I considered the aim of completing 30 interviews in approximately three months realistic due to my previous extensive experience in conducting qualitative research with Muslim, and otherwise marginalised, groups of women in a variety of settings since 2007 (Khan et al. 2012; Scourfield et al. 2013; Chimba et al. 2012). On reflection, the original aim may have been overly optimistic. The fieldwork process was longer than expected and it forced me to diversify my approaches to engagement. I had the opportunity therefore to have many informal conversations about my project, and to participate in a range of social activities with Pakistani women in Mohallaton. This resulted in a far richer understanding of community life in Mohallaton.
At the outset of fieldwork, I had a single contact in Mohallaton. This was a member of my mother’s kinship network who lives in the area. Making contact with this distant aunt resulted in meeting an influential gatekeeper, Khalida, who introduced me to the
coordinator of a local community group for EM women. I was very aware that a single contact would not generate the number of required interviews within the short time-scale. Snowballing from a single contact might also lead to homogeneity in the socio-economic or socio-demographic characteristics of respondents. Throughout the research process I used a variety of methods to meet potential research participants including organisation-level access to community groups and activities; snowballing;
and more opportunistic engagement in community spaces. There was no distinct phase of moving from one method of engagement to another, instead they overlapped as I responded to the realities of being in the field.
The first stage in becoming familiar with Mohallaton began with spending time in the area, looking into shops, chatting to shop-owners, leaving copies of a project leaflet (see Appendix 1) and looking at advertisements and posters for local community groups. It was on that first trip that I realised that my professional ‘uniform’ of jeans with a smart top made me stand out in the area so I bought, and immediately changed into, a long kurta (ethnic shirt).
Contrary to my expectations, I had greater obstacles to securing the participation of economically inactive second-generation women than first-generation. Although these women were happy to engage with me, they were very hesitant to take part in an interview to talk about their views and perspectives. Several interviews were cancelled
118 at very short notice. I attribute this hesitance to a sense of embarrassment because they were economically inactive. Some women said that they worried whether they would be able to provide the ‘correct’ answers to my questions. There was also a nervousness about the nature of questions that would be asked. At the start of one interview I can only describe the interviewee’s look as one of complete terror; Shabana relaxed within the first five minutes of the interview and gave some insightful and rich responses to my questions. By the end of the interview we had built up a good rapport and I asked her what had made her so nervous; she replied that she thought I would ask questions about her intimate relationship with her husband despite having seen the information sheet and signed a consent form (see Appendix 2 and 3)
The two migrant generations had very different social networks with little social or community-level interaction with one another in terms of friendship groups and social activities, despite living in the same area and regardless of age. To increase my opportunities to meet second-generation women I identified alternative gatekeeper organisations. For example, I approached a local mosque that appeared to provide facilities and services for women. I was able to obtain the email address of the
chairman of the mosque committee and sent a formal email of introduction along with the project information sheet. My initial email was received positively by the chairman and he told me that he would raise the possibility of my having access to some of the female activities and facilities at the next monthly mosque committee meeting.
When contacting mosque committees, it is important to bear in mind that they are staffed by volunteers who often have full-time jobs. Whilst I was waiting for a response from the mosque committee, a number of women I met offered to give me the contact details for female volunteers at the mosque or asked me to accompany them to mosque-based activities but I decided, rightly, to wait until I had obtained official permission. The level of access and assistance offered to me subsequently was
generous and valuable. It was only in early December that I received confirmation that I could access the mosque and was given the contact details of a female volunteer who would help me to meet potential participants. I attended and participated in a number of activities at the mosque including a coffee morning, exercise class, halaqa and Quran recitation class.
Many of the managers and volunteers at the organisations went above and beyond my expectations in helping me to meet women who met the requirements of my sample and providing access to meeting rooms to conduct interviews, as well as hot lunches and cups of coffee. The gatekeeper organisations or groups included a dars (Islamic Studies class in a private home); various women-only community groups; a
mainstream community centre; a weekly parents coffee morning at a local high school;
119 mosque-based activities; and a toddler playgroup at a local Sure Start centre. I
participated in a range of activities; this was not data collection as such but rather part of my approach to engaging with Pakistani women in the area. Some of these activities included participating in an exercise class; reciting the Quran in a tajweed class;
sweeping up sand and cutting fruit at a mother and toddler group; and making cups of tea for volunteers at a drop-in session at a local community centre.
My dependency on these organisations, however, came with certain conditions and a degree of loss of control over the way in which participants were engaged. This had an impact on how some of the research interviews were conducted and required some adjustment of my personal interview technique and method, therefore affecting the nature of the data collected. My ideal approach would have been to introduce the project to a group of women and then to have collected contact details of those interested to contact them later and arrange an interview. Instead, in one community group the co-ordinator selected the first generation women to be interviewed and the interviews were to be conducted in a meeting room in a local community centre.
Similarly, the high school insisted that I undertook interviews on school premises and not ask the women for their contact details. Researchers don’t always have agency or the ability to take action and can feel helpless and immobilised in the research setting (Henry 2007).
On reflection, I should have spent more time with the co-ordinator to discuss the parameters of engaging respondents and clarified what would be acceptable to both of us. I did raise this with her later and she stated that her control over the process had been to limit the risks to the interviewees. A previous academic researcher had conducted research in private homes and this had caused trouble for the women whose husbands had objected to the presence of a researcher in their homes.
I feel that the group leader selected the participants she felt, in her own words, would give “nice” interviews. I took this to mean interviews that would represent the group and the wider community in a positive way. The women selected were educated and from urban areas of Pakistan. It is unlikely that these first generation women, let alone those from rural origins, would have been as willing to take part without the endorsement of the co-ordinator. Although I lost some control over the situation, her support was invaluable and the potential bias is acknowledged. These women did in fact give accounts which I believe to be critical and reflective in their observations on the community and their own experiences.
The skilful and diplomatic management of difficult situations is an essential skill for a qualitative researcher. For example, I took a short break on the second day of
interviewing at the community centre and returned to the meeting room to find my last
120 interviewee for the day had already arrived. She was dressed in a sari, which was unusual for a Pakistani woman in Mohallaton, and spoke Urdu with a slight accent. This woman, a Muslim woman of Indian heritage who did not live in the Mohallaton, had taken the place of another interviewee. I spent some time trying to explain to her that I only meant to interview Pakistani women, and she spent some time trying to convince me that being Indian was really not that different to being Pakistani.
After she asked when she would get her voucher more than once, I realised that her insistence on taking part was related to the financial incentive. She agreed to the consent procedure and I undertook a brief interview of 10 minutes with her and signed off on her voucher; the resulting audio file was not saved or transcribed. As it was the last of the interviews with the women at the community centre, I did not raise it as an issue with the co-ordinator and can now look back at the episode with some
amusement. As Gilliat-Ray reminds us, data collection can be “uncomfortable, confusing, amusing, and traumatic” (Gilliat-Ray 2010, p.418).
It is important to acknowledge the spatial and temporal parameters of data collection (Hammersley 2016). Locations such as homes and institutions have different socio-cultural and institutional norms and rules on behaviour and performance (Gilliat-Ray 2010). My presumption has always been that the family home would be the most convenient place for women to be interviewed and I have always put forward this option as if I am being particularly accommodating. On reflection, and as a direct result of fieldwork for this project, I now see this was indeed presumptuous and rather selfish.
Access to family homes is another rich source of data in the form of field notes; one is able to observe and note practices and displays of religiosity and other aspects of culture as well as observe social interactions amongst family members and to see everyday life in action. Also, respondents tend to be more relaxed and open within their own home; they are often able to spend more time on the interview and this leads to more in-depth and rich interview experiences. The home is then perhaps the ideal location for data collection for me, but perhaps not best for the women being interviewed.
There are a number of drawbacks for interviewees when they take part in interviews in private homes. For all women, particularly those with young children, making the home presentable for a researcher may be an additional burden on their daily domestic routines. Women who are LAHF might be expected by their family and friends to be at home and therefore may be more likely to be interrupted during the interview. Where a family is workless, discussion of household income is likely to be a sensitive topic and the male partner is more likely to be in the home. Given the high proportion of Pakistani
121 men working unsociable/flexible hours in self-employment, such as catering or taxi-driving, this may also be the case for women with working male partners. Where there is informal work or fraudulent benefits claims, the male partner may be very reluctant for his partner to take part in a research interview.
Had I insisted on undertaking interviews in private family homes, I believe far fewer women would have taken part and there was a potential risk of harm to the participants by disrupting family relations, even if momentarily. I do not know how many of the interviewees told their husbands that they had taken part in the project: certainly none explicitly told me that they had. The interviews were conducted in a location of the respondents’ choice: eleven interviews took place in meeting rooms in community centres and sixteen took places in respondents’ homes.
The initial, three month plan became an intensive fieldwork period of six months, with almost daily trips and frequent cancelled interviews. Persistence and professional conduct were key to eventually obtaining the final sample. For example, a BME umbrella organisation in Manchester gave me the contact details for the manager of a local community centre. I sent an introductory email with details about the project but did not receive a reply. I visited the centre when I saw it was open one day and the manager, who had read the email but had been too busy to reply, spent some time talking to me over a cup of coffee. I was invited back to the community centre to observe activities and engage with second generation young women: two interviews resulted from this contact. Towards the end of the fieldwork in December, I dropped off some small boxes of chocolates to add to the Christmas food parcels that would be sent out from the foodbank which operated from the centre.
I refer to the qualitative phase of the project as fieldwork and not simply qualitative interviewing. When I referred to it as “a qualitative study with ethnographic moments” at a research methods conference for early career researchers it was clear that some of the ethnographers did not approve of this description. Without meaning to disrespect carefully planned ethnographic fieldwork, I feel that this is a useful description of the extent of my engagement in Mohallaton. Observing first hand gave rich insights into the experiences of the women who live there, including everyday experiences that were not spoken about in interviews.
For example, after a day of fieldwork I called into a halal supermarket on the high street in Mohallaton on my way home. As usual, I was not wearing hijab and on that day might have stood out because I was wearing a brightly coloured kurta. The first-generation, young, Pakistani man serving me at the meat counter spoke to me in a sing-song voice and in a manner that can only be described as flirtatious, which I found offensive and inappropriate. He clearly sensed this in my manner when I spoke to him
122 in English and proceeded to serve me in a more subdued way. This experience told me something about the way in which women who do not wear hijab are regarded by some men in Mohallaton and the very public way in which men can comment or behave towards the women around them. It was my ability to speak up, loudly and clearly, in English, and the possession of confidence to express my displeasure, that I was able to immediately assert some authority over the situation. The experience remains an unpleasant and vivid memory. If this behaviour is commonplace, then it might be an effective form of social control over women that was recognised in studies conducted in the 1980s and 1990s (Shaw 1988; 2000; Mohammed 2005a; 2005b).
Fieldnotes on experiences in the field were not treated in the same way as interview data; they were not coded or analysed, but they deepened my knowledge of the social realities of Mohallaton and therefore contributed to the overall analysis. Some
references are made to fieldnotes where they add to description or analysis in the following qualitative findings chapters.