“Telling” ethno-racial discrimination to “white” researchers
Reflections from an interview-based survey with racialized young people
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14428/emulations.42.06Keywords:
ethnic and racial discrimination, racism, race as a social construct, interview research method, race of interviewer effectAbstract
The article offers a reflection on an under-explored methodological issue representing a gap in French-speaking research on ethno-racial discrimination: that of the « racial » (mis)match between researchers and respondents. The reflection is based on a research project using interviews to understand the processes and conditions leading respondents to voice or not (speaking or silencing) the ethno-racial discriminations they experience in everyday life. Discussing the main outcomes of English- and French-speaking literatures on the topic, the article investigates whether the respondents’ argumentative strategies may have been influenced by some methodological aspects of the research such as: the recruitment strategy, the way the topic of the research was introduced, the researcher-respondent relationship within the interview. Combining a plurality of differences and similarities of status (gender, class, age, nationality…), this latter articulates a dialogue between « white » researchers and racialized respondents: to this extent, it raises methodological and ethical issues that, if taken seriously, can prove instructive.
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