Researching With "the Privileged": Intersectional Positionality, Glocality, and Power Dynamic in Research Ethics

• In Event: Ethical Lessons Beyond Institutional Review Board Approvals: Rethinking Ethics in Qualitative Research

Abstract

In qualitative inquiries that explore global migratory experiences, researchers face complexities of legal, political, and social aspects of participants' lived experiences (Moralli, 2023). Such complexities are shaped by participants’ diverse migrating experiences, even forced and traumatic experiences, such as war refugees (Zapata-Barrero & Yalaz, 2020). The positionality of the researchers and participants situated at the global and local (glocal) levels across home countries and host countries inform decisions made during research designing, analyses, and representations, demanding consideration of the power dynamic within and surrounding the research processes (Reich, 2021). Many scholars have discussed ethics when researching with marginalized, vulnerable global migrants in host countries and around the world (Liamputtong, 2007). However, there is a lack in the discussion of ethics that guide scholars of color in their work with global migrants who migrated from “Western” countries to other countries that have endured the historical consequences of colonialism and its ongoing consequences.
In my research that explores U.S. transnational teachers' experiences of working and living in China as global migrant workers, I employ intersectional positionality (Moralli, 2023) as the guiding ethical framework for understanding positionality, reflexivity, and ethics. Such a reflexive framework is led by the study's theoretical framework, intersectional precarity, coined from intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991; Collins & Bilge, 2020) and precarity (Standing, 2014; Butler, 2004). Intersectionality and precarity overlap in many ways due to the frameworks’ focus on inequality and injustice in economic life and life conditions that can be caused by different factors (e.g., gender, race, and class). From the overarching theoretical and reflexive frameworks, the research explores the complexities of participants’ lived experiences of privilege, precarity, and marginalization/belongingness at the glocal level across the U.S. and China. During the research, as a female Chinese transnational scholar based in the U.S., I have encountered unanticipated ethical and reflexive challenges, issues, and dilemmas when participants of color join the research and when participants reveal their undocumented status.
In this presentation, I will draw from my data corpus, including interviews, memos, online observation, and research poems, to share my constant shifts in positionality and reflexivity regarding my roles as a transnational individual and researcher. Through the examples, I illustrate how the complexities of racism, sexism, and other injustice circulate, shift, and repeat at the glocal levels. These circulations and repetitions take the participants and the researcher to constantly (re)visit experiences in both countries where our intersectional identities and positionalities diverge and entangle. The examples also illustrate the frustrations and difficulties of pushing back against participants' problematic ideologies as a woman of color researching with White American participants. Meanwhile, the challenges also extend to having empathy and care toward participants as a part of research ethics. The reflexive exploration will guide a discussion on the fluidity of intersectional positionality and who can be privileged/marginalized in a study. The audience will be invited to (re)consider positionality, glocality, privilege and precarity, and ethical practices in qualitative research.

Author

• Yixuan Wang, Gwinnett County Public Schools