It is assumed that both approaches to research practice face the problem of constructing "data" and are therefore subject to potential bias. �i�f�-`
)62�"��T��H�gy�1:�1OY����P��D�\H挥��jh"WQ All theoretical descriptions of reality are fallible, but not equally fallible. In this part of the paper, I discuss some crucial issues of ontology and epistemology in social sciences in general, and in qualitative research in particular, and how ontological and epistemological commitments are implicitly or explicitly linked with methodological choices and practices. (2004). Thus, for critical realism, the social world is viewed as stratified and emergent, and phenomena and social processes are produced through the constant interaction between human, individual and collective agency and action, social material structures and ideational discursive formations. For example, the in-depth examination of how the capitalist crisis and the associated changes in the capitalist social and economic relations globally, especially after the 1990s, created the need for even cheaper, more precarious, more disciplined and without rights working force and, thus, to illegalization of migration, would be a necessary theoretical baggage in this kind of qualitative research practice (see Scripta 2013). Fleetwood, S. (2005). Opener. (Iosifides 2011a, p. 46), (1) the homogenization of national culture (2) the homogenization of migrants into ethnic groups – seen as bearers of discrete cultures – who arrive bearing cultural, class, and religious differences, and (3) the use of national statistics organized so that ethnic difference appears as an independent variable in the reporting of levels of education, health status, degrees of employment, and level of poverty. Immigrant Chinese American women: Negotiating values and perceptions of self in the cultural borderlands of east and west: A qualitative study. A qualitative researcher might be more interested in the investigation of how social relations produce racist and discriminatory practices such as deportations, subjectification processes of deportees, the role of securitization discourses and associated material practices to migrant selectivity and so on (see, for example, de Genova 2002; Skleparis 2016a, b). Qualitative Philosophy brings together a variety of philosophical assumptions that are available to qualitative researchers. (Squire 2009, p. 31). Potter, G. (2001). From a relativist point of view, what is morally acceptable is so only in the context of a particular cultural framework, and could well be unacceptable from other perspectives. Yet if the validity of all knowledge claims is relative to some socio-cultural framework or context, then this is true of this claim as well. Cherríe Moraga and Chicana feminism. The making and unmaking of ethnic boundaries: A multilevel process theory. Potter, G., & López, J. Search form. Thus, the incompatibility thesis put forward by … The other appeals to qualitative research’s grounding in particular ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions, which he describes interchangeably as interpretivism and constructivism. Epistemology & Methaphysics for QR. It is specifically concerned with the nature, sources and limitations of knowledge. I have put together this post to explain what a research paradigm is, which includes ontology, epistemology, theoretical framework and methodology, and why it is important for your research or PhD. In migration related research, methodological nationalism leads or enhances. Second, qualitative migration research is valuable in the depth investigation of how boundaries between people are constructed and become effective and how unequal power relations are enhanced and reproduced through them (see Wimmer 2008). The elements within each branch are positioned according to their congruence with elements from other branches so when read from top to bottom (or bottom to … Epistemology and Different Research Paradigms. This is because those versions of interpretive thinking equate causality and causal explanation with the positivist conceptualization of it and implicitly adopt its positivist definition. Joseph Maxwell argues for critically applying a realist ontology to a number of important theoretical and methodological issues. 0000002465 00000 n
In this one, I discuss issues of power differentials between researchers and research participants in qualitative migration research and I extend this beyond the “classic” preoccupation about relations between researchers and research participants in the field. Second, they dissociate understandings of the point of view of social actors from explaining them as well, that is from making an effort to explore the causal conditions which allowed certain beliefs, meanings and interpretations to arise and not others. Engel GL. Amelina, A., Nergiz, D. D., Faist, T., & Glick, S. N. What is Epistemology. Hammersley, M. (2009). challenge of realist claims about knowledge (debates usually known as epistemology). 0000001119 00000 n
This kind of social constructionism views “…reality, including social reality, as inseparable from socially constructed knowledge and its understandings” (Iosifides 2011b, p. 110). And finally, they reduce social reality to subjective agential action, ignoring and neglecting a series of other factors and causal powers such as materiality, structural conditioning, social power asymmetries or cultural dynamics (see Elder-Vass 2010, 2012). It is a notion of causality as generative and of causal powers as emergent from the relational makeup of social entities (Sayer 1992; Outhwaite 1998; Elder-Vass 2010, 2012). Having in mind that no term is neutral, it has to be noted that “migration” is usually used to describe and give special meaning to spatial mobilities of certain poorer categories of people. Qualitative and quantitative research strategies are distinct in several aspects. Migrant ‘illegality’ and deportability in everyday life. Allow me now to return to securitization research. This time, its relevance and utility does not concern states, administrative agencies or intergovernmental organizations, but movements and collectivities aiming to resist power asymmetries, fight anti-immigrantism (Doty 2003) and achieve freedom of movement for all people (Hayter 2004).