The Methods and Meanings of Collaborative Team Research

Abstract

Team research enables the collection of multiple, sometimes conflicting, stories of migration, family, and belonging. Using common qualitative methods within a team research context can stretch these research techniques in productive and instructive ways and proffer new insight and meaning.Therefore, the authors suggest that team research offers an important avenue for both extending qualitative methods and expanding interpretative lenses. To illustrate these points, the authors draw upon their study of the settlement and migration patterns of East African Shia Ismaili Muslims in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and discuss their experiences with focus group effects, the simultaneous household interview strategy, and postinterview dialogues. The article highlights how these three techniques and effects enacted in the team research context helped the authors explicitly locate contradictions, ambiguities, and paradoxes within the narratives of first-and second-generation Ismailis.Keywords collaborative team research; focus groups; household interviews; Ismailis; qualitative methods "Team Ismaili"l is a group of four geographers (at the time two master's students, one professor, and one instructor), who joined together as research collaborators in the summer of 2005 to explore transnational migrations and connections, family and community expectations, and identity expressions among East African Shia Ismaili Muslims 2 in Greater Vancouver, Canada. We approached these themes through focus groups and in-depth individual interviews with Ismailis who either forcibly or voluntarily left East Africa between 1970s and early 1990s (people we defined as first-generation Ismailis) and the adult Canadian-born children of these immigrants (defined as second-generation Ismailis).3 The contrasting and complementary stories of "Ismaili-ness" evident in the research archive grew to be a compelling focus within our study and prompted us to reflexively consider how our methods contributed to the gathering of disparate accounts. Therefore, in this article we discuss our experiences with focus group effects, the simultaneous household interview strategy, and postinterview dialogues. We highlight how stretching qualitative methods through the team research context helped us explicitly locate contradictions, ambiguities, and paradoxes within the narratives of first-and second-generation Ismailis. In other words, the meaning ofthe narratives about the Ismaili community became nuanced and textured through the teambased mobilization of our methods.The three methodological engagements that we discuss here provide the foundation for this article. With this in mind, first, we detail the literature on focus groups and discuss the emergence of various focus group effects in our research. We next turn to the simultaneous household interview strategy and outline how this technique offers glimpses into assorted intergenerational perspectives (Jamal, 2006;Pang, 1998). We conclude with examples from our postinterview dialogues. This stru...

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