement, the analysis reveals how the BN(O) visa, a bespoke humanitarian route for Hongkongers, emerges within a broader political and social context. By unpacking the process of codification, the study demonstrates how policy language becomes a social fact, constituted through the specific categorisation of people in society. In particular, it explores how the identity of Hongkongers is framed within the visa’s justification and how this categorisation both reflects and produces particular social and political realities. The analysis highlights the unique position of the BN(O) visa within the UK’s immigration system, situated between more restrictive economic visas and other humanitarian routes, offering valuable insights into how policy is not only a reflection of, but also a means of constituting, social categories and relationships.

 

Reading List

  1. Wyn Edwards, Catrin, and Rhys Dafydd Jones. “Reconceptualizing the Nation in Sanctuary Practices: Toward a Progressive, Relational National Politics?” International Political Sociology 18.2 (2024): olae006.
  2. Prowle, A. (2023). ‘I want to drive my own bus!’: Supporting the self-efficacy of asylum seeking and refugee mothers in the UK. International Journal of Birth & Parent Education, 10(4).
  3. Shobiye, L., & Parker, S. (2023). Narratives of coercive precarity experienced by mothers seeking asylum in the UK (Wales). Ethnic and Racial Studies, 46(2), 358-377.
  4. Adekeye, O., Chowdhury, S., McRae, A., Olorunfemi, T., Ozokede, E., Dubukumah, L., … & Dean, L. (2023). Exploring the well-being of people affected by skin NTDs in Kaduna and Kwara States, Nigeria: a photovoice and scoping review study. International Health, 15(Supplement_1), i100-i109.
  5. Shobiye, L. (2022). Mothers seeking sanctuary: wellbeing, learning, and education in Wales. Cardiff.
  6. Phillimore, J. (2021). Refugee-integration-opportunity structures: Shifting the focus from refugees to context. Journal of Refugee Studies, 34(2), 1946-1966.
  7. Mannay, D. (2015). Visual, narrative and creative research methods: Application, reflection and ethics. Routledge.
  8. Williamson, F. A. (2024). Black methodologies as ethnomethods: On qualitative methods-making and analysing the situated work of doing being hybridly human. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 21(4), 426–461. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2024.2347590
  9. Kawamura, K., & Okazawa, R. (2022). Reading What is Not There: Ethnomethodological Analysis of the Membership Category, Action, and Reason in Novels and Short Stories. Human Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-022-09658-y