Unveiling racism through qualitative research: The politics of interpretation

Abstract

The main purpose of the article is to present and compare various strategies aimed at encouraging research participants to voice their experiences of racism and discrimination. This is supplemented by the discussion on how scholars can unveil the intersections of multiple systems of oppression reverberating in research participants’ narratives, given the challenge of racial asymmetry in research and the politics of interpretation in a race-mute societal context. Based on their study involving young migrants, the authors argue that qualitative research instruments such as individual and focus-group interviews, visual elicitation, co-creative methods, and video interviews enable individuals to frame their experienced reality in complementary ways. Comparing how each method can conceal or disclose racism, the authors warn of treating narrations on racism on face value and plead for carefully analyzing the extent to which individual narrations align with political agendas and normative discourses within the research's contexts. Addressing each research tool's potential and limitations, the authors also show how the researchers’ epistemological and political positionalities shape their data collection and analysis.