Doing qualitative research in the UK publishing sector – an ethnic minority’s experiences

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the relations between researcher and researched. My doctoral project is to study the role of social networking in labour recruitment in the UK publishing sector. The methods I used are semi-structured interviews and participant observation. I interviewed forty publishing staff in various roles such as editorial and design during mid 2005 and early 2006. I also participated actively in a UK publishing association and organized events and annual conference during the above period. In this paper, I will focus on how my ethnic identity influenced the relations with my interviewees. I am an ethnic Hong Kong Chinese who has just stayed in the UK for study for four years. The UK publishing sector is predominately a white middle classes sector. It is not difficult to imagine that I encountered some special experiences during the fieldwork (despite the fact that people in publishing are generally very friendly). These experiences are as follows. Firstly, it is access gaining. I did not know anybody in this sector before the fieldwork. The way I got into the field was to make use of my ethnic minority identity and participated in a couple of diversity programs. Secondly, I needed to develop a sense of trust with the interviewees within a very short period of time. Friendly body gestures such as smile and being attentive helped to overcome my accented English, which could be a barrier in the fieldwork. Thirdly, I realize that being an ethnic minority could be an advantage during fieldwork since my interviewees were open to tell me a lot of tiny details (such as office politics). Some of them said it was because to a very large extent I am an outsider to UK publishing, they felt safe to tell me everything.