A JOURNEY OF (IN)(OUT)SIDER RESEARCHER: ON THE INTRICACIES OF BEING, BECOMING AND BELONGING(S)
Location
1053
Format Type
Event
Format Type
Paper
Start Date
January 2018
End Date
January 2018
Abstract
The author of this paper is a Jewish heterosexual married woman from the former Soviet Union, immigrant twice over (to Israel and to Canada), social worker experienced in work with immigrant families in Israel, and currently an Assistant Professor in a Canadian university. My lived experience of marginalization and oppression as Jewish and as immigrant from the Eastern Block in the West informed my research agenda to examine individual realities of Jewish immigrant couples from the former Soviet Union within the socioeconomic/socio-political contexts of Canada. This presentation is based on my PhD dissertation study on lived experiences of Jewish immigrant couples from the former Soviet Union in Toronto, Canada. The goal of the presentation is to show that research endeavors are never a neutral process; as a researcher, I am inevitably embedded within, shaped and shaping all aspects of the project. I demonstrate the impact of my personal lived experience on the choice of research methodology and illuminate the tensions encountered in the researcher’s and participants’ shared social location, my presumption of shared feelings and experience of being marginalized and the participants’ narratives that reproduce middle class heteronormative capitalist norms. Based on my reflexive journal, I present my personal account as a researcher crossing the boundaries of insider/outsider and subject/object and explore the complexities of my research identity as a ‘halfie’ – researcher whose insider identity has been altered by immigration and education, and focus on the intriguing ways in which my various social identities shift during interaction with participants.
A JOURNEY OF (IN)(OUT)SIDER RESEARCHER: ON THE INTRICACIES OF BEING, BECOMING AND BELONGING(S)
1053
The author of this paper is a Jewish heterosexual married woman from the former Soviet Union, immigrant twice over (to Israel and to Canada), social worker experienced in work with immigrant families in Israel, and currently an Assistant Professor in a Canadian university. My lived experience of marginalization and oppression as Jewish and as immigrant from the Eastern Block in the West informed my research agenda to examine individual realities of Jewish immigrant couples from the former Soviet Union within the socioeconomic/socio-political contexts of Canada. This presentation is based on my PhD dissertation study on lived experiences of Jewish immigrant couples from the former Soviet Union in Toronto, Canada. The goal of the presentation is to show that research endeavors are never a neutral process; as a researcher, I am inevitably embedded within, shaped and shaping all aspects of the project. I demonstrate the impact of my personal lived experience on the choice of research methodology and illuminate the tensions encountered in the researcher’s and participants’ shared social location, my presumption of shared feelings and experience of being marginalized and the participants’ narratives that reproduce middle class heteronormative capitalist norms. Based on my reflexive journal, I present my personal account as a researcher crossing the boundaries of insider/outsider and subject/object and explore the complexities of my research identity as a ‘halfie’ – researcher whose insider identity has been altered by immigration and education, and focus on the intriguing ways in which my various social identities shift during interaction with participants.
Comments
Breakout Session F