Positionality, symbolic violence and reflexivity: researching the educational strategies of marginalized groups

The chapter uses accounts that describe fieldwork ‘critical moments’ drawn from two research projects on educational and housing conditions of Roma people to reflect on key methodological dilemmas arising from research with marginalised groups. The chapter addresses four issues: a) the risks of symbolic violence as always ‘around the corner’ in fieldwork activity; b) the access as a key step in the construction of the encounter and the problem of its negotiation; c) researchers’ positionality; d) neo-positivist empiricism and ethnocentrism as forms of symbolic violence which are yet very common but difficult to discover in research with marginalised groups. We argue for the adoption of a reflexive disposition towards fieldwork activities that problematizes the connections between research, symbolic violence and the wider relations of exploitation and domination and transforms the ‘betweenness’ of the researcher and the researched worlds as a space of possibility for questioning the dominant regimes of truth.