Intersectional positionalities across gender, race, ethnicity and immigrant status in qualitative interviews

Abstract

This article addresses the implications of intersectional qualitative interviews across identity categories of gender, race, ethnicity, and immigrant status. Responding to the research gap on the intersectionality in qualitative interviews and informed by the intersectionality framework, this reflective critical discourse study shares an analysis of two interviews conducted by a female minority researcher. Using the analytic methods of critical discourse analysis, the study examines how the interviewer and interviewee enacted, resisted, and negotiated diverse positionalities and power imbalance within the interview space. Particularly, the analysis demonstrates the researcher’s challenges, vulnerability, and mitigating efforts in resisting the powered position taken by the interviewee in light of gender, race, and immigrant status. It also reveals how identity convergence allowed the participants to inhabit the space as collaborative insiders despite the tension in other layers of intersection. Methodological dilemmas and implications for intersectional interviews will be discussed.

Keywords:

• Qualitative interview
• intersectionality
• critical discourse analysis

Acknowledgements

I sincerely thank our research participants for their contributions to this work, as well as our blind peer reviewers and editors for their thoughtful and helpful feedback. Portions of the Midwest data collection were supported by a grant from the University of Missouri Research Board (2015–2016).

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sujin Kim

Sujin Kim, Ph.D. is a transnational scholar and teacher educator and currently serves as an assistant professor in the Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse and Exceptional Learners Program in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University. Her main research interests include content-language integrated education for multilingual learners, translanguaging/transmodalizing pedagogy, and critical discourse studies in education.