Institutional Ethnography as a Research Methodology to Study Domestic Violence Experiences of Migrant Women: Some Concerns and Comments


Neela Hassan, University Of Waterloo

Dorothy Smith developed institutional ethnography (IE) as an approach to knowing the social that is useful for people and contributes to the understanding of oppressive and dominating practices that shape peoples everyday lives. Smith designed IE as a method of inquiry to create an alternative to the traditional research methods that do not subordinate peoples knowing and experiences to objectified forms of knowledge and discourses. In this paper, I discuss the possibilities and challenges of employing IE in a project that analyzes the accounts of migrant women who have experiences of domestic violence. I argue that while IE addresses many limitations of the mainstream sociological methods by making the ontological shift that starts from the standpoint of peoples everyday experiences, it presents methodological challenges and ethical dilemmas. I contend that understanding social phenomena with all its nuances and complexities requires pushing methodological boundaries and engaging with messy processes. This practice becomes even more important in contexts where the research subjects experience multiple forms of marginalization, violence, and exclusion. As a research methodology, IE enables my research to examine the intersection of multi-layered forms of precarities that exacerbate womens vulnerability to domestic violence by tracing the extra-local forces, such as the policies and practices of governmental and non-governmental organizations. It will shed light on the structural barriers that individual women encounter when accessing necessary services in their pursuit of safety, as well as identify strengths and gaps in institutional policies and practices designed to support migrant women. In doing so, it not only produces knowledge but also offers direct benefits to research informants by locating them as experts of their own lived actualities in research, helping them to see where they are located in the system and what and how they can change the parts of the system that dont work for them. However, utilizing IE as a research method for studying vulnerable groups, particularly those whose experiences are deeply intertwined with cultural beliefs and local relationships, presents the risk of suppressing individuals understanding and interpretations of their experiences. Additionally, it may neglect factors that may not be directly linked to broader social institutions but are equally crucial in comprehending peoples experiences. In the specific context of my research, an overemphasis on text-mediated relations may result in misrepresenting and misunderstanding research informants and their experiences, potentially leading to what Bourdieu refers to as "symbolic violence." To overcome these two challenges, I constructed my research methodology based on my research projects theoretical and methodological grounding by incorporating IE with a narrative approach. In doing so, my aim is to uncover how the extra-local and text-mediated processes coordinate migrant womens experiences of domestic violence without overlooking the local culture and beliefs that may not have traces in institutions and texts but are significant in shaping womens experiences. It will enable the analysis to highlight the complexity, ambiguity, and contradictions of relations between women and the world, including the past, present, and their social and ideological understanding of themselves and the world around them.

This paper will be presented at the following session: