Close encounters: researching intimate lives in Europe

Abstract

This research note aims to extend the discussion on the methodological implications of doing research on intimacy and personal life. Drawing on a comparative study concerned with the intimate lives of those who live outside the conventional, modern western nuclear family, it reflects on the processes of gaining access to often hard-to-reach populations which informed and influenced the empirical work that we carried out in four European countries.

Keywords:

• gatekeepers
• negotiating access
• intimacy and personal life
• unconventionality

Notes

1. See www.femcit.org and Halsaa, Roseneil, and Sümer (2012). FEMCIT – GenderedCitizenship in Multicultural Europe: the impact of contemporary women’s movements – was a European Commission Framework 6 Integrated Project (Project Number 028746), directed by Beatrice Halsaa, Sasha Roseneil, Solveig Bergman, and Sevil Sümer. The Intimate Citizenship Work Package of FEMCIT was directed by Sasha Roseneil.

2. The sample bias towards women was deliberate and was related to the overall focus ofFEMCIT on the impact of women’s movements on gendered citizenship.

3. The term key informant/personal contact refers to informants with some knowledge of agroup/community identified by the researcher as potentially leading to interviewees, aswell as personal contacts, colleagues, friends and acquaintances known prior to theresearch who were asked to assist in the recruitment of the sample.

4. The choice of this terminology is ours and does not necessarily reflect the membershipof all the organisations and communities we contacted, some of which were exclusivelyaimed at lesbians or at gay men.

5. See Edwards 2004 for a comprehensive discussion of the ways in which social capital can be activated in ethnographic research.