Learning through go-along interviews: an intersectional approach to researching marginalised migrants from a feminist and antiracist perspective

Abstract

Based on a four-year study on illegalised migration in Switzerland, this article explores go-along interviews (go-alongs) as an intersectional method combining interviewing and mobile ethnography. First, it presents go-alongs as an approach that enables researchers to adapt the data collection process to participants’ needs, comfort and lifestyles, responding to their criticisms of traditional interview formats. Second, it shows that go-alongs help us analyse the embodied and sensory dimensions of the diverse realities of racialised and marginalised lives. Third, it argues that go-alongs enable scholars to engage deeply with the intersection of gender and race. Fourth, it proposes considering go-alongs as a participant-centred, sensitive and engaged research approach that takes antiracist feminist praxis seriously, addressing the normative concerns of intersectional scholars. The goal is to present go-alongs as a suitable feminist and antiracist method and methodological tool that engages with the epistemological, material, spatial and structural inequalities of a research setting.

Keywords: antiracism and racism; go-along interviews; migration and illegalisation; intersectionality; feminist methods and methodology; walking