28 Papers, cards, and perilous encounters with the state
for Peace and Justice 2020). In order to ensure a comfortable environment
for women participants, I tried where possible to organise women-only focus
groups and secure female translators. In the cramped conditions of camps in
both Bangladesh and India, there are few private spaces in which to interview
or hold meetings, making it much harder to organise spontaneous interviews
and discussions with women as I could with men. Women did not self-present
requesting to be interviewed as frequently as men did. Fieldwork consisted
of narrative interviews, focus groups, observations, and walking histories.
Narrative interviews
Narrative interviewing aims to generate in-depth accounts rather than general or factual statements. It seeks to understand the meaning people attach
to experiences and events. It therefore departs from the styles of structured
or semi-structured interviews that are common in social science research and
shifts to a style that is more conversational and less structured (Riessman
2008:Ch 2). It involves the researcher ‘giving up control’ of structured questions and allowing participants to speak in their own ways by forging conversational styles. The features of such a style are turn-taking in speaking;
associative shifts in topics; ‘entrance and exit talk’ where narratives transition in and out of accounts of past events to relevant issues; the exploration
of associations and meanings that may generate other stories; and discussion
of where shifts and turns occur in the conversations (Riessman 2008:24). In
the example I provided in Chapter 1, Gulam’s account of returning his old
land document to Myanmar, narrative shifts frequently occurred that established links between his past experiences and the precariousness of the current situation for Rohingya in Bangladesh. Through a series of associations,
his narrative negatively assessed the trustworthiness of the Myanmar government and warned of the threat of future forced repatriations. Since narrative
interviews are interactions involving social positioning and co-construction
of conversation, the method is sometimes described as being close to ethnographic practice (Mishler 1986; Salmon and Riessman 2008). In Gulam’s
story, the presence of younger Rohingya impacted the way the story was
told—an elder described their collective past in ways that interpreted their
current shared situation. The ways in which the younger Rohingya interacted with him and touched the document had as much significance as the
language itself. The analysis of narrative interviews involves focusing not
only on transcripts of conversations but also on factors such as turns in the
conversation, associations, tone, volume, rhythm, pauses, velocity, plots, gestures, emotions, reticence, and points where views conflict (Portelli 2006).
Therefore, in addition to the transcripts of the narrative interviews, I also
made notes shortly after the events to set the scene and describe gestures,
emotions, pauses, and interactions that the transcripts themselves could not
fully account for. I provided space for participants to tell stories about their
citizenship and their ID cards in their own ways. It allowed me to explore the