Doing focus group research with young East and Southeast Asian people on the racialised politics of belonging in Britain reveals rich and complex dynamics of vulnerability and resilience. Inviting young people to share their views and reflect upon their experiences as minoritized and underrepresented groups in Britain often entails the sharing of sensitive life stories. This includes the divulging of biographical traumas but also the discovery of shared commonalities, differences, humour and mutual empathy. This paper explores both the empowering and disempowering potential of focus groups as a forum for sharing biographical experience. We argue that the focus group setting can provide opportunities for overcoming vulnerabilities through listening to shared experience, developing solidarity with others and de-individualising experiences of racism. However, focus groups can also generate discomfort when differences between participants and facilitators are too great or too small or where power dynamics are too asymmetrical. In these situations, participants use ‘protective silences’ to shield them from sharing vulnerabilities and experiencing potential retraumatisation.
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Barber, Tamsin Yeh, Diana
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Year of publication: 2024Date of RADAR deposit: 2023-06-01
All rights reserved. "This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edited version of an extract/chapter published in Biographical Research and New Social Architecture. Details of the definitive published version and how to purchase it are available online at: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/biographical-research-and-new-social-architecture”