Análisis estadístico: cómo minimizar el error. La validación

The specific methods employed in this project needed to capture two key strands of data. First it was necessary to investigate young Muslim male identity ‘on the ground’ as it were, which would provide a platform from which to judge institutional treatment of Muslims in Birmingham. Secondly the research method needed to capture the impacts of counter-terror policies on the identities of young Muslim men in the city. The first is a bottom-up approach aimed at manoeuvring around preconceptions of young Muslim men. It seeks to approach questions of belonging and identity, in isolation from the counter-terror agenda. The second is a top-down approach aimed at analysing how governmental institutions would perceive and then attempt to impact those self same men and their identities.

Before proceeding it is important to recall the literature review and the idea that identity is inescapable and in scope almost incalculable, due to its fluidity and the multiplicity of its dimensions. This raises the question as to what aspects of Muslim identity this thesis would seek to evidence and how the evidence could be gathered. The initial plan was to collect traditional interviews with young Muslim men in the city after a period of deep ethnographic research which would allow interviewees to feel comfortable in the presence of the interviewer. However, following initial contact with potential interviewees and informal discussions on identity and belonging, two problems were identified. Firstly it was feared that younger participants and particularly those not familiar with academic research, might not feel comfortable enough to express themselves about the deeply personal issues of identity. Secondly, being aware of how so many aspects of Muslim identity might be missed if interviews were conducted ‘traditionally’, I was also anxious to ensure that elements of everyday life and behaviour were captured with regards to the young Muslim participants. The importance of acknowledging the importance of everyday life was emphasised by Michel de Certeau

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(1984), who was influential in shifting the focus of some urban geographers towards the study of everyday practices. In particular de Certeau emphasised the importance of mobility in capturing those everyday experiences, writing that:

...the act of walking is to the urban system, what the speech is act is to language or the statements uttered.

(de Certeau 1984; 97)

To de Certeau, the reality of cities has been camouflaged by thinking of cities as a single, static and panoramic text. He argues that the city cannot be read if it is removed from the obscure interlacing of everyday behaviour. He contends that in order to touch upon the reality of city life one has to look at the city, not from the top of what was the World Trade Centre, but from the hustle of the streets below:

The ordinary practitioners of the city live „down below‟, below the thresholds at which visibility begins. They walk – an elementary form of this experience of the city; they are walkers. (They) make use of spaces that cannot be seen…the paths that cross in this intertwining, unrecognised poems in which each body is an element signed by many others, elude legibility. The networks of these moving intersecting writings compose a manifold story that neither author or spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces; in relation to representations, it remains daily and indefinitely, other.

(De Certeau 1984, 93)

The importance of mobile research methods in getting at ‘richer’ urban experiences goes beyond the analysis of direct physical contact between human actors; the networks de Certeau speaks of are both performative and psychological. Movements to de Certeau are writing, and walking is poetry. As human subjects come into contact with each other, the writings as performed and imagined by the individual subjects intertwine and collide to form new writings, new memories and new histories. Casey (2001; 684) goes beyond speaking of human networks to argue that people and place are co- ingredients, and spaces themselves are intrinsically and inseparably part of human identity. He points out that in contemporary philosophical thought there is no neat way of distinguishing between

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people and places. For Casey, places are not stages but are mediums that structure and facilitate human existence. Moreover, they are an outcome of thought, action and practices of humans (ibid; 683-684). Furthermore, as humans experience places, they form memories and experience feelings. These feelings, according to Casey (ibid) are then transcribed back onto those particular places, which then begin to embody those characteristics.

Methodologically it was important to capture these practices and the memories, histories and imaginations and their intertwining. For this reason it was decided that to supplement the ethnographic participant observation, a form of walked interview would be the favoured method of more formal interview with research participants. As part of this method, respondents were asked to give an interview in an area of the city in which they were the most comfortable and where they could demonstrate aspects of their everyday lives. All but three of the twenty interviewees who were consulted using this method chose their immediate residential neighbourhoods as the places where they would be comfortable. The interviews were recorded on Dictaphones worn around the neck of a participant, to capture their voice clearly amidst the sometimes loud hubbub of the street. This tended to work well with the exception of one incident in which an interviewee, having bumped into a friend towards the end of the interview, fiddled with the device and deleted the interview file. In this instance field-notes were written up to compensate.

With the growth of the new mobilities paradigm (Sheller and Urry 2006) much has been written about the advantages of walked interviews. For those specifically interested in place it givens a detailed picture into the way human interactions with the environment take place (Solnit 2001; Kusenbach 2003). During most of the walked interviews it was clear that the technique was having the effect of empowering the participant. The participant was able to wield a degree of power shaping the walk as he pleased; his knowledge of the area in comparison with the researcher’s relative outsider status allowed him to express himself more confidently. In their typology of walking interviews Evans and Jones (2011, 850) describe this particular type of method, with the route chosen by the participant as a ‘participatory walking interview’. This method bought to life

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interesting and relevant details about the everyday life of participants; in the inner-city neighbourhoods every single walked interview participant during the interview perchance encountered a friend with whom he was able to exchange greetings, talk and sometimes introduce the interviewer. On one occasion it was noted that an interviewee was interrupted eight times during his 54 minute walk by passers-by and he was by virtue of this contact, able to arrange a football game with his friends. Through this observation the importance of neighbourhood spaces to the social life of this participant became apparent.

A criticism of this approach might be that in ascertaining the tropes of identity and senses of belonging, by providing the stimuli of local place, the conversation would tend spatially towards the local as opposed to national or transnational aspects of identity and belonging. I would counter this with two points; first this thesis partly aims to capture facets and dynamics of belonging and identity of young Muslim men that have been sidelined. Indeed this research does emphasise the fact that in discussions around Muslim identity in Britain, the ‘local’ is often ignored in favour of pre-figured debates around Britishness and Muslim ‘culture’. Secondly, the walked interview method was part of a wider set of methods which helped triangulate data; a number of other data-gathering exercises took place including in-situ participant observation at youth centres, an all-day workshop on identity and interviews with youth workers for their perspective on issues of Muslim youth.

Between February 2009 and September 2010 and following initial conversations and contact with respondents, twenty in depth interviews were conducted with young Muslim men between the ages of 18 and 30. As the nature of the ethnographic research conducted emphasises research depth over breadth, it is not possible to engineer a completely ‘representative’ sample of Muslims in the city, yet efforts were still made in order to ensure both a geographically and socially diverse set of individuals took part in the research project. The interviewees were recruited largely through access to youth and community groups in three areas of Birmingham: Lozells, Washwood Heath and Sparkhill. This also allowed for an even spread of interviewees geographically, from a number of neighbourhoods in Birmingham with significant numbers of Muslim residents. However, to ensure that a diverse social

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range of interviewees, five were also recruited through the city’s universities. Full details of the residential areas and the employment backgrounds of the participants can be found in the appendix to this study. In addition 34 visits were made to youth and community sessions in areas of Birmingham’s inner-city suburbs which have large Muslim populations. During these visits relationships were made with individuals who would then on occasion give formal interviews around notions of identity and belonging. These visits also allowed for participant observation and would usually take place on weekday evenings and lasting between one and two hours. To ensure that individuals beyond the reach of government-provided services were reached, religious groups and university Islamic societies were also asked to provide respondents. Emphasis was placed upon making initial contact with interviewees and developing a rapport with them prior to an interview taking place.

Whilst this thesis investigates young Muslim identity from the bottom-up, this focus is matched by a view from the top-down focussing on the politicisation of Muslim identity by governmental institutions. Data relating to counter-terror strategies relating to young Muslims was obtained principally through 13 in-depth interviews with policy-makers and practitioners. But information was also gathered through numerous local-authority and third-sector events and conferences related to the Prevent agenda. Twice I participated in Prevent-funded residential courses for young Muslim men, which took place over four days in August in both 2009 and 2010 (see Chapter 6.5). The interviews with policy-makers (including Muslims) were very different in nature to the walked interviews and participant observation with young participants. Richards (1996) and Cochrane (1997) both emphasise the importance of making the ‘right impression’ and gaining trust of local elites in obtaining rich data from those holding office or a position of responsibility or power. Interviews with these policy-makers were thus conducted generally in workplace and office settings, and were much more structured to elicit data relating to specific sets of policies and practices.

Finally, in exploring the impact of Project Champion on the city (see Chapter 7) I attended four public meetings on the scheme, four meetings of organisers of protests against the scheme, and on eight

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occasions I accompanied protestors manning stalls where petitions against the scheme were being signed; this participant observation allowed me to gauge how Muslims in particular were reacting to the scheme once knowledge of its existence had become public. In analysing government approaches to young Muslims in a counter-terror context a number of policy documents were used, including some relating to Project Champion that were obtained following Freedom of Information requests. Field-notes were kept to ensure that pertinent conversations and happenings during meetings, events and field-visits would be recorded.

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