Visible and invisible borders in time and space. History, biography and work borders in a research career

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-03-2019-0106
• Pages: 676-691
• Published date: 19 August 2019
• Date: 19 August 2019
• Author: Geraldine Healy
• Subject Matter: Hr & organizational behaviour,Employment law

Visible and invisible borders in

time and space

History, biography and work

borders in a research career

Geraldine Healy

School of Business and Management,

Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to explore how biography influences professional and academic

development. It aimsto show how in different ways our experiences reflect the structures of society andthat

histories repeatthemselves with differentprotagonists and different preys.It uses the author’sownbiography

to argue thatin the author’s case, early influencesof Irish migration shapedsome of the decisions she madeand

her commitment toresearching inequalities. The paperalso asks how relevant are early life influences on the

careers of equality anddiversity academics?

Design/methodology/approach –This paper uses a biographical method that draws on a personal history

of migration and relates these to historical moments to show the interconnection between the self and wider

macro events.

Findings –The findingsof the paper show the relevanceand interconnectionof biography with the macroand

political context. The paper explores how an academic’s personal biography[1] and the multi-layered

relationshipbetween the self and the widermacro historical context haveinfluenced her research development.

It does this by using her personal stories of being part of an Irish community and shows how everyday

interactionsmay lead to a sense of being an outsider,of being other. Historyis used to show the multiple borders

that Irish and othermigrants experience, from biographic and diasporic borders, to violence andconflict and

finally to work borders including the link with the author’s research work. The paper argues that while the

targets of discrimination may change over time, contemporary events can intensify the devaluation and

othering of particular migrant groups.

Originality/value –Each biography has a unique element but the paper shows how individual biographies

are connected and interrelated with the macro level of analysis.

Keywords Inequality, History, Biographical research, Irish ethnicity, Irish migration, Autoethnography

Paper type Viewpoint

This paper is based on a tenth anniversary keynote address at the 2017 Equality, Diversity

and Inclusion (EDI) conference[2] in London. This was a particular honour for me as I had

presented the keynote at the first EDI conference in 2008[3]. It was a stimulating conference

devoted to the broad range of equality and diversity issues and one that enabled multi-

disciplinary researchers to meet and build networks across disciplinary borders. The 2008

EDI conference was a huge achievement at the time bringing together such a diverse and

talented range of scholars[4], some of whom worked in departments where they were

intellectually isolated. In the intervening years since that first EDI conference, equality and

diversity scholarship has thrived as more and more scholars, including doctoral students,

have been attracted to our field, often in the context of greater policy attention. This growth

enabled our field of study to build a strong foundation. This is no more evident than in my

own institution, Queen Mary University of London, where in 2005 we set up the Centre for

Research in Equality and Diversity, which continues to thrive[5].

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 38 No. 6, 2019

pp. 676-691

© Emerald PublishingLimited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-03-2019-0106

Received 18 March 2019

Revised 24 June 2019

Accepted 24 June 2019

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/2040-7149.htm

The author sincerelythanks the brilliant colleagues and friends withwhom she has worked and without

whom much of this work would not have been done. She gives particular thanks to her wonderful

daughters,Aideen and Ciara Silke, who read and madehelpful comments on an earlier draft.This part of

their story too, so their comments on the personal parts of thepaper were particularly valued.

676

EDI

38,6

My talk at the inaugural EDI conference was entitled “Inequalities in organisations –

moving forward or standing still? An intersectional analysis”; I concluded then, somewhat

pessimistically, that the work setting is firmly connected to increasingly remote relations of

domination and subordination in the wider society. However more ambivalently, I argued

that intersectional analysis can reveal the different ways that women and men at different

levels in the hierarchy and of different ethnicities, classes, ages, abilities and sexualities act

on organisational structures to reproduce discriminatory practices, but importantly also

seek to transform them (see Healy et al., 2018). My talk was very much influenced by Joan

Acker’s (2006a, b) work on inequality regimes, which alerted us to the challenges faced by

those confronting discriminatory practices, in the context that the organising processes that

produce inequalities are resilient and their reproduction is embedded in interactions and

practices. From Acker’s work, we know it is important to understand the mechanisms that

shape inequalities as well as their nature and consequences. However, it is also the case that

to challenge inequalities, organisational inequality regimes push women and men to adopt,

strategies of compliance or, conversely, oppositional stances. Through compliance, they

may inadvertently affirm stereotypes associated with their ethnicity and gender. Thus,

there is a sense that if those subject to discriminatory practices put up with unfair treatment,

their compliance is assumed and reproduction of this symbolic violence (see Al Ariss et al.,

2013; Tatli et al., 2014) is seen as acceptable. However, if they resist, they find themselves

punished for “not fitting in”, alienated and “othered”, a process that reflects and reinforces

organisational inequality regimes. Either way, they may find that they cannot win. Sadly,

many of the conclusions of my 2008 keynote talk hold good today; in some cases, even more

so, given the UK context of austerity since 2009 that has hit hardest those most

economically disadvantaged, often women and minority ethnic groups in particular.

Turning to EDI 2017, I was very taken with the conference theme of “borders”and its

flexibility as a concept with respect to equality and diversity. I therefore decided to organise

my lecture around a number of “border”themes, both personal and professional.

The personal reflected my own biography and the professional reflected my experience as

an academic researching inequalities and some of the projects on which I have worked.

Writing this professional insights paper has underlined that for me the personal is never far

from the professional. I also wondered how much this was the case for other equality and

diversity researchers.

The border themes allowed me to chart the interrelationship of different kinds of borders

and acknowledge the force of each. Moreover, the border theme fitted with my longstanding

multi-layered approach to research influenced by Layder (1993) (see Table I) which respects

both qualitative and quantitative traditions and the importance of history at each of the

layers of reality from the self to macro analysis.

Sometimes forgotten and unspoken are the biographical borders that shape our own

personal thinking and experiences which in turn are interconnected by an intersectional

sensibility derived from our gender, ethnicity and class but also from our sexuality, religion,

abilities and the borders that are constructed because of these characteristics (see Healy, 2015;

Healy et al., 2018). Thus, socially constructed borders resulting from our education, our working

experience and life generally have a life-time influence. The level of the “self”(Layder, 1993,

2006) is crucial in sociological thinking as is the relationship of the self to other levels of analysis.

Engaging with personal biographical or oral history research has its limitations (see for

example Robson, 2011, pp. 374-375). There is often some conflation with autoethnography.

Denzin (2006) has an eclectic and non-purist approach by showing that different

autoethnographers have very different purposes thus the term offers different ways

forward for different researchers and has no fixed meaning. Thus bringing the self into

narrative is a reflexive venture through which we are able to understand the relationship

between our lives and the societies in which we were brought up and lived and enables us to

677

Visible and

invisible

borders in time

and space