Reflecting narrative interview context as performance: interviews with former homeless persons with intoxication and mental health problems

Abstract

The objective in this article was to discuss the importance of reflecting the interview context holistically in which the temporality and spatiality, the bodily poses and actions, as well as the interaction, have an impact on the narrative produced in an interview. Using performance perspective, I shall demonstrate how these different dimensions also have an impact on the produced story. I shall focus on some challenging interview situations with former long-term homeless women and men. The most challenging interviews were those when intoxication or mental health problems were present. This caused ethical issues which I shall reflect upon. I shall also discuss about the emotional as well as some narrative challenges which made me understand the meaning of interview context and the need to reflect on it more profoundly.

Keywords:

• narrative interview
• interview context
• performativity
• homeless
• intoxication
• ethical issues
• emotions

Acknowledgements

This study is a sub-project in the research project ‘Long-Term Homelessness and Finnish Adaptations of Housing First. http://www.aka.fi/Tiedostot/Tiedostot/ASUMINEN/Research%20projects/Asu%20Juhila%20small.pdf

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. About Housing First Model see e.g. Busch-Geertsema (2013).

2. In a go-along interview, the researcher and the informant go for a walk to explore a neighbourhood at the same time recording the conversation. The method is used for instance to examine themes such as spatial practices, biographies, social architecture and social realms (Kusenbach 2003). I asked my interviewees to show me places which have been important to them in some point during their life. Because the places were scattered around the city area, we drove in my car to these places and I had the recorder on. We also took photographs about the places if the interviewee wanted it. For more on the go-along interview, see e.g. Kusenbach (2003).

3. All the names of the residents in data or diary extracts are pseudonyms.

4. The conversations I had while sitting with the women at breakfast are not included in my data. Some of the women I talked with, I did not interview at all although they shared fragments of their life with me.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Academy of Finland and its program ‘The future of living and housing’ (ASU-LIVE) [grant number 255379].