Intersectional Reflexivity and Sociological Empathy: Building Legitimacy in Participatory Research Involving LGBTIQ+ Individuals With a Migration Background

Intersectional Reflexivity, Positionality, and Sociological Empathy

Reflexivity is at the heart of qualitative research. Since feminist studies of the 1970s (Harding, 1986; Hartsock, 1987; Smith, 1987), social scholars have critically assessed the impact of researchers themselves on research. A growing number of qualitative researchers from feminist, critical, postcolonial, and decolonial perspectives have challenged the idea of excluding the self from research, using reflexivity as a methodological tool in their studies (Boer Cueva et al., 2024; D’Arcangelis, 2018). Adopting reflexivity involves acquiring awareness of how the researchers’ influence on the study design, data collection, and analysis shapes findings (Finlay, 2002). Reflexivity emphasizes the importance of researchers’ reflecting on their position and on their relationship with participants with respect to identity, status, and power (Muhammad et al., 2015).

The sociologists Michaela Benson and Karen O’Reilly (2020) argued that “the point of reflexive practice is to continually reflect on and adapt to our own positionality as we become aware of it: it is reflexive and not reflective” (Benson & O’Reilly, 2020, p. 184). Positionality refers to the researchers’ worldview and standpoint, which depend on their position in systems of gender, sexuality, class, race, and the like. Almost four decades ago, feminist standpoint theory called for researchers to reject positivism in favor of an epistemology that values situational knowledge (Haraway, 1988). This knowledge comes from participants’ unique experiences and social position (Harding, 1991; Stacey & Thorne, 1985). Social, cultural, and political contexts shape interpersonal relationships. They also shape qualitative research, which has interpersonal relationships at its heart. Indeed, positionality includes how researchers view themselves and are viewed by others in terms of age, gender, sexuality, class, race, and other social positions, each according to their values and beliefs. Researchers’ positions influence their choice of subject to investigate and methodology, as well as their research results (Savin-Baden & Major, 2013). For qualitative researchers, adopting reflexivity implies developing a consciousness of their own relationships to the research object, to participants, and to the knowledge that is (co)produced (Benson & O’Reilly, 2020).

At the same time, an intersectional approach is widely used across disciplines, allowing for an exploration of the multidimensionality and complexity of social identities, as well as the broader structure of power and hierarchy in which they are situated (Anthias, 2012). Many sociological studies provide empirical evidence of multiple oppressions, such as sexism, cisgenderism, heterosexism, racism, classism, and ableism (see, e.g., Cappotto and Rinaldi (2016); Cisneros and Gutierrez (2018)). Intersectionality is even advocated as a conceptual framework for expanding the understanding of “the lived experiences of marginalized people” in ways that respect their “expertise and agency as knowledge producers” (Hamilton, 2019, p. 530).

However, few works combine both reflexive and intersectional approaches to show what an intersectional approach can bring to reflexivity (Baz, 2023; Hamilton, 2019; Wheaton & Olive, 2023). The Black feminist Patricia Hamilton (2019) argued that a key objective is to draw attention to the way power operates in the research process from the point of view of both participants and researchers. She recommends what she calls “intersectional reflexivity” as a tool for researchers to interrogate their positionality and to capture how it informs each aspect and stage of the research process. The concept of intersectional reflexivity has also been taken up by the feminists Belinda Wheaton and Rebecca Olive (2023), who advocated for “researching with responsibility” (Ratna, 2018, p. 197). Indeed, they claimed that “bringing reflexivity into conversation with debates about our shifting positionalities and subjectivities helped us navigate a process that strives to be responsible, engaged, collaborative, ethical, and anti-colonial” (Wheaton & Olive, 2023, p. 4).

Sociological empathy is a concept that sheds light on a key feature of the social world: intersubjectivity. What one thinks and feels is connected to what others think and feel (Ruiz-Junco, 2021). Sociological empathy is a multidimensional concept that sociologists have studied for many years. Charles Cooley (1992, p. 136) defined empathy as “entering into and sharing the minds of others” (p. 136). He identified three conceptual dimensions of empathy—imaginative, interactional, and purposive—which led him to theorize three means of empathy: knowing, intersubjective understanding, and purposive social action (Ruiz-Junco, 2021). Empathizing is an interactional process through which “the empathizer imagines and shares the thoughts and feelings of the empathy recipient,” whereas sharing is “an interpretive process by which the empathizer evokes in themselves similar thoughts and feelings to the recipient’s, for the purpose of understanding the recipient” (Ruiz-Junco, 2017, p. 419).

Arlie Hochschield (2016) pointed out the existence of empathy rules, which are socially learned expectations of empathy that people internalize. If the rules vary according to context, they always shape the process of empathizing. Indeed, doing empathy requires identifying situations that deserve empathy, rightful empathizers, and proper empathy recipients (Ruiz-Junco, 2017).

Moving Beyond the Insider–Outsider Approach to Reflexivity

In research contexts, insider–outsider approaches to reflexivity tend to be static and fixed, meaning that researchers are either insiders or outsiders and their position does not change throughout the study. These approaches are largely contested in methodological literature, particularly by contemporary feminist scholars, who advocate for a more nuanced view of the boundaries between insider and outsider researcher (Baz, 2023; Imray Papineau, 2023; Paechter, 2012). To move beyond the simplistic debate of insider or outsider, we focus here on the multiple positions and social identities of the three researchers involved in fieldwork for the InMIND participatory research in relation to their gender, sexuality, migration background, race, age, and professional status. At the time of the fieldwork, two of them self-identified as cisgender women, one as nonbinary ¹ ; two as heterosexual; and one as queer. No one had a migration experience, but one person came from a non-French-speaking cultural background; all three researchers self-identified as white. Two researchers were in their early fifties and held the position of senior researcher, one was in her early thirties and held the position of junior researcher, one researcher also worked in the field as a legal adviser for LGBTQIA+ migrants, and another volunteered with unaccompanied minors and young adult migrants.

The intersection of these positions and social identities shaped the way each researcher understood and engaged with the research, including their knowledge, values, perspectives, approaches, and research practices. As researchers, each one occupied multiple identities that were fluid and contextually situated. This shows that positionalities—or where one is situated in relation to various social identities and positions—are numerous and changing over time. They must be seen as “ever moving, changing, adapting, nuanced, negotiated and socially constructed way[s] of doing research” (Baz, 2023, p. 14). Reflecting on those positionalities—on how researchers’ gender, sexual, racial, class, and other self-identifications, as well as their lived experiences and privileges, influence empirical data collection and analysis—is at the heart of the InMIND participatory research. As a practice, researchers constantly reflect on their positionalities throughout each stage of the research. They engage in what Michaela Benson and Karen O’Reilly (Benson & O’Reilly, 2020) have referred to as a collaborative, iterative, and creative reflexive practice, one embedded in an intersectional approach.

This engagement is in line with both feminist methodology on positionalities (Haraway, 1988) and constructivist grounded theory (CGT), developed by Kathy Charmaz (2006) and adopted in the InMIND research. Although CGT does focus on conceptual development, its central emphasis is on critical reflexivity, interpretation, and context; the researcher–participant relationship; and the co-construction of knowledge with participants (Charmaz, 2019). CGT researchers are encouraged to consider their experiences and positions as researchers, and how those subjectivities might inform data collection (Charmaz, 2016). Many scholars, such as Elaine Keane (2022) translated Kathy Charmaz’s constructivist principles into reflexive grounded theory methodological practice, focusing particularly on issues of researcher positionalities, participant involvement, and researcher self-disclosure.

During the fieldwork for the InMIND research, the day before each interview, researchers considered how they would introduce themselves to the participant, what they would be prepared to share about their identities and experiences, and how they would approach the interview. Feminist methodologies advocate self-disclosure to place the researcher and researched on more equal footing (Bhopal, 2010). This is achieved by engaging in “‘reciprocal exposure,’ as the process of opening up one self when asking others to do the same” (Bolognani, 2007, p. 290). However, self-disclosure raises the question of data protection for the researcher’s identities and experiences, as the following field note extract shows:

I also reflect on my positioning. At the start of the interview, we ask participants to introduce themselves. It’s about understanding how they situate themselves, in relation to the minoritized identities explored in the research. To situate my position as a researcher, and to create a dialogue, I plan to introduce myself, explaining where and how I am situated. However, how far do I position myself? What information do I give about my own minority background? The interview isn’t anonymous for me. I can hardly ask the participants to keep this information confidential without putting them in an inappropriate role, which is not theirs in this encounter. (Field notes, Researcher 3, 19.03.2023).

These reflections and questions are crucial for those researchers with minoritized gender and/or sexual identities, as they might be torn between revealing their identities to create a close bond with participants and not revealing their identities in order to protect themselves. Communication on positionality has benefits such as establishing connection and credibility, or creating space to challenge structures of oppression, but it also creates burdens, especially for minoritized researchers, resulting in discomfort, anxiety, and fear of jeopardizing one’s anonymity (Massoud, 2022).

Depending on whether researchers share their gender and sexual identities, participants might perceive them as insiders or outsiders. However, notably, nobody is absolutely and irrevocably insider or outsider. This illustrates the shifting nature (Bashir, 2023) or fluidity (Britton, 2020) of the insider–outsider position across the research, which can depend on what researchers want to share about themselves during each interview.

When assuming an insider position based on gender and/or sexual minoritized identities (e.g., presenting as LGBTIQ+), researchers expect to increase complicity with participants. Complicity and closeness can also be achieved in other ways. For instance, researchers found that when participants were recruited with the snowball technique or through the expert group, closeness emerged from the first contact:

We had several phone calls before the interview. Fej struck me as a warm-hearted person right from the start. He was on first-name terms with me and spoke to me as if we were already on friendly ground. I realized that for contacts made via the partner group’s contact persons, this friendly ground is already marked out. (…) When he arrives, I am with the interpreter outside the building. He immediately opens his arms to me, and we hug. The interpreter asks me: “Do you know each other? No, we don’t!” From the outset, Fej set the scene for a very sweet and friendly exchange. (Field notes, Researcher 3, 08.05.2023) ²

However, focusing on an insider position based on gender and/or sexual identity should not obscure the fact that each researcher occupies a position that is at once outsider and insider (Dhoest, 2015), and there is a continuum of insider–outsider positions (Fenge et al., 2019): Researchers may perceive themselves more or less insider or outsider, depending on both the identities they take into consideration (among the multiple aspects of their identity) and the participants’ identities. Moreover, participants might perceive researchers as more or less insider or outsider according to the identities that they decide to share or enact during the interviews, as well as the identities that participants assign to researchers (e.g., race, based on skin color). Because identities are complex and multifaceted, it is not easy to predict how participants will perceive researchers and position themselves during interviews (Ryan et al., 2010).

For instance, researchers might perceive themselves as insiders with respect to age category, as is the case here for the junior researcher:

I soon spot Elie in the cafeteria, where we have arranged to meet. She is a little shorter than me, but not by much. We look about the same age. I think it also gives us a kind of closeness. It is as if, because of our size and age, there is no hierarchy between us. We are on first-name terms at her suggestion. (Field notes, Researcher 2, 27.03.2023)

With another female participant, the same researcher had the impression that her insider status based on gender was reinforced by the fact that she shared the same (artificial) hair color as the participant. This sharing gave her the impression of being immediately connected to the participant, even though she did not share other aspects of identity, such as sexual identity or race, with her:

When I see her in the courtyard where we have arranged to meet, I immediately want to smile. Her hair is the same color as mine! She’s just colored her hair. I know it, because she messaged me that she would be late because of it. The contact is easy. It’s a kind of personality where I feel right at home. I don’t know why, but I don’t feel judged at all, and that gives me confidence. I feel at ease inside. (Field notes, Researcher 2, 17.04.2023)

This position shows that there is a certain space “in between” (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009) that allows researchers to be insider and outsider at once rather than insider or outsider. This is also the case when researchers share life experiences with the participants, such as motherhood, addiction, psychotherapy, illness, bereavement, or even common interests, such as cats for a participant with two cats who welcomed a researcher into his home for the interview. Indeed, researchers bring their own life experiences and biographies to their research (Baz, 2023; Britton, 2020). For example, motherhood played a crucial role in the dynamic of one interview. It created complicity, because both researcher and participant considered that shared experience as central in their lives:

We walk up to the 3rd floor together. Osser seems at ease and so does her child (aged 1 year). We talk about his development, which I compared to that of my children. The experience of motherhood binds us together, and I feel that it is already creating a bond between us. (…) During the interview, the child cries, and I take him in my arms. Osser tells me that he usually doesn’t stay with people that he doesn’t know: “He likes you! Because usually he refuses people.” (Field notes, Researcher 1, 03.04.2023)

This reflection about the insider–outsider position shows that each research encounter involves multiple positionalities, based on the diverse, fluid identities that researchers and participants identify in themselves and attribute to each other (Ryan, 2015). It also allows for “identity mapping” (Joseph et al., 2021) of both researcher and participant, which is particularly useful in participatory research with participants who have multiple and intersectional minoritized identities. Indeed, in such research, it is of particular importance to analyze how identities meet in the context of the interview and how they influence both the dynamics of the interview and the results.

Building Safety in a Vulnerable Context

We assume that for participants to feel empathy, they must first feel safe. This is particularly important when participants face intersectional vulnerabilities (Mellini et al., 2024), as in the InMIND research. Vulnerabilities stem from the overlapping of their minoritized gender identities, sex characteristics and/or sexual orientations, migration background, and related legal and socioeconomic status in Switzerland, race, and other characteristics or experiences, such as disability or illness. For this reason, we have paid a lot of attention to building safety with all participants according to the needs and wishes of each one. We discussed safety issues in the expert group and identified two dimensions that are crucial in interviews: spaces and interactions. Like any actions occurring in everyday life, interviews take place in a frame and involve two actors who engage in performances (Goffman, 1959). For researchers, these performances include displaying social empathy through words, silence, bodily gestures, and expressions.

Regarding the spaces where the interviews took place, participants could choose the place they preferred to be interviewed. On the first contact with each of them, we clarified that it was important to us that they chose a place where they felt comfortable and safe. In the end, the interviews were conducted in five categories of spaces: in the research team’s office (21), at the participants’ home (8), in a public space (park or café) (3), in an LGBTIQ+ and migration nongovernmental organization (NGO) where Researcher 3 was working (2), and at the studio of an artists’ collective (1).

Before scheduling the first interview in the research team’s office, we took care to create a welcoming space, as suggested by the LGBTIQ+ migrants involved in the expert group. We placed a small table and two chairs in a corner of the office, close to two bay windows overlooking the forest. In front of the windows, we placed several pots with plants, and we offered participants tea, coffee, and biscuits. The two chairs were arranged at angles, to avoid a frontal gaze. When participants entered the office, they could decide where to sit, facing or facing away from the front door. We also made sure to put a note on the door indicating that we were not to be disturbed. Finally, whenever possible, interview days were scheduled when the offices next door were not in use.

For one interviewee, we had to provide additional safety guarantees beyond the research office where the interview took place. A woman from the Middle East told us that it was important for her not to meet men of some specific origins around the office, because of her previous bad experiences:

Ery asks me through the interpreter if there will be any Arab men. She wants to make sure there won’t be. I tell her that no, there won’t be any Arab men, at least not where we’re going, or anyone else for that matter. Once we arrive, I offer her a cup of coffee, we chat very cordially, and I can feel Ery relaxing. However, just before we start, she seems to hesitate. She stresses that she doesn’t want her name to be circulated. She says everyone in [small city where she is living] knows everyone else. I explain to her about confidentiality and anonymity in research. I’ll pay particular attention to this aspect in the transcription, which I’ll do myself. (Field notes, Researcher 3, 09.06.2024)

This field note also reminds us that creating safer spaces is an ongoing effort. There is no such thing as a completely safe space, especially from an intersectional perspective. As researchers, it is important to keep in mind this dynamic and complex aspect of the process of creating safer spaces, which sometimes works and sometimes does not. Furthermore, it is the act of making these flaws visible that also makes research reflexive.

For the interviews that took place at interviewees’ homes, we did not have to worry about safety because the interviewees were either living alone or, at our request, had made sure that no one was home at the time of the interview. In contrast, when interviews took place in a public space, we were more concerned with safety, especially because we would be talking about intimate matters in a public place:

At the start of the interview, I wondered whether it would be a problem for us to be sitting in a park, in a public space, given that we’re talking about very intimate things. But she didn’t seem to mind (in fact, it was she who suggested the park and the bench). She spoke in a very relaxed way, with lots of gestures, almost theatrical at times, I thought. She has a very strong character and makes no apologies for who she is. She said so several times during the interview. (Field notes, Researcher 2, 29.06.2023)

Unlike these interviews, the two that occurred in an LGBTIQ+ and migration NGO where Researcher 3 was working did not raise any issues regarding safety. Difficulties instead arose from the fact that the researcher embodies several roles that the physical location of the interview made even more visible: researcher, legal adviser, and activist.

I feel strange doing this interview at [NGO name]. This time, I’m in danger of finding myself wearing my [NGO name] hat far too prominently and finding it even harder to draw the line between my different roles. (…) This brings me back to the way in which I situate myself in research, to assume and act on the fact that I have this anchoring of legal advice, and accompaniment of LGBTIQ+ migrants and refugees in the field. That’s even where I’m starting from to arrive at this research. I can’t close this door but rather try to see how I can manage the way it communicates with the research. (Field notes, Researcher 3, 23.05.2023)

As we saw in the previous section, empathy rules vary according to context (Ruiz-Junco, 2017), and in this case, the researcher’s position at the intersection of three roles created different ways of performing empathy and the need to emphasize sociological empathy.

Regarding interactions—the second crucial dimension of interview safety—three issues must be considered. First, in the first contact, each participant was asked to indicate who they would like to be interviewed by so that they could feel safe and comfortable, especially regarding gender, sexual orientation, and migration background. For instance, a participant who self-identified as nonbinary expressed that they did not want to be interviewed by a cisgender man. During another interview with a participant who self-identified as a trans woman, the researcher’s reflexivity led her to remark that, in this context, her female gender identity and expression was an asset for showing empathy to this woman, who said she did “not like men”:

During the interview, I gradually began to think that it might be an advantage for me to be a woman in this talk (for once, my gender could possibly be an asset… at least not a hindrance, let’s say). I was thinking this because she explained several times that she does not like men at all, and even that it would be fine with her if there were only women on earth. She seemed to have a mixture of anger and disgust towards men and/or masculinity. (Field notes, Researcher 2, 23.05.2023)

The second issue is physical positions in the space or room during interviews. Researchers showed constant reflexivity on this point before each interview. They thought about positioning themselves in front of the interviewee, diagonally, or side by side. They also evaluated changing the position during the interview when they felt discomfort with the interviewee. This “feeling with” (Schwalbe, 2008) is considered an expression of sociological empathy:

She makes herself something to eat, a salad, and we resume the interview at the table. She eats at the same time. Whereas before, on the sofa, we were each at the point of an L (so not face to face), here we are face to face and I realize that I like this arrangement a little less. I find it more intrusive. I turn around a little. I look less at her, so as not to create an impression of interrogation. (Field notes, Researcher 2, 25.05.2023)

Physical positions during the interview strongly influence eye contact or avoidance of it, which raises questions about the hierarchical relationship between participant and researcher, given their multiple and intersectional positions (e.g., being a white, heterosexual, cisgender, middle-class researcher in front of a Black, queer, trans, working-class participant):

We’re doing the interview sitting in a park. We’re side by side, looking in front of us. When I ask him questions, I sometimes turn towards him, but not always. I have the impression that the fact that we don’t necessarily look at each other, accompanied by the silences, gives us the impression that we’re both thinking things through, and makes the interview less inquisitive. And less hierarchical, with one person investigating and the other recounting his life. I think it works well. He’s not looking at me either. (Field notes, Researcher 2, 19.07.2023)

Finally, the third issue concerns the ways of addressing interviewees and asking questions. On the first contact, we took care to ask each participant how they wanted us to address them (using which pronouns), and we repeated this every time we communicated, as we assumed that gender identity might have changed with time. The team also worked on the questions in the interview guide for a long time. After each interview, we all debriefed on how to handle interviews, how to formulate questions, and how to follow up with interviewees.

Building Trust and Complicity in Challenging Situations

Every scholar doing qualitative interviews knows that building trust is crucial to collecting in-depth data (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2015). This also applies to participatory research (Bussu et al., 2020). Yet building trust is a challenging process, given the co-construction of power relations and their (re)production during interviews. For this reason, it is necessary to adopt reflexivity, in order to reflect on how privilege stemming from gender, sexuality, race, and class operates between the researcher and the participant in the research context (Knott et al., 2022).

Reciprocal sharing, showing empathy, and allowing respondents sufficient time to respond and build rapport between interviewer and interviewee can help build trust. As already discussed, to reduce the hierarchy between interviewer and participant, which can limit the emergence of trust, researchers often share personal stories (Dickson-Swift et al., 2007). Showing sociological empathy can support the same goal. However, depending on the social characteristics of both researcher and participant, empathy over other aspects can be deployed, such as queer empathy, activist empathy, or maternal empathy, as reported in the following field note:

I felt a certain complicity with him, despite all the differences that separate us: gender, age, race, socioeconomic status, to name but a few. At no time did I feel that he was questioning my ability to understand his experience… I think he must have felt my empathy for him, that of a sociologist, but also that of a mother watching a child alone in the face of a world that is too unfair and cruel. Why didn’t anyone at school react to the brutality perpetrated on him by his father? Why didn’t the police listen to the child’s voice, let alone believe it? “They didn’t listen to me, they didn’t listen to me at all,” Ved insists. And in my head, these “they didn’t listen to me at all” echo as many “Why? Why? Why?” And the more these echoes resound in my head, the more my sociological empathy for Ved grows. (Field notes, Researcher 1, 11.04.2023)

Establishing an interview schedule that takes into consideration the time needed before and after each interview and respects everyone’s speaking time can help build trust. The average length of our interviews was 2.5 hours, and the longest ones lasted more than 4 hours, so the result is that we often spent half a day with participants. That time investment led us to believe that respondents felt comfortable with us and trusted us.

Nevertheless, in the InMIND research, trust building was particularly challenging in three types of interviews: interviews with multiply marginalized participants, interviews with interpreters, and interviews with queer activists.