Researching from the Diaspora: The Benefits and Challenges of an Insider Perspectives  

How do you negotiate your research positionality when you find yourself researching your own community? What are the risks and advantages of being an insider when conducting ethnographic fieldwork? These questions are central to methodological debates across disciplines, and  Socio-Legal Studies in particular.  

Working within the scope of the ERC funded research project ConflictNet led by Professor Nicole Stremlau at the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, I​ recently​ found myself researching my own community; Somali immigrants in Johannesburg and Pretoria. As part of the project, we have been investigating how Somalis navigate the complex and plural legal landscape of the space they come to inhabit as migrants and refugees. This space is shaped by a mix of relations of customary law, religious jurisprudence, and state institutions.  

While I was excited about the fieldwork, I still started the process with ambivalence. I grappled with questions: Will a qualitative researcher working on his own community be taken seriously by the research community? Is an insider status an advantage or an obstacle for a qualitative study?   

There are no handy answers to these questions, but scholars have discussed the conundrum. For instance, Terre Blanche et al. (2006, p. 321) argue that being an outsider should not necessarily be a prerequisite for a qualitative research project. These authors indicate that researchers with an ability to “make the strange familiar and the familiar strange” (2006, p. 321) can create knowledge from everyday mundane events they get exposed to. Lindseth and Norberg (2004) remind us that qualitative researchers are often interested in researching human experiences and it is therefore not possible that they as individuals with lived experience can be totally ignorant of a phenomenon, they are interested in. For Lindseth and Norberg, having a “life world” in common with the participants (knowledge/or awareness about the particular topic) can be useful in making the interview deeper and meaningful. Others also suggest that insider status can help the researcher to get access to the participants’ natural settings.   

These scholarly reflections came to my assistance at the start of my fieldwork. I first approached those whom I knew and accessed the wider Somali community in the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria for interviews through their networks. My prior relations with some of the interviewees allowed me to talk to them about sensitive topics involving family and business disputes and the ways in which they handle such issues. During the interviews, I could relate to some experiences the participants referred to such as xenophobic occurrences, robberies, and exclusionary bureaucratic institutions. I am a Somali who also lived in South Africa as an immigrant after all. I also discussed with them ideas expressed in Somali such as concepts in the Xeer, the Somali customary law.   

Yet, I had to reinterview the respondents for clarification of some central concepts and logics in the Xeer law. This was a strategic way of ‘making the familiar strange’ since my main role as a researcher is to probe the interviews and let the respondents express their views in their own ways. In some regards, however, I almost equalled an outsider. Some elders used terms which were new to me, for example, the term ‘rafiso’. Rafiso is the 10% of the diya (financial compensation paid for murder or personal injuries)- a sort of deposit from the perpetrator’s clan to the victim’s kin in some regions including the Jubaland state of Somalia. It may also entail a show of remorse and a commitment for full compensation in a fixed period of time. After investigating I learnt that rafiso equals the term ‘geelxawaal’ which is also used in the Middle Shabelle and Banaadir regions of Somalia where I grew up.   

Even though my insider status was helpful, not all of the people whom I approached were willing participant​s​. Some of the people I had known for years declined my interview. Finding willing women respondents was particularly challenging. Firstly, Somali women are a minority in the community leadership. Secondly, some of them are culturally reluctant to talk to a male researcher.  However, I managed to interview some Somali women, using my familiarity with the community structures and protocols.   

Entering the realm of Somali women was a new experience for me and the stories I heard from them were particularly hard to process. Three ​of them​ told me they ​had been falsely​​​ blamed for using witchcraft to cast bad luck on others. One of the ​women​ was shot by a man who accused her of cursing him and his wife with infertility. Another woman had a gun pointed at her for a similar rumour. However, these were rare cases, as the dominant sources of disputes among Somalis in South Africa are family and business-related.   

​​​In conclusion, doing the fieldwork as an insider researcher meant a mix of surprising, challenging, and more importantly, inspiring moments to me. It was an opportunity to improve my ways of researching and continue my academic studies further.