When conducting fieldwork in intercultural settings, little has been done to discuss the issues of positioning. And when the researcher´s position is mentioned, it is often in terms of the insider-outsider dichotomy, where being an insider is perceived as an advantage in order to gain access to the field. Yet, how can two apparent aliens conduct fieldwork on foreign turf and collect quality data?
We consider ourselves as apparent aliens while we conducted fieldwork in our respective intercultural settings, understood as in different national settings as well as in different communities of practices: Spjeldnæs is a Norwegian female researcher who collected data among adolescent black South-Africans, while Ly, a French female researcher collected data among Norwegian, Swedes and Chinese engineers (mostly male) in the marine industry. We
believe that identities are co-constructed in interactions (socio-constructivist approach) and that despite of our apparent differences, we succeeded in finding common grounds and build trust with our informants.
In this chapter, we describe how we navigated the challenges we have met in our previous fieldwork in intercultural settings and share the strategies that we have used to juggle with our identities. We reflect on these strategies using concepts of perceived and performed credibility; how we presented ourselves and were perceived, and perceived and performed approachability; how we approached our informants in a nonthreatening and safe way, developed by Mayorga-Gallo and Hordge Freeman (2017).
Hence, sometimes, we stressed the common grounds that we shared with our informants, such as gender, religion, language, and experiences related to family situation. At times, on the contrary, we consciously emphasised our differences, such as racial, cultural, and professional backgrounds, in order to be told and explained as much as possible.
Using these strategies, we could in turns, play the role of the naive foreigner, the respectful researcher or the confidant, who will listen but does not gossip in the neighbourhood or report to the boss. We draw some implications of using such strategies in terms of trust building and explain how we ensured the quality of our data. Last, we discuss some outcomes, including
unexpected ones, and we underline key lessons learned.
