Biographical Entanglements,Self-Reflexivity,and Transnational Knowledge Production

Introduction

Globalization and transnationalization have challenged not only societies but also research processes. These processes have forced researchers to adjust and refocus their research designs in accordance with changing social realities that are increasingly going beyond the nation-state. This has led to a revision of conventional methodological tools and to the development of new ones, in order to research social phenomena that reach beyond the nation-state frame of reference. Consequently, these methodological developments have been considered helpful in overcoming the “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2003) that frames social-scientific research and its methodological devices (see Amelina, Faist, & Nergiz, 2012; Amelina, Faist, Nergiz, & Glick Schiller, 2012; Burawoy et al., 2000; Falzon, 2009; Köngeter & Wolff, 2012; Marcus, 1995; Molyneux, 2001; Ruokonen-Engler & Siouti, 2013; Zsuza & O’Riain, 2002).

As scholars educated in qualitative interpretative methods and especially in biographical methods, we have been working with a narrative research approach that puts the emphasis on the emergence of the themes and topics during the qualitative research process. This research approach, which is strongly influenced by grounded theory, avoids confronting the empirical material with predefined categories and classifications and is open for the emergence of the new perspectives out of the data (see Apitzsch & Inowlocki, 2000; Apitzsch & Siouti, 2007). Our own research on transnational migration and our training of students in qualitative methods have, however, sensitized us to the need for epistemological and methodological reflection of the question of emergence in a qualitative research process. The urgency of this question arose in the context of the study of transnational social phenomena that extend beyond nation-state borders, such as transnational migration. Considering the fact that knowledge production processes are constructions that involve collective generations of meaning that are always shaped by conventions of language, discourses, and social processes, the question that we were faced with was how the emergence takes place in transnational social fields. How do these fields emerge? How can we get access to these fields? These epistemological questions led us to look more carefully at the role of the researcher in the field of transnational research and to ask how the researcher contributes to the construction of a transnational research field and to transnational knowledge production about phenomena beyond nation-state borders (Ruokonen-Engler & Siouti, 2010, 2013). We realized that explicit disclosure of the role of the researcher was not only of epistemological but also of methodological importance, because it had remained very undeveloped in the field of transnational studies, whereas the role of the researcher has been widely discussed in the field of qualitative research methods. By combining the biographical research approach with discussions on the role of the researcher in qualitative research, this article addresses the question of how to tackle emergence in transnational research fields. As we go on to discuss, methodologically guided, analytical reflection of the role of the researcher in different phases of a research process can provide a helpful tool for understanding how the reflection of the biographical entanglements of the researcher can function as a heuristic part of the emergence of the research data in a qualitative research process. Our focus here is on qualitative transnational research, but the question of emergence is of epistemological and methodological interest for qualitative research in general. We develop our argument by considering first the challenges that the critique of “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2003) poses to qualitative inquiry. Second, we suggest “biographical reflexivity” as a theoretical and methodological concept that can help us to understand the central role of the researcher as a participant in the construction of the research field and in the (re)construction of the phenomena under investigation. Consequently, we argue for the importance of incorporating the analytical step of “doing biographical reflexivity” (Ruokonen-Engler & Siouti, 2013) in a qualitative research process and propose a reflexive narration scheme as a methodological tool that makes possible the analytical reflection of the researcher’s biographical entanglements.

The Challenge of Methodological Nationalism for Qualitative Research

The challenge that transnational research poses to qualitative methods has been articulated by Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller (2003). Wimmer and Glick Schiller pointed out in their critique that social-scientific research has traditionally been framed by national borders and nation-state paradigms as natural and normative frames of the research; they called this kind of framing “methodological nationalism” (2003). For Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2003, pp. 577-578), there exist three variants of methodological nationalism: (a) ignorance or disregarding of the fundamental importance of nationalism for modern societies, (b) the naturalization of the nation-state as a given frame of the research that delimits and defines the unit of analysis, and (c) the territorial limitation that confines the study of social processes to the political and geographic boundaries of a particular nation-state. When we look at different social phenomena in the age of globalization, transnationalization, and increasing mobility and migration extending across different geographical spaces, the critique of Wimmer and Glick Schiller is undoubtly justified”. As the research done so far shows, mono-national, nation-state research perspectives cannot adequately capture trans-national phenomena like increasing mobility, complex migration processes, multiple belongings, and the interconnectedness of people beyond nation-states. This poses a challenge for social-scientific research, because the spatial spanning of social phenomena beyond the nation-state frame of reference and the intersections and interconnectedness of the local and the global demand reflection and possible re-consideration of the epistemological, theoretical, and also methodological frames of the research. The critique formulated by Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2003) of the nation-state framing of theoretical and methodological approaches in the social sciences has indeed led to a questioning of common methodological premises and fieldwork practices and to the development of new methodological approaches in the field of transnational qualitative research (see above). Amelina and Faist (2012, p. 1711) see mobile methods and self-reflection of the researcher’s positionality as possible methodological tools to overcome the trap of methodological nationalism in research designs. In addition, qualitative ethnographical research traditions, the methodological strategies of multi-sited ethnography (Falzon, 2009; Marcus, 1995), and global ethnography (Burawoy et al., 2000; Molyneux, 2001; Zsuza & O’Riain, 2002) have been developed and used to overcome the methodological nationalism of the research process. These approaches have been applied in research on ethnographical field observation and transnational practices. The concept of multi-sited ethnography has been introduced as a means to follow people, connections, associations, and relationships across space (Falzon, 2009). Furthermore, the biographical research approach that consists of phenomenological reconstruction of life stories has been introduced as a tool to access the emergence of transnational social phenomena (Lutz, 2011, p. 350). The transnational biographical approach has relied on the concept of biography, both as a theoretical and a methodological tool for investigating initially invisible structures of transnational migration spaces as “embodied experiences” (Ruokonen-Engler, 2012a; Ruokonen-Engler & Siouti, 2010). The biographical approach considers biographical narrations as a way to get access to the constitution and construction of social fields, which can be reconstructed with the help of the method of narrative interviewing (see Rosenthal, 1993, 2004; Schütze, 1977, 1983). In the field of transnational migration studies, the biographical approach is particularly well suited to empirical investigations of transnational migration processes, because it offers a narrative way to reconstruct diversity, complexity, and the transformational character of transmigration phenomena with the help of biographical analysis (Apitzsch & Siouti, 2007; Siouti, 2013). Method-ologically, the biographical approach is framed by the logics of abductive reasoning and grounded theory, as well as by a reconstructive and self-reflexive logic in the process of data interpretation and analysis. It proceeds in a way that avoids the confrontation of the empirical material with predefined categories and classifications (see Apitzsch & Inowlocki, 2000; Apitzsch & Siouti, 2007). Moreover, the importance of a self-reflexive research approach that theoretically discusses the role of the researchers in transnational social fields has been underlined (Amelina & Faist, 2012, p. 1716). The methodological challenge, however, lies in the question of how and with which methods the self-reflection process can be included in a research process.

The Role of the Researcher in the Field of Transnational Knowledge Production

It can be argued that the above-mentioned epistemological and methodological challenges posed by the globalization and transnationalization of social worlds seem to be in accordance with the constructivist and reflexive turn in the social sciences in general, as well as with its influence on methodological developments in qualitative research (see, for instance, Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009). The reflexive turn has forced researchers to question and reconsider the theoretical and methodological premises and approaches that have been used in explaining social phenomena from a sociological perspective. Even though the importance of the sociological question of “knowing what” cannot and should not be denied, the reflexive turn has underlined the importance of taking a closer look at the research process itself and has demanded answers to the question of “knowing how.” This has pushed sociological knowledge production processes and ways of scientific discovery into the foreground and forced researchers to scrutinize not only the epistemological grounding but also the methodological premises and the research methods that have been employed and, finally, to reflect on the researcher’s role in the research process (see May, 2002).

Despite the obvious need for reflexive research and the problematization of the role of the researcher in a qualitative research process, historically the role of the researcher in a sociological research process has long been discussed from a positivist scientific perspective that problematizes the influence of the subjectivity of the researcher on the process. It can even be argued that the ideal of mainstream scientific research has relied on a positivist scientific method:

Positivism’s model of inquiry is based on logic and empiricism. It holds out a specific epistemology of knowing—that truth lies “out there” in the social reality waiting to be discovered, if only the scientist is “objective” and “value free” in the pursuit of knowledge building. (Nagy Hesse-Biber, 2012, p. 8)

Theoretical developments like the idea of the social construction of knowledge, the influence of ethnographic approaches, feminist theory, post-structuralism, and post-colonialism have forged the reflexive turn in the social sciences by destabilizing the idea of “objectivity” of scientific knowledge-production processes and have forced scholars to reconsider the influence of the researcher on a research process, instead of defending the illusion of objective knowledge and knowledge production processes as something unaffected by the researcher her- or himself. Instead, knowledge production processes and knowledge claims should be seen as contextualized and situated, as Donna Haraway (1988) has argued: “Feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subjects and objects. It allows us to become answerable for what we learn how to see” (p. 583). Feminist objectivity thus is an attempt to reformulate a new concept of scientific objectivity that does not, like the traditional notion of objectivity, exclude the role of the researcher’s experiences, biases, emotions, values, and so forth, in a research process but sees these as an integral part of knowledge claims. If we look now at the phenomenological tradition of biographical research, it can be argued that the question of subjectivity, reflexivity, and the explication of the personal involvement with the research topic “why do I do what I do” (Langer, 2009) has seldom been made explicitly visible. However, the importance of this question was articulated in the 1990s when Liz Stanley (1992) called for the inclusion of an “intellectual autobiography” of the researcher in feminist biographical work. Altogether the role of the researcher has been theoretically and methodologically reflected and worked out in greater depth in, for example, interdisciplinary gender studies, cultural anthropology, post-colonial approaches, and lately also in the field of autoethnography. Furthermore, the aspects of reflexivity and knowledge production have been discussed in greater depth in feminist standpoint theories (Harding, 1993; Hartsock, 1983), social psychology (Breuer, 2003; Kuehner, 2012; Langer, 2009; Muckel, 1996), sociology (May, 2002) and in the ethnographical research tradition in relation to the topic of the researcher’s positionality, a development that has been influenced by the “writing culture” debate in cultural anthropology (Clifford & Marcus, 1986). It can even be argued that transnational research still has much to learn from the reflective qualitative research. However, there have been some attempts to discuss the role of the researcher in relation to the researched as boundary (re)drawing, in the context of multiple and changing positionalities and power relations in transnational research fields (see Shinozaki, 2012; also Tuider, 2011). The epistemological question of how the researcher’s own biographical experiences influence the research process as well as the knowledge production process has been theoretically as well as methodologically under-valorized. This is the point we want to focus on in the following.

We argue that reflection of the role of the researcher is very important in the field of transnational studies, because from the perspective of social constructionism, the role of the researcher in (re)constructing transnational research fields is extremely relevant. Even though many researchers active in this field have their own biographical experiences and entanglements with the research topic, this implicit knowledge is seldom openly articulated or methodologically integrated in the research process. On the basis of our research and teaching experience, we suggest that this tacit, implicit knowledge needs to come under scrutiny, as it can be seen as an important and productive part of knowledge-production processes in transnational research fields. This is especially important in the field of transnational studies, where the researcher’s own biographical entanglements seem to play a central role both in relation to the emergence of the research topic and in access to and construction of the research field, the analysis of data, and the resulting transnational production of social-scientific knowledge. It follows that not only the reflection of the biographical experience and the biographical entanglements of the researcher, but also the development of a methodological device to assist such reflection is of importance. A research method that helps to reflect on the researcher’s own experiences and their influence on the development of the research process can be considered as a resource and a productive part of the co-construction of the research field and its emergence (see Ruokonen-Engler & Siouti, 2010, 2013). The need to explicate the decentered and dispersed paths of knowledge production processes and their eventual connection with the researcher’s own biographical experiences forces the researcher to reflect her or his ethical approach, ideological involvement, and social positionings in regard to the phenomena being investigated. As Shields and Dervin (1993) argue,

we bring to our research our own cultural experiences of race, age, ethnicity, gender, and economic status. Instead of striving toward some unattainable objectivity, we need to investigate what role our own subjectivities bring to our research strategies and results. (p. 67)

However, it can be argued that is not enough to reflect upon the researcher’s own positions and encounters in the research field. We also need to analyze their influence on the theoretical and methodological developments in the research process, for example, by constantly revising the research process and the concepts used and thus explicitly articulating the influence of different positionings on the development of the qualitative research process. Otherwise, the theoretical impetus of scientific reflection does not lead to any methodological consequences. The questions at issue here are how the biographical experiences of the researcher and the encounter with the research topic influence the research conducted and the research perspective adopted, and how the reflection of subjective experience can be considered as a productive method for doing research in transnational research settings.

Reflexive Research in Practice: Doing Biographical Reflexivity

In the social sciences, there are several different conceptions of reflexivity, which are rooted in different theoretical discourses (Lynch, 2000, p. 26). Despite a lack of any common theoretical definition or methodological device of reflexivity, the importance of the reflexive research approach is nowadays widely acknowledged in the field of qualitative social sciences. We consider reflexivity in the sense of “epistemic reflexivity” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 366), which sees reflexivity as a way to develop further the epistemological means of knowledge production. However, we argue that the idea of epistemic reflexivity needs to be broadened and re-conceptualized in such a way that it explicitly includes the dimension of biographical experience and biographical knowledge production. The concept of “biographical reflexivity” opens up a way to reflect methodologically the meaning of (one’s own) entanglements in a research process. The theoretical concept of “biographical reflexivity,” as we use it, is grounded in interpretative social research and in biography theory. It relies on the theoretical concept of “biographicity,” which refers to individuals’ reflexive capabilities in coming to terms with the social world (Alheit, 1995; Alheit & Dausien, 2000). Biographical reflexivity can thus be understood as (a) a recursive organization and interpretation of biographical experiences and (b) part of the cognitive constitution of the biographical self (Dausien, 2002, p. 105). In contrast to psychoanalytical conceptions of reflexivity, which focus on transference and countertransference (see Muckel, 1996) in an interview situation, we want to underline the need to incorporate the concept of biographical reflexivity that is grounded in biography theory. This makes it possible to reflect the meaning of biographical experiences in a research process and to implement the biographical reflection of the researcher’s own experience and involvement as an interactive, relational act in the research process. The question is, however, in which way the biographical reflection of embodied experiences should take place in a qualitative research process.

We argue that the reflection of the researcher’s own involvement and encounters with the topic of the research can be done by formulating sensitizing concepts out of one’s own embodied biographical experiences. Sensitizing concepts enable researchers to see, organize, and understand experience and deepen perception as points of departure for further research (Charmaz, 2003, p. 259). These function as heuristic devices and can be productively included and capitalized in an abductive theory-building and research process. In this way, the reflection of biographical experiences becomes part of an interactive, decentered research process in which embodied biographical knowledge is brought into a dialog with a multivocality of theories and experiences on the one hand and with the emergence of research data on the on the other. But how can this reflection be implemented as part of research practice?

As we have realized in our own research on transnational phenomena, as well as in teaching qualitative methods, a narrative reflexive research practice does not take place automatically. It needs to be induced and methodologically guided. As a result of our research projects and of discussions with students in qualitative research methods, we ended up developing a narration scheme out of the central questions on the biographical entanglements that arose during the research process (see Ruokonen-Engler, 2012b; Siouti, 2013) in order to reflect our own biographical entanglements and make them productive in the research process.

A Biographical Reflection Scheme

We propose the use of a narrative approach as a possibility to critically reflect on the researcher’s own biographical entanglements with the research field and their influence on the emergence of data. We started the narrative questioning of biographical entanglements by posing several questions about the topics under investigation.

We started by inquiring ourselves what personal experiences we had had with the research topic. This initial question aims at inducing a narrative reflection of any experiences and memories that might have influenced, either consciously or unconsciously, the emergence of certain research themes and thus might have a heuristic function in the co-construction and emergence of research themes and fields. These experiences can then be scrutinized: How did I come to study the specific topic in the field? This question evokes the reconstruction of the biographical entanglements with the formulation of research topics, teams, and their scientific justification as a proper field of study. The third question, “What is my relationship to the topic being investigated?” calls for the reconstruction of both biographical entanglements and ethical and critical stances. This question is closely interlinked with the next question, “How did I gain access to the field?” In the field of transnational studies, the question of the constitution and construction of invisible transnational social spaces is of great relevance. The challenge that researchers are confronted with is how transnationalism emerges, and if and how the researcher herself or himself is to be seen as a co-constructer of these research fields. The co-construction of the field is furthermore influenced by the researcher in regard to her or his positions. Therefore, the question “How does my own position (age, gender, class, ethnicity, economic status etc.) influence interaction in the field and the data collection process?” induces self-reflexive narrations that locate research activities in a situated logic. And last but not least, the question “What is my interpretation perspective?” induces a critical, reflective narration of the positionality of the researcher’s own theoretical and methodological devices. These first-person questions forge a biographical reflection process that can lead to a heuristic moment of epistemological significance. Thus, with the help of these questions it is possible to generate narrations and, more importantly, sensitizing research concepts that are the results of the reflections of the biographical entanglements of the researcher. These concepts, developed in a dialog with biographical experiences, function as a starting point of the reflexive research process. By making visible the researcher’s own biographical entanglements with the research topic, it is possible to make visible the relation of the researcher’s attitude to hegemonic discourses, national and ethnocentric perspectives, hierarchies and power relations, and also to conventional analytical categories. At its best, this reflection leads to a research perspective beyond methodological nationalism and contributes to a kind of theory building and knowledge production processes that take into account the influence of globalization and transnationalization on the everyday lives of the subjects.

We argue that this biographical reflection with the proposed narrative questions not only indicates the researcher’s own entanglements at the beginning of the research process but also encourages her or him to continue this reflection in all phases of the research process—in the research field construction and research fieldwork, in conducting biographical narrative interviews, in the reconstructive biographical analysis, and in the research writing process. Even though these different research phases have been listed here separately, they can be seen as intertwined with each other in an abductive research and theory building process. The biographical reflection process should be conducted in an “I-Form,” but it should be written down in field notes that are systematically included in the research interpretation process (on this point, see Strauss & Corbin, 1990) as well as fostered by collective group discussions that take place in formal, trustful, and reciprocal collegial research group sessions (Forschungswerkstatt). These group sessions open up a reflexive space for the oral and written narrations of biographical entanglements and research experiences, guided by the narration scheme. The collective endeavor supports the individual’s biographical reflection process, which in turn profits greatly from the diversity of the research group members. Working in a group of multilingual researchers with transnational experiences and interdisciplinary backgrounds forces everyone involved to reflect on their own positionality and entanglements. This demands reflections on conscious as well as unconscious theoretical assumptions, competing knowledge claims, power relations, and hierarchies in (trans)national research settings. Both the individual and the collective biographical reflection have a methodological meaning for the further development of the research process. They facilitate the generation of sensitizing research concepts that can be seen as a starting point for the biographically grounded reflection of the implicit and explicit limits of the theories, concepts, and methods that are framed by methodological nationalism (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2003). This also makes it possible to work out the influence and the co-construction of the researcher in relation to the emergence of the transnational social fields.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed the critical notion of methodological nationalism and the challenges that it poses to the methods of qualitative research in general and biographical research in transnational settings in particular. We focused on the epistemological question of the meaning of researcher’s subjectivity and her or his biographical experiences and entanglements in a qualitative transnational research process. We underlined the epistemological productivity of the theoretical concept of biographical reflexivity as a methodological tool in the field of transnational biography research. Furthermore, we discussed its analytical promise to make visible the implicit, embodied biographical knowledge that is often a more or less unconscious part of the emergence of a transnational qualitative research process. We argue that methodologically controlled biographical reflection of the researcher’s experiences and her or his personal entanglements with the research topic should be seen as a meaningful part of the constitution of transnational research settings. As a way of integrating biographical reflexivity into research practice, we proposed the use of a narration scheme in all phases of the research process. Through the biographical reflection of one’s own entanglements in the research process, the researcher can widen her or his research perspectives and can thus analytically reflect on her or his biographical experience and positionality in that process. Acknowledging the situated nature of transnational knowledge production makes it possible to reflect on the biographical groundings of sociological imagination and question its ethical, emancipatory, and critical inputs. “Doing biographical reflexivity” is a theoretical and methodological tool that can be used to deal with the trap posed by methodological nationalism in qualitative research. Even though our discussion focused on the biographical reflection and the articulation of the researcher’s own entanglements within the field of developing transnational research fields, biographical reflection with the help of narrative questioning has also proved to be a helpful tool for teaching sociology students to generate sensitizing concepts in qualitative research settings in general.