Estudios norteamericanos

‘When we narrate we both describe and construct who we are: we produce and present identities’ (Temple 2008 p. 3).

‘A position can be defined as a temporarily occupied coherent identity with its own ‘vantage point’ or perspective’. (Taylor 2005 p. 253)

Narrative is described as constructing identities and opening up a plurality of stories (Wood 1981) and I suggested in Chapter Two, that in line with my epistemological position, identity is strategic and positional, rather than essentialist (Hall 2000). Discussions of identity have become even more important because of an increased focus on social and political concerns with the modern world, and within academic discourse, ‘identity’ has gained

conceptual importance in offering explanations of social and cultural changes (Woodward 2002, du Gay 2000). Temple (2008) argues that:

‘In constructing who we are, we also construct who is ‘other’ to us’ (2008 p. 3).

Women’s narrative identity therefore, is their construction and presentation of their experiences and themselves through their narratives. Narrative analysis is suited to looking at the presentation of identity and identity can be

fragmented and sometimes contradictory in nature (Riessman 1990, May 2005)

Both participants and researchers portray themselves as located within their accounts in particular ways. Any narrative identity is inscribed with social characteristics since:

‘People present themselves differently in different settings and the ‘same act’ can have different meanings’ (Temple 2001 p. 71). Narratives do not reveal who we are although there are links between narrative and identity but this does not mean that we are determined solely within language, and, if identity work is practice, it is practice within limits (Temple 2008). Temple (2008), drawing on Ricouer (1988), describes

narrative identity as continuous over time and changing according to context, and further narrative identity illuminates the context in which people are located. In my research I examine how women construct ethnic identity

through nostalgia in relation to the past and the present and how this is linked to place and networks. Such shifts in positionality will be examined in Chapter Seven, both in relation to the narrators and the researcher as their audience.

In Chapter Two, I argued that Anthias’s work on identity is useful to make sense of the epistemological and ontological complexities surrounding the concept of identity. Anthias (2002) argues that identity is a socially meaningful concept, in other words, what it describes has use, but labelling this ‘identity’, is not she feels useful, since it is a fixed way of attempting to understand who

one feels and thinks one is and does not allow for any consideration of the processes which lead to identity formation, or the context in which identities are constructed and performed. However, narrative identity is not fixed and allows for such processes. Holstein and Gubrium (2000) use identity as process in a way that counters Anthias who says that this is not possible and refer to ‘the when, where and how’ rather than ‘the who’ in narratives.

Narratives of location then, are accounts of such processes and the context in which these processes operate, or how we locate ourselves in terms of the many categories that are socially available to us, for example ethnicity. Therefore, using translocational positionality has epistemological value in the context of my work since I do not see identity as being fixed or essentialist and it also opens up scope to explore how ethnic identities are constructed while away from country of origin. I use the term ‘identity’ but as noted in Chapter Two I do not believe that identity is fixed or has an essence since narrative identity is concerned with performance and process. Narrative identity can be understood to be about similarity and difference and it can be multiple and is also relational. Somers (1994) refers to ‘positioning’ to

describe how the narrator establishes her identity or self through narrative practice in relation to the listener and how this also defines the identity of the researcher. Gubrium and Holstein (1998) refer to this process of shifting positionalities as ‘narrative footing’, so the focus is on the identity that the narrator ‘performs’ through the narrative act (Riessman 1993, 2000; Goffman 1969, 1975, 1981). Another way of looking at this is in terms of how

participants negotiate how they want to be known by the stories they develop with their audience (Riessman 2000) and how they in turn choose to cast the audience or how narrators set up subject positions (Day Sclater 1998a) and this impacts on the research process and how the story is told as I discuss throughout Chapters Five, Six and Seven.

I also analyse women’s narrativesas counter narratives (Andrews and

Bamberg 2004) to the Government’s master-narrative of community. I explore this in relation to the presentation of their preferred ethnic identity and again this is useful to examine the links between the micro and the macro since,

‘Narratives are produced in relation to socially available and hegemonic discourses and practices’ (Anthias 2002 p. 511).

Micro-level analysis is a useful point of investigation of macro structures and processes in social change (Stanley and Dampier 2009). I introduced the macro process or ‘big structure’ (Tarim 2009 1.1) of lifestyle migration and community formation in Chapters One and Two and throughout this chapter have discussed the value of narrative analysis in making links between the micro and macro worlds.

Further, I consider how the women’s presentation of ethnic identity is used to persuade me of the ‘rightness’ of their actions or choices. Considering the identities that women want to present allows for an examination of

constructions of belonging to places, periods in history and the social networks that they belong to. I also focus on how women position other characters and me in and through their narratives. To summarise, in my research I explore how women who have moved to Spain from the UK locate themselves in terms of their perceived ethnicity: I also examine how they experience ethnicity and what this concept means to them away from their country of origin. As I indicated above, I only focus on interaction in so far as examining how women position me, themselves and other characters and take account of my own position in relation to the research. I examine identity in narrative in a way that focuses on context, meaning and practice, and how identity is constructed in and through narrative.

Having discussed my epistemological position, located my approach to narrative analysis within the context of the work of others in the field and described how I will use it, I now turn to address the practicalities involved in conducting my research in Spain.