Methods for the Study of Everyday Cohabitation

ABSTRACT

The current issue brings together researchers who have studied the dynamics of cohabitation in various settings, placing emphasis on the ways in which researchers have shown a great deal of creativity in creating or adapting research methods in sometimes very difficult circumstances. In recent years, empirical studies of everyday cohabitation in settings have emerged in different disciplines, however, there has been relatively little research on the methods used to study this phenomenon, especially from a systemic or comparative perspective. This trend in the academic literature led us to ask a number of important questions about how to study cohabitation and why. How can emerging research on public spaces and social relations facilitate new forms of comparative analysis and social inquiry? What are the methodological and conceptual issues that must be addressed in order to understand how new forms of everyday cohabitation are reshaping cities?

The face of globalization today – border disputes, environmental degradation, hostility toward migrants, global pandemics – serves as a reminder that we are living in a time of unprecedented human mobility (Nail 2015). While it might not be easy to fully explain or understand these changes, one thing is clear: large cities across the globe are rapidly becoming more diverse and the study of this diversification requires us to rethink the methodological and conceptual tools at our disposal. The articles presented in this special issue, following from a workshop organized in Montréal, Canada in July 2018, examine the social dynamics of cohabitation in increasingly diverse urban settings. This workshop, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, brought together researchers from multiple fields of the social sciences and humanities in order to discuss the methodological approaches and conceptual tools used to study cohabitation in urban settings characterized by ethnic and racial diversity. The authors would like to thank Pierre Anctil and Gabrielle Desilets for their important contribution to the early stages of this project.

The current issue (which includes several articles that were not presented in Montreal) brings together researchers who have studied the dynamics of cohabitation in various settings, placing emphasis on the ways in which researchers have shown a great deal of creativity in creating or adapting research methods in sometimes very difficult circumstances (for one example, see Saillant et al, this issue). In recent years, empirical studies of everyday cohabitation in settings have emerged in different disciplines, however, there has been relatively little research on the methods used to study this phenomenon, especially from a systemic or comparative perspective. This trend in the academic literature led us to ask a number of important questions about how to study cohabitation and why. How can emerging research on public spaces and social relations facilitate new forms of comparative analysis and social inquiry? What are the methodological and conceptual issues that must be addressed in order to understand how new forms of everyday cohabitation are reshaping cities? While many of these questions remain unanswered, this special issue may open up to future research and inquiry.

The Study of Cohabitation Over Time

Complex migration patterns have become one of the hallmarks of diversity in cities and this process of diversification is setting the stage for new forms of cohabitation and social encounters in increasingly plural urban spaces (Vertovec 2021). Obviously, the study of social relations in the context of urban migration is not new, beginning with the important early work of the Chicago School of critical urban sociology and the Manchester School of social anthropology in Sub-Saharan Africa (Hannerz 1980). Fredrik Barth’s ground-breaking work on ethnicity laid the foundations for much of the work that would follow in the field of ethnic studies (Poutignat and Streiff-Fenart 1995) and the work of Erving Goffman was important in terms of understanding face-to-face interactions in various types of public and institutional settings (Winkin 1981). More recent scholarship has paid attention to the dynamics of cohabitation in the context of increasing super-diversity. In many cases, however, studies are not based on concrete empirical research and they favor statistical data and opinion polls, methodologies which can introduce certain forms of analytical or normative bias (Leloup et al. 2016).

There is a vast literature relating to the question of ‘diversity management’ in various institutional and organizational settings (health and social services, public and higher education, employment in the private sector, etc.) and a great deal has been learned about how institutions and organizations reproduce the values and norms of the majority (Ahmed 2012, Heller 2007). The normative constraints imposed by these different organizational contexts makes it difficult to talk about cohabitation in any real sense since the dominant norms in these settings leave little room for negotiation with regards to what actually constitutes ‘civility’ (Wessendorf 2014) or ‘cohesion’ (Cantle 2005). From this point of view, conducting research in public or semi-public urban spaces represents new possibilities, but also new challenges, given the fact that norms in these settings are more diverse and potentially more fluid. One question that is not resolved is whether this normative pluralism has the potential to introduce methodological or ideological biases.

While some research suggests increasing levels of segregation and social division (see Cantle 2005), other studies have observed new forms of sociability and even solidarity in diverse urban settings (Karner and Parker 2011). Amin has argued that increased diversity in cities does not necessarily lead to social breakdown and calls for a ‘local micropolitics of everyday interaction’ (2002: 960). In a previous special issue of this journal, Amanda Wise and Gregory Noble (2016) focused their attention on the notion of conviviality, placing emphasis on the fact that the ‘everydayness of living together’ carries the potential for transformation, but also for tension and conflict. Paul Gilroy (2004) describes conviviality in plural cities as an ‘ordinary feature of social life in Britain’s urban centers’ that may serve as a corrective to the ills of multiculturalism. Despite ambitious intellectual projects setting out to theorize pluralist notions such as social cohesion (Cantle 2005), convivencia (Gimenez Romero 2017), cosmopolitanism (Noble 2009, 2013), or vivre-ensemble (Saillant 2016), attempts to describe these models have had difficulty demonstrating how the everyday dynamics of cohabitation are related to systemic forms of discrimination and exclusion (Anctil and Robinson 2019, Ray and Preston 2015, Veronis 2015). This is one of the reasons for focusing on the identification and analysis of specific situations (White et al, this issue) and the different forms of public and private discourse that characterize cohabitation in any given setting (Volleberg, this issue).

The analysis of everyday social interactions in rapidly diversifying urban settings represents a number of methodological challenges, since norms in public spaces are necessarily plural and interactions can vary in duration and intensity (see Radice and Vollebergh, this issue). As Weck (2017) suggests, ‘fleeting encounters’ between people of different cultural and social backgrounds who would otherwise never interact can lead to new forms of ‘public familiarity’ (Germain et al 2015) or urban bonds (Blokland 2003). Other studies have focused on the dynamics of everyday contexts such as playgrounds (Germain et al., 2015) and semi-public spaces such as cafés (Watson 2009). These studies look at the nature of relations between strangers who find themselves in various types of shared spaces and situations of ‘public sociability’ (Joseph, 1998) in the context of complex linguistic configurations (Heller 2007) and a civility that increases the range of possibilities for cohabitation, but that is not without conflict (Wood and Landry 2008).

As cities become increasingly diverse, there is also evidence of a diversification of urban public space. This can be seen in the rising number of terraces, street furniture, public art installations and events in public spaces (whether political, charitable, artistic, gastronomical). If this observation is true – and it might be more true in some places than in others – it is safe to say that city-dwellers have more opportunities to encounter one another in public spaces and settings (parks, playgrounds, public markets, street food vendors and ‘food trucks’, street furniture, public terraces and squares, ephemeral installations, and events, etc.), though the particular way they encounter one another has certainly been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic (Rocher and White 2021). The reimagining of public libraries as a ‘third space’ (White and Martel 2021), seems increasingly common and the lines are blurred between public, private and institutional spaces in many urban settings. Obviously, these are not just given characteristics of urban sociality, but instead the result of located practices that are situated in social time and space.

Commentators from various fields have observed that the empirical analysis of interactions in urban public spaces is one of the great challenges for the study of global migration in the years to come (Gilroy 2004, Vertovec 2007, Amin 2012, White 2017, Wood and Landry 2008). Despite increasing interest in inter-disciplinary research, however, the study of inter-group dynamics has suffered from methodological compartmentalisation and the creation of disciplinary silos. Vertovec underlines the ‘need for more and better qualitative studies’ of social dynamics in the context of super-diversity, since ‘social scientists, to say nothing of civil servants, have few accounts of what meaningful interchanges look like, how they are formed, maintained or broken, and how the state or other agencies might promote them’ (2007: 1045). Given the complexity of this phenomenon, it is necessary to bring together scholars with experience in various fields of study and a variety of methodological tools and frameworks. In order to better understand the rapid evolution of this phenomenon, scholars need to focus their attention on the epistemological premises of methodological frameworks and question whether or not these frameworks may be introducing unintended forms of bias (see Samamani this issue). They also need to pay close attention to the different layers of decisions made with regards to methodology – field site, data collection strategies, role and status of participants – in order to ensure that research results are meaningful and also respectful of the complexity of local history (Vodicka and Rishbeth, this issue).

Conceptual and Methodological Issues

The articles that are brought together in this issue raise a number of important questions, beginning with the terminology that should be used to talk about interactions in diverse urban settings. Conviviality has played an increasingly important role in the literature on diversity and migration in cities, especially following attempts of scholars such as Gilroy to use conviviality as a way of explaining inter-group dynamics in neighbourhoods generally portrayed as having problems with racial and ethnic tensions. Indeed, much of the literature on conviviality was intended to counter ‘a tradition of scholarship on race and ethnicity that has always taken friction and racism as the problem and starting point, and the reproduction of relations of social power as the end point’ (Wise and Noble 2016: 425). But scholars interested in the idea of conviviality have also been responding to the populist backlash against multiculturalism and diversity more generally (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010), a phenomenon which if anything has become more pronounced in recent years. In this sense, studies that mobilize the notion of conviviality are not only filling an empirical gap in the literature, they are also a reaction to scholarly angst about the social imaginary of diversity; ‘[t]he convivial turn is best understood as a situated response to these particular scholarly dilemmas, trends and social conditions’ (Samamani forthcoming). While conviviality has clearly taken hold as a useful heuristic device for talking about inter-group dynamics in diverse settings, it is not clear 1) if conviviality refers to a field of inquiry or an analytical frame and 2) if it applies equally to all the objects that have been placed within this frame.

From a systemic point of view, it would seem fair to say that ‘conviviality’ and ‘cohabitation’ do not refer to the same social phenomena or perhaps to the same level of phenomena. Whereas conviviality connotes interactions with the potential to be positive or at least socially meaningful, the notion of cohabitation makes it possible to regroup a larger diversity of interactions, including those that are negative, neutral and positive (see Gimenez Romero 2017). In other words, it may be accurate to say that the two concepts do not share the same semantic field. If the goal is to show that diversity is not a threat or a source of social division, then the idea of conviviality – an idea that exists in one form or another in all societies – is a logical and elegant terminological choice. If, however, the objective is to examine different ways of relating to difference in order to better understand how particular conditions and patterns lead to particular outcomes, then we most likely need another term. The term ‘cohabitation’ was chosen as the frame for this special issue because it appears to be more neutral than conviviality, providing us with the possibility of encompassing a larger repertoire of relational frames and dynamics. From an editorial standpoint, we decided to keep both concepts, leaving the question of their relative importance and of their articulation up to the individual contributors to the issue.

Another observation about the recent literature is that researchers tend to be interested in studying cohabitation in public spaces (where the notion of public required some clarification) or in more rigid institutional and/or organizational settings, but generally not both. Some contributors to this special issue said that the study of cohabitation in institutional and organizational settings (for example schools, hospitals, courtrooms, etc.) was sufficiently covered in the academic literature and that public spaces (such as parks, markets, public transport) are more interesting because they involve a greater diversity of actors and situations. Others argued that the study of cohabitation in public spaces generally leads to predictable outcomes (namely civility and avoidance) and that the study of inter-group relations in institutional settings is crucial, because it involves the analysis of norms that reproduce systemic discrimination against minorities. Others expressed a discomfort with the dichotomy between ‘public’ and ‘institutional’ settings. They argued that there are different characteristics or dimensions of cohabitation in any given setting (weak, strong, fleeting, ongoing, etc.), and when we add the dimensions of time and space the study of these dynamics becomes even more complex.

Much of the discussion on this topic centers on the question of norms. When we look at normativity in public spaces, to what extent are norms those of the majority? How are these norms imposed or made explicit? It may make sense to speak about these issues in terms of ‘normative density’, meaning the number and interrelatedness of co-existing norms or normative frameworks. In order to be clear about this terminology, we need to first ask if normative density refers to the existence of more norms or to the degree to which norms are structured. One example of this is the case of comparing children in parks and children in schools. Sometimes schools can be like parks (kids running around classrooms or during recess) and sometimes parks can be like schools (turn taking on slides). This question is not mere semantics, since researchers have to make important methodological decisions about what to study and how, and the decisions they make may have an impact on the type of data they collect and analyze. Given these critiques, it might be more accurate to say that the methodological distinction between public and institutional spaces is not a clear-cut dichotomy, but more like a continuum of ideal types.

Overview of This Issue

The articles in this special issue take on the question of how to study cohabitation from a number of different angles. Some of the articles look at methodologies for the study of cohabitation from a philosophical or epistemological perspective (Samamani, Leloup, Volleberg), asking deep questions about what we actually mean when use terms like diversity, conviviality or difference, while others are more specifically focused on how the question of ethics is embedded in the methodologies of field-based research. Following in this vein, several contributions to this special issue engaged in critical reflection about the role of researchers, not only in the way that we portray cohabitation (Saillant and Bourdages-Duclot) but also in terms of their relationships to participants (Vodicka and Rishbeth, White et al). All of the articles in this issue are concerned at some level with how methodological strategies can be developed or adapted to respond to a wide variety of settings, especially those characterized by increasing ethnic and racial diversity. This includes innovative strategies for collecting data (Radice, White et al, Vodicka and Rishbeth), for analyzing data (Leloup, Samamani), for representing the results (Volleberg, Saillant and Bourdages-Duclos) and more generally for the overall design of research methodology (Leloup, Vodicka and Rishbeth, Volleberg, White et al).

Drawing on ethnographic research in the London neighbourhood of Kilburn, the article by Farhan Samamani presents a broad overview of the rapidly expanding literature on conviviality, looking at the different ways that this notion has been conceptualized and how underlying epistemologies have let to tensions or fault lines in the literature. Samamani argues that instead of making a case either in favour or against the notion of conviviality, researchers need to ensure that their conceptual frameworks are consistent with what they see on the ground. Xavier Leloup looks at methodological frameworks in two very different, but somehow related contexts: Brussels in the 1990s and Montreal in the 2010s. Research conducted in these two periods and places had very different objectives, but the article brings them together in order to ask a number of questions about how researchers in social sciences make decisions about theoretical frameworks, field sites and methodological toolkits. The analysis presented by Leloup focuses on the importance of understanding local history and context in the study of cohabitation, what he refers to as ‘situating’. Anick Volleberg's article on conviviality in ethnically and racially diverse neighbourhoods in Antwerp examines how local residents understand and talk about cohabitation, most notably through discourse about living together across various forms of difference. The use of walking or ‘go-along’ interviews are used to gain insight about how local residents engage with each other in public spaces, but the article also experiments with various forms of writing strategies, including what she refers to as ‘mobile monologues’ as a means of representing how the idea of living together is contested and resignified in light of local power relations.

In their article on contingent value of public spaces in Sheffield, United Kingdom, Goran Vodicka and Clare Rishbeth tested the use of walking interviews, photography, drawing, participatory mapping as a means of experimenting with different modes of collaboration. The analysis they present also interrogates the ethics of urban design. Taking a fundamentally reflexive stance with regards to research on cohabitation, the authors cross-examine how professional and academic identities inform differences in emphasis, and how these factors, in turn, inform the design of methodology. Francine Saillant and Sarah Bourdages-Duclot present the results from an experimental project on youth, marginality and imaginaries of cohabitation in four large urban centers: Paris, Montréal, Port-au-Prince and Rio de Janeiro. Using not only walking tours, but also drawing workshops, participatory mapping and cellphone photography, they accompany young people in creating sometimes unexpected portrayals of life in ‘the city next door’.

In her article Martha Radice explains how certain pillars of traditional ethnographic research (namely in-depth interviews and participant observation) may not always be well-suited to the study of cohabitation in ethnically and racially diverse urban environments. This is true in part because interactions in public spaces are by nature fleeting. She proposes the notion of ‘pop-up ethnography’ to talk about a series of methodological strategies that are better suited to ethnographic inquiry in urban public spaces, not only because these spaces have particular characteristics, but also because they are frequented by people who are ‘just passing through’. Bob W. White, Anthony Grégoire and Mathilde Gouin-Bonenfant present the results of a research project whose primary objective was to develop a methodology for collecting ethnographic data about everyday interactions or ‘intercultural situations’. The approach to this research is referred to as ‘indirect ethnography’ because it involves working primarily with professionals who observe intercultural situations as a part of their work on a daily basis. Participants in this methodology experienced difficulties in describing intercultural situations and they often asked the question: how do we talk about difference without reinforcing prejudice?

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bob W. White

Bob W. White is full professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Montreal. His current research is focused on intercultural policy and practice in various settings : intercultural cities, intercultural policy frameworks and civic-based forms of belonging. As the director of the Laboratory for Research on Intercultural Relations (LABRRI), his most recent project involves an in-depth ethnographic study of intercultural dynamics and policies in Montreal, Québec, where he is also the coordinator for REMIRI, a regional network of cities working on integration and intercultural relations. Together with Lomomba Emongo he recently published L’interculturel au Québec : rencontres historiques et enjeux politiques (PUM, 2014). His most recent book is entitled Intercultural Cities: Policy and Practice for a New Era (Palgrave, 2017).

Annick Germain

Annick Germain is a full professor of sociology at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in Montréal, Québec. She taught at the Institut d'urbanisme de l'Université de Montréal before joining the Centre Urbanisation Culture Société. Author of numerous publications on Montreal, including Montreal: A Quest for a Metropolis published with Damaris Rose in London by John Wiley & Sons in 2000, her research focuses on social mixing in residential projects, public spaces, neighbourhoods and immigration. She has directed the Quebec Metropolis Centre, Immigration and Metropolis.