These last few months I’ve moved from focusing on fieldwork to transcribing my interviews, analysing my data, and “writing up” the research. One surprising aspect coming out of my data is a sense that much has changed since many of the interviews were conducted. I did my fieldwork between October 2014 and November 2015, so its not particularly long ago. But while I transcribe and analyse, hindsight and irony are more frequent than I anticipated. Here are a few examples:
- My fieldwork period spans Reform of Local Government in Northern Ireland, and the local government district which is my Northern Irish fieldwork site no longer exists. My interviews encompass the before, during and immediate aftermath of this period.
- There are the interviews on the cusp of the general election in May 2015, wondering what will happen. (I will remember the night of the general election for some time; I was listening to the unfolding media drama as I travelled back to England from Northern Ireland.) Preparations for the elections, and changes afterwards, figure strongly in some of my interviews.
- There are increasing commentaries on migrants in the Mediterranean as the interviews go forward in time. Events in the Mediterranean increasingly influenced people’s understandings of their own experiences in Northern Ireland and England.
- There are interviews evidencing fear about, and prejudice against, asylum seekers despite the fact that there are very few asylum seekers in either of my fieldwork locations. These interviews took place before the ISIS terrorist campaign in Autumn/early Winter of 2015.
Space is a fundamental part of this research project, conceptually and analytically. I hadn’t appreciated that time would play such as strong role as well. All social science is situated in a time, but it seems almost as though my fieldwork period is punctuated by a series events which render it a notably different past.
Superdiversity and Planning in the UK 