Improving the study of responses to experiences of ethnoracial exclusion—a heuristic for comparative qualitative research

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article advances the debate on responses to experiences of ethnoracial exclusion by proposing a heuristic for comparative qualitative research. The heuristic is developed based on an overview of the literature and of existing classifications of responses. It first introduces a differentiation between cognitive and practice-based responses to experiences of ethnoracial exclusion and, second, a differentiation between responses to incidents of racism and/or the general experience of racism on the one hand and strategies for gaining recognition in society on the other. The article also addresses challenges that occur when applying the heuristic in interview-based research (e.g. the trade-off between exploring interviewees’ meaning-making and accessing the whole spectrum of incidents experienced by the interviewees) and discusses the heuristic’s benefits: Most importantly, the heuristic enables comparisons between pre-existing findings in the field and provides a tool to guide qualitative comparative research.