How to deal with autobiographical narrative interviews in the Euroidentity Research Project
How to deal with autobiographical narrative interviews in the Euroidentity Research Project

Summary/Abstract: The article contains a report of the second research workshop of our Euro-Identities project. The workshop took place immediately after collecting first data (pilot interviews). On the base of the digital recording of all sessions, the protocol carefully attempts to reconstruct the proceedings of the research workshop as a social arrangement for the generation of analytical knowledge. Therefore it can be read as a reconstruction of – in the sense of Alfred Schütz’ perspective of “Making Music Together” – “how to do together” analysis of autobiographical narrative interviews. The report dwells on the questions of how to get a first impression of the interviews, of how the European phenomenon is addressed in them and, of how to do the research steps of formal text sort analysis, structural description, analytical abstraction including the reconstruction of the overall biographical structuring and contrastive comparison. Although at this stage of analysis it is not dealt with the research step of constructing a theoretical model, phenomena of social worlds and social arenas, of European opportunity structures, of networking and establishing of social relationships, of transnational comparison, of transgressing cultural borders, of new professional initiatives and professional hybridization and of a non-essentialist self-identification with Europe are found.

• Details
• Contents