Methodological dilemmas: gatekeepers and positionality in Bradford

The fallacy of the instrumental gate? Contextualising the process of gaining access through gatekeepers

“…In this and in other similar situations, my perception of gatekeepers' behaviours and of being aligned with them, and the context in which I met them did not allow me to create a 'positional space' (Sanghera & Thapar-Björkert, 2008) that I believed would be conducive to the establishment of a caring, trusting and non-oppressive relationship (Birch, Mauthner, & Jessop, 2012) with migrant women. For this reason, I decided not to ask the latter for a possible interview, and in most of these cases I only had brief conversations with them.…”

“…These acknowledge, and are critical of the limitations of a purely instrumental and mechanistic understanding of the gatekeeper's role and function, and contrast this by emphasising the importance of the relationships, lives and contexts in which gatekeepers, the process of gatekeeping and of granting (or precluding) access are embedded (see e.g. Clark, 2011;Emmel, Hughes, Greenhalgh, & Sales, 2007;Hennink, Hutter, & Bailey, 2011;Miller & Bell, 2012;Sanghera & Thapar-Björkert, 2008;Wanat, 2008). Reflecting on the negotiations conducted with gatekeepers in the course of their ethnographic research, these authors point out that gatekeepers provide more than 'just access'.…”

Seeking new paradigms in Aboriginal education research: methodological opportunities, challenges and aspirations

“…Status inequality, subordination and organisational constraints are all genuine issues that emerge when considering the ethics of gatekeeping and informed consent. Sanghera and Thapar-Björkert (2008) conclude that the underlying dynamic that influences whether access is granted by a gatekeeper is the researcher-gatekeeper relationship, further outlining that ''it is a relationship that is fraught with inconsistencies and instabilities'' (p.544). Sanghera and Thapar-Björkert (2008) wrote of their research context, which was an inquiry of social capital in a complex, low socioeconomic community called Bradford in the United Kingdom.…”

“…Predictably, there is a body of literature on the concept of gatekeeping in research (Heath, Charles, Crow, & Wiles, 2007;Murgatroyd, Karimi, Robinson, & Rada, 2015;Sanghera & Thapar-Björkert, 2008;Shoemaker & Vos, 2009;Wanat, 2008). Gatekeeping of research has been written about across disciplines, with Wanat (2008) proposing that gaining access in a research context is unique to each study.…”

Close encounters: researching intimate lives in Europe

“…Our successes and failures to find interviewees who met our pre-existing criteria for participation in the study need to be understood also in relation to issues of positionality and biography, whereby aspects of the researchers', researcheds' and gatekeepers' social identities and life experiences frame social and professional relationships in the field (Sanghera and Thapar-Bjorkert 2008). For example, we were all more familiar with and networked to the majority national populations than with the minoritized/racialized groups of the countries in which we did research.…”