Mixing and Mixedness: Researching Difference and Belonging through Diverse Methods

This is a recording of a presentation given at Methods in Dialogue: Researching Diversity, 9 February 2011 at the University of Manchester. The methods that we use to access and generate data should be driven by the issues that we are researching, rather than vice versa. In this presentation I will consider the diverse methods that colleagues and I have used across several projects exploring difference and belonging in how parents bring up children from ‘mixed’ racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds. These methods range across quantitative and qualitative, and primary and secondary, and encompass the collection and analysis of media and political discourses, Census data, small surveys, in-depth interviews, and historical comparative work. The issues we addressed were also generated in diverse ways, from identifying gaps in empirical knowledge, pursuing theory, instrumental pragmatics and serendipity. While substantive mixing and mixedness does not intrinsically demand a methodological mixing and mixedness, the state of empirical and theoretical knowledge in the field (as well as instrumentality and serendipity) encourages it.