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University of Ottawa, Canada
Title:“Neither Here Nor There”: Feminist Reflections on Insider–Outsider Positionality in Research with Marginalized Communities.
This paper develops a feminist methodological reflection on the insider-outsider framework based on my doctoral research with Garo women in Bangladesh’s beauty industry. While my research centers on the migration, labour, mobility and aspirations of Garo women, this paper departs to explore how positionality: particularly in one’s own national context, demands a continuous negotiation between insider and outsider roles. As a Bengali-Muslim woman from an urban, middle-class background, I am ethnically and socially distinct from the Garo women I study. These differences position me as an outsider, with implications for trust, representation, and ethical data collection. However, shared national belonging, language fluency in Bangla, gendered experiences in Dhaka, and familiarity with the local context render me a partial insider. I see myself as a compromised researcher (Griffin, 2012), neither fully inside nor fully outside. This dual identity comes with both strengths and limitations, drawing on Noh (2019), Islam (2000), and Smith (2004), I argue that insider/outsider status is fluid, relational, and historically situated. I introduce a three-step reflexive approach that includes: (1) endogenous reflexivity- acknowledging my identity and training; (2) cultural and historical immersion to mitigate misrepresentation; and (3) attentiveness to the lived experiences and strategic silences of participants. I engage with Butz and Besio’s (2004) notion of “transcultural knowers” to highlight how Garo women navigate narratives on their own terms. This paper calls for more critical engagement with positionality in South Asian research contexts, especially among dominant-group researchers working with marginalized communities. In articulating the “in-betweenness” of my positionality, I offer an analytical lens to reconceptualize feminist research ethics and power within familiar geographies.
Fairuz Sharif, Ph.D. Candidate (ABD) at the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies in University of Ottawa.