Description

‘Yes you’re Tamil! but are you Tamil enough?’ An Indian researcher interrogates ‘shared social location’ in feminist immigration research

NAMITA N MANOHAR

Department of Sociology, Brooklyn College, The City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA

Abstract

This paper is a reflexive analytic account interrogating my ‘shared social location’ as immigrant, Tamilhalfie researching Tamil (an Indian regional group) immigrant women in Atlanta, Georgia. Drawing upon feminist interpretations of insider/outsider positions in research, I argue that shared social location is a performative, tenuous and contextual position continually constructed and contested by both my participants and I. It also destabilizes power hierarchies in the research context such that power is not statically experienced, but mutually reaffirmed and negated by Tamil women and myself. Finally, it generates myriad ethical dilemmas with the potential to undermine feminist research, requiring researchers like me to reflexively and continuously interrogate our methods of doing research and our personal biases in approaching the topic. Thus, far from being a panacea in research, shared social location is often a double-edged sword: facilitating successful research while simultaneously making it a charged process.

Keywords: shared social location, feminist immigration research, Indian researcher, insider/outsider, power in research, ethical dilemmas