Reflexivity: unmarried Japanese male interviewing married Japanese women about international marriage

Abstract

This article addresses the reflexive nature of research I conducted investigating the experiences of Japanese women who are married to Australian men and currently reside in Australia.It highlights how my positionality: my male gender and Japanese cultural identity, unmarried status and the perspective about the discourse on international marriage influenced the nature of the interview conversations and had an unexpected impact on my fieldwork generally. Considering positionality is not static or fixed, both insider and outsider status between researchers and the researched are not always clearly detached. Presumed advantage and disadvantaged attached to these statuses, therefore, needs to be scrutinized carefully. This article maintains that the insiderness and outsiderness of researchers and researched relationships were not always antithetical, but could work simultaneously making research both highly nuanced and ambiguous at times.