Homecoming with a New Identity: Returning “Home” for Field Research

• In Event: Positionality and Reflexivity in Political Science II: The International Context

Abstract

Many researchers work on the research topics relating to their home countries that are at the center of their scholarly concerns and inquiries. Given it is their “home”, we often assume these researchers know the contexts well and have relatively easy access to the research data compared to foreign researchers. However, based on my fieldwork experiences as a researcher returning “home” to do research, being a “local” has both advantages and disadvantages. These advantages and disadvantages are often linked to different professional identities (such as, as a graduate student or a research fellow or a professor etc.), has impacting access to research sites, research data, as well as the relationships between the researcher and the interviewees. At the same time, these different identities also affect the researchers to adopt different strategies in order to conform to the social norms of society.

In this paper, I draw on my experiences of returning “home” to Taiwan to conduct field research with those experienced conducting field researcher in South Korea as a foreigner. By doing so, I highlight what it means to be a “local” researcher in Taiwan. I also investigate how different identities (such as being a graduate student, a research assistant of professors from the “Western” universities, and a postdoctoral research fellow) have impacted my research strategies and interactions in the field. In sum, this paper reflects on my positionality in researching the home country and integrates the reflexivity into how different identities have influenced the strategies in qualitative field research.

Author

• Yi-Chun Chien, National Chengchi University