Practicing Reflexivity in the Study of Italian Migrants in London

Authors

Francesca Romana Seganti, London Metropolitan UniversityFollow

Abstract

This article discusses the centrality of reflexivity in qualitative research through examples from my study on the role new media play in the lives of Italians in London. My hypothesis was that Italians were "in transit" in London and they were using new media to build "temporary" communities. I conducted in-depth interviews with members of the Italianialondra.com online community. I found they settled in London and the online community, instead of supporting "nomadic" identities, was used for re-territorialization. Through reflexivity I was able to determine the reasons for a partially wrong hypothesis. I also identified biases that clouded my interpretations of the object of study; thus promoting rich insight and enabling public scrutiny of the integrity of the research.

Keywords

Reflexivity, New Media, and Italian Immigrants

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Maureen Duffy and Steve Terrell for helpful editorial and analytical comments on the earlier draft of this paper.

Publication Date

7-1-2010

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2010.1191

Recommended APA Citation

Seganti, F. R. (2010). Practicing Reflexivity in the Study of Italian Migrants in London. The Qualitative Report, 15(4), 966-987. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2010.1191