Interviewing as Becoming: Diffractive Analysis of Interviews With South Korean Adolescents on Race and Racism

Abstract

Revisiting task-based interviews from 2016, the authors explore the complexities of doing interviews with a particular emphasis on racial and ethnic issues among South Korean adolescents. The study shows that such interviews can go beyond simple information collection, transforming into an educational experience that addresses often-overlooked issues. Reanalyzing these interview experiences through the lens of Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism, the study illuminates the entanglement of all agencies involved and their collaborative becoming during interviews. By reading diffractively past interview transcripts with this perspective, this study offers new insights into the interview process, highlighting the dynamic intra-actions between human and non-human agents. This viewpoint contests the conventional belief that only humans play an active role in research and challenges the traditional notion of interviews merely serving as data collection tools for the researcher. Consequently, the study highlights the importance of researchers being sensitive and open while navigating the diffraction in intra-actions that are inherent in qualitative interviews.

Introduction: The Beginning with Returning

[It is] impossible to differentiate in any absolute sense between creation and renewal, beginning and returning, continuity and discontinuity, here and there, past and future (Barad, 2007, p. ix).

This study began with returning to mixed feelings of excitement, wonder, and confusions that the first author had encountered but had not fully recognized for more than 8 years. In 2016, the first author conducted task-based interviews with South Korean adolescents to explore how they racialize migrants (Kang, 2020). The interviews included open-ended questions and elicitation techniques that utilized images and tasks to facilitate students’ verbalization of their racial thinking (Barton, 2015). While taboo topics such as race and racism are likely to make participants offer vague generalities, using elicitation techniques during interviews helped to encourage participants to articulate their tacit ideas in complex ways (Barton, 2015; Johnson & Weller, 2002). Talking with images and tasks, participants seemed to be comfortable with and even enjoying sharing their thinking about racial issues. The first author was also excited to listen to unexpected stories of participants and fascinated with richness and dynamics in their ideas and conversation.

However, at the same time, the first author was also confused with her finding that something more than an interview happened in the process. During interviews, she thought facilitating participants to talk about racial/ethnic minorities was not merely an interview but rather an educational process through which participants were encouraged to talk about issues that are prevalent but rarely discussed at school. Working with deliberatively designed questions, interview materials, and tasks, participants were engaged to think about a range of racial issues. Wrapping up the interviews, many of them commented that the interview was enjoyable and meaningful to think about issues that they had never been asked about before. Listening to similar comments repeatedly, the first author was pleased to make the interview enjoyable and meaningful but was uncertain about what constituted a “meaningful” interview and whether it is appropriate or not. Although this confusion and uncertainty grew with interviews employing elicitation techniques, at the time, the first author struggled to find the proper language to identify those complicated feelings, leaving them unexplored until she talked with the second author. During a casual conversation to stay updated, the second author, a friend and colleague for over a decade, shared insights from her recent studies on new materialism. Listening to her work and new materialist theories revitalized the first author’s long-held but unexpressed feelings. Through this conversation, the first author finally found the appropriate language to navigate those complexities, inviting the second author to join her on this journey of revisiting previous interview experiences through the lens of new materialism.

Recently, new materialism has garnered increasing attention within qualitative research, presenting a fresh perspective on the relationship between the material world and human perception (Andersson et al., 2020; Fox & Alldred, 2015; Marn & Wolgemuth, 2017; O’Donnell & Sadlier, 2023; Schadler, 2019; Smith, 2019; Ulmer, 2016). By challenging the traditional Cartesian dualism that separates the observer from the observed, new materialism disrupts the anthropocentric notion that humans are the sole agents while non-human entities are passive objects. As a result, new materialism has prompted qualitative researchers to contemplate the entanglement of human and non-human agents in the research process.

By adopting the new-materialist perspective, emerging research has centered on showcasing the materiality of interviews through the documentation of how various non-human actors, such as technologies, devices, questionnaires, physical spaces, and other material elements, play a significant role in shaping the research (Marn & Wolgemuth, 2017; Nordstrom, 2015; Smith, 2019). Instead of viewing interviews as purely human-centered activities, researchers employing the new-materialist perspective recognize the agency and impact of these non-human agents. Additionally, prior studies have emphasized the relational aspect of research by examining ethical consequences of the research process (Daelman et al., 2020; O’Donnell & Sadlier, 2023), which include “a consideration of who these entanglements materially and psychologically effect, the futurities they make possible, and the possibilities they pass over in silence” (Rosiek, 2019, p. 88).

Thinking with new materialism prompted us to reexamine our past interview experiences and enabled us to articulate complex emotions and moments that we had previously struggled to identify. In particular, among a range of new-materialist theorists, Karen Barad’s (2003, 2007) theory of agential realism offered valuable insights into understanding interviews not merely as a researcher’s inquiries with participants but as a process in which all human and non-human agents are intertwined together. To explore this further, we revisited the interview transcripts from 2016 and analyzed the data through the lens of agential realism. By doing so, this study demonstrates how the agential cut reveals alternative perspectives for comprehending our data in unforeseen ways.

Theoretical Frameworks: Karen Barad’s Agential Realism

Karen Barad’s critique of representationalism stems from her perspective as a feminist new materialist. Representationalism, deeply rooted in Western civilization, suggests that language can accurately represent the external world (Davies, 2018; Jackson, 2018). It assumes a separation between knowers and things, establishing words as an intermediary between them. Things exist independently with inherent determinate properties; knowers are situated outside the world observing and representing things, and words serve as a reflection of these properties. However, Barad (2003) believes that representationalism’s static triadic relationship between things, knowers, and words creates the problem of portraying matter as immutable and passive waiting to be represented. Furthermore, it fails to accurately describe the actual functions of discursive practices. As a response, Barad (2003, 2007) presents “agential realism,” which emphasizes the performative nature of matter. It introduces concepts such as “intra-actions” to illustrate the dynamic interplay between agencies and “diffraction” to recognize how the agencies are entangled and changed in the process.

Agential realism suggests that matter is not passive but actively involved in the production of reality (Barad, 2003, 2007). This claim may seem peculiar for one who associates the concept of matter with things like pencils, cups, and chairs. However, these things are the outcome of the iterative materialization of matter, the process that allows matter to be recognized as a fixed entity (Hong, 2021). Matter itself is “not a thing [but rather] a congealing of agency,” and it is in a constant state of differentiation and transformation within its entanglement with other matter (Barad, 2007, p. 210).

Matter intra-acts with other agencies, including matters, bodies, ideas, and more, and forms a larger material arrangement (Barad, 2007). Intra-action refers to the dynamic, entangled, and co-constitutive relationships that emerge among these agencies. It differs from the conventional understanding of interaction, where distinct agencies with fixed boundaries influence each other. Instead, the concept of intra-action emphasizes the ontological inseparability and the impossibility of pre-existing relata before their relation (p. 429). The boundaries, properties, and meanings of entities are not predetermined or given but rather delineated within complex agential intra-actions.

It is through agential cuts that ontological indeterminacy is resolved and distinct forms of matter emerge (Barad, 2007). The agential cuts are “boundary-drawing processes” undertaken within specific material (re)configurations. This brings a distinction between subject and object, “[enacting] a causal structure among components of a phenomenon” (p. 140). Obviously, the boundaries formed through intra-action are not fixed or immutable, but rather open to change. Even if certain agencies may appear to have distinct outlines, they do not establish absolute exteriority with each other, nor do they possess independent identities since they are all part of the same phenomenon (Park, 2023). As entangled agencies are viewed as mutually constituted, the primary ontological unit of agential realism becomes a ‘phenomenon,’ rather than an individual entity (Barad, 2007, p. 139). ‘Phenomenon’ here does not refer to the phenomenological sense of ‘something appearing in consciousness,’ but rather to the primitive relations of the world (Rhee, 2021).

In this sense, practices of knowing cannot be mere representations from a distance but enactments of agential cuts through direct material engagement with the world (Barad, 2007, p. 149). ‘Objects’ do not exist as independent entities prior to their encounter with the ‘subject,’ but both are co-constituted from the phenomenon through intra-actions. To ‘know’ something, one engaged in intra-actions should cautiously intervene in it with an apparatus that (re)configures the world and respond differentially to what matters. Once matter, apparatuses, bodies, and so on form certain material (re)configurations, knowledge is created on the surface of intra-actions as their condensations.

Apparatuses play a significant role in determining what becomes matter and what does not, particularly in the world’s differentiating movement. It is an interconnected set of discourses, practices, instruments, etc., that enacts specific exclusionary boundaries and provides meaning to certain concepts, thereby affecting both materiality and intelligibility (Barad, 2003). For instance, the behavior of light can be articulated either as a particle or a wave, depending on the measuring apparatus used. This illustrates that the properties of the measured objects cannot be separated from the measuring apparatus, and measurements as a practice of knowing no longer merely reveal the inherent properties of individual objects transparently. Put differently, when a researcher observes an object, the very act of observation becomes intertwined and influences what is being observed (Barad, 2007, p. 185).

Barad (2007) employs the concept of diffraction to explain the nature of knowing. Diffraction, normally referring to waves bending or spreading as they encounter obstacles, implies that our knowledge is not merely a reflection of what is reflected back to us as it is, but rather “materially engaging as part of the world in giving it a specific material form” (p. 91) and actively making differences in the world. The way I know about the world affects both my own and the object’s modes of being, and what is known (epistemology) is inextricably linked to what matters (ontology). Our task, then, is to develop a response-ability to the entangled phenomena. This involves an understanding of the interlocking of ontology, epistemology, and ethics and consideration of the way to respond “to the possibilities that might help us and [the world] flourish” (Barad, 2007, p. 396).

Method

Data Sources

This study draws from diffractive readings of a previous interview study that focused on the racialization of migrants by ethnic Korean students (Kang, 2020). The original study, conducted in 2016, involved open-ended, task-based interviews with 32 ethnic Korean adolescents residing in four different cities in South Korea, namely Seoul, Ansan, Pyeongnae, and Iksan. To facilitate a comfortable and interactive environment for the participants, the first author conducted all of the interviews in groups consisting of 2–3 students who were acquainted with each other. This approach was chosen to encourage open dialogue among participants and to observe the group dynamics that contribute to the collective racialization of migrants by peers.

During the interviews, to facilitate students’ verbalization of their thinking about race and racism, the first author utilized elicitation techniques that use visual, verbal, or written stimuli to encourage participants to share their ideas (Barton, 2015, p. 180). During each interview, two tasks were administered alongside open-ended questions. The first task involved presenting participants with five photos, one at a time, depicting various interactions between ethnic Korean and non-ethnic Korean students or teachers. For each photo, participants were asked three questions: (1) to describe what is happening in the photo, (2) to speculate on the thoughts of the person in the photo, and (3) to speculate on why the person in the photo came to South Korea. The purpose of these questions was to explore how participants categorized migrants based on their own perspectives before any predetermined categories were introduced in the subsequent task.

The second task requested participants to rank five groups of migrants (migrant workers, marriage migrants, North Korean refugees, Joseonjok, and international students) in terms of the perceived level of difficulty they face when living in South Korea. Participants were then asked to provide explanations for their rankings. Following this, participants were invited to share any thoughts that came to mind when thinking about each group of migrants. After completing the two tasks, participants were asked to discuss their personal experiences with migrants, their perspectives on racism in South Korea, and their opinions on the debate surrounding the improvement of rights for migrant children.

Process of Diffractive Analysis

This study adopts the “diffractive analysis” (Barad, 2007) to investigate how all the involved agencies were becoming with one another throughout the course of interviews. “Diffractive analysis” is a methodology that attends to differences and entanglement within a constantly changing world (Barad, 2007). This methodology posits that data is not a passive substance awaiting interpretation by the researcher but a co-constituting force that shapes the process of inquiry in an intra-action with a researcher (Lenz Taguchi, 2012). Therefore, instead of trying to derive a singular absolute truth from the data, it seeks to generate differences and redirect knowledge through agential cuts during the intra-action process (Koro-Ljungberg, 2016). It also tries to read insights “through” one another to understand how differences are constructed, what is excluded, and how these differentiations and exclusions shape the materialization of a phenomenon (Barad, 2011, p. 452). With the methodology, this study aims to revisit the unexplained feelings from the previous study (Kang, 2020), engaging with the data using other optics, and observing what differences emerge.

In order to conduct diffractive analysis, we revisited the interview data collected in 2016, incorporating Barad’s concepts of entanglement, intra-action, and agential cut (Barad, 2007). As researchers trained in traditional qualitative methods, we initially struggled to depart from our familiar analytical approach. During the first round of analysis, we focused on documenting how discourse and materials influenced the interview process individually. However, we discovered that this attempt to separate discourse from materials reflected a dualistic perspective prevailing in a human-centered approach. For example, in examining the agentic roles of photographs during interviews, it became clear that the conversation was co-constructed not solely by the photos themselves but also by the interviewer’s following questions and comments, as well as the responses from other participants. In this dynamic, material and discourse were inseparable, collectively shaping each moment of the interview. Therefore, instead of analyzing the distinctive effects of discourse and material, we shifted our focus in the second round of analysis, to examine how differing agencies—the researcher, participants, and materials—were transforming throughout each interview. Yet again, we found that when thinking with Barad’s theory, it became apparent that the researcher and the researched, subject and object, and human and non-human cannot be neatly separated from one another. For instance, when analyzing the researcher’s becoming during the interviews, it was impossible to describe the researcher’s changes without also considering the evolving participants and the shifting connotations of the photos. Together, the researcher, participants, and interview materials were interwoven, shaping each other in a continuous intra-action where the boundaries between agencies were constantly being redefined.

To resolve this issue, drawing insight from previous research articles utilizing diffractive analysis (Daelman et al., 2020; Mazzei, 2013; O’Donnell & Sadlier, 2023; Schadler, 2019), we decided to “stop… separate the elements of the mangle” (Hekman, 2010, p. 26) in order to illustrate the entanglement of all agents involved. Instead of analyzing these relationships as interaction between separate entities, we opted to capture specific moments that exemplify the entanglement and report them as vignettes to demonstrate the complexities. After that, we organized the vignettes with similar themes and grouped them together. Based on these groupings, we identified three main findings and assigned names to these clusters of vignettes, as shown in the Finding section.

Becoming More Racial with Interviews

Racializing Questions and Reactions: “Do They Seem Like Koreans?”

As described in the methods section, the interviews began with photo elicitation, where the researcher used photos and relevant questions to help participants express their thoughts on the discussed topics. The study specifically examined students’ perceptions of migrants, so the photos selected depicted school activities involving individuals from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds. However, contrary to the researcher’s anticipation, the participants did not primarily concentrate on the ethnicity or race of the individuals in the photos during the interviews. Initially, their attention was more dispersed and less focused on those aspects. But, entangled with researcher’s questions and reactions focusing on race and ethnicity, participants began paying attention to ethnic/racial relations in the photo as shown in Vignette 1.

[Vignette 1] Three boys in Pyeongnae, talking about photo #1

Interviewer: I’m going to show you guys a photo, and I want you to freely express your thoughts that come to mind. There are no right answers, and I don’t even know what’s happening in the photo. So, [showing the photo] what do you think they’re doing?

Minwoo: Does he resemble my friend? Doesn’t he look like Bruno Mars?

Dongmin: Hehe.

Jae-Jin: So, this friend... It seems like he’s showing something interesting on his phone and saying, “Hey, this is fun.”

Si-Kyung: What is he holding?

Duk-Soo: He’s showing something interesting on his phone, I think.

Jae-Min: While smiling.

Interviewer: Do they seem like Koreans?

Jae-Jin & Dongmin: No?

Duk-Soo: No.

Interviewer: Why do you think they are in Korea?

Duk-Soo: Are they in Korea?

Interviewer: Oh, this is a Korean classroom, by the way.

Duk-Soo: There could be various reasons. Maybe because of their parents’ occupation... or something like that?

Jae-Jin: They could be mixed-race.

Duk-Soo: Maybe they want to study about Korea?

Si-Kyung: One person is Korean, and the other is a foreigner.

Duk-Soo: They could be mixed-race.

Si-Kyung: Or maybe they’re exchange students...

Duk-Soo: They could be exchange students.

In the above vignette, Minwoo initiated the conversation by pointing out the resemblance between the person in the photo and his friend. The focus of the conversation shifted to discussing the behavior of the person who was shown to be engaged with something interesting on their phone. This deviation from the researcher’s expectations prompted the interviewer to redirect the participants’ attention by asking if the individuals in the photo appeared to be Koreans (“Do they seem like Koreans?”). When the participants responded negatively, the interviewer followed up with another question, inquiring about the reasons for the foreign-looking person being in Korea (“Why do you think they are in Korea?”). This line of questioning emphasized their perceived foreignness and inadvertently contributed to participants perceiving migrants as “the Other.” This racialization of participants’ attention was also evident in the subsequent conversation.

[Vignette 2] Three boys in Pyeongnae, talking about the photo #2

Source: https://www.hnews.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=38041

Interviewer: Okay. What do you think they’re doing in the next photo?

Si-kyung: It looks like they’re at an elementary school...

Jae-Jin: Is someone asking the other person to look at this picture?

Si-kyung: Self-study time.

Duk-Soo: It seems like they’re asking how to do something and explaining it.

Jae-Jin: Sign language.

Dongmin: How do you know it’s sign language?

Jae-Jin: Sign language interpreter?

Dongmin: This person couldn’t speak, so they used sign language... That’s what I see.

Jae-Jin: So, they can’t communicate with each other.

Interviewer: Can’t communicate? Who? The boy?

Jae-Jin & Dongmin: The girl.

Jae-Jin: They can’t communicate because...

Si-kyung: Or maybe it’s part of the learning process. If this person looks at this and explains it to the other person, then the other person draws based on the explanation...

Interviewer: Why do you think he came to Korea?

Duk-Soo: Actually, I had a friend like this. She looked similar and... when I was in elementary school, there was a little girl who came to our school in the second grade. I think she came because of their parents’ job.

Interviewer: You have quite a lot of experiences. Interesting.

A similar pattern was observed in Vignette 2, where participants’ focus on sign language was redirected through the interviewer’s questions, which unintentionally served to otherize non-ethnic Koreans as foreigners. When Duk-Soo shared his personal experience of meeting a friend with migrant parents, the interviewer acknowledged it as “interesting,” inadvertently encouraging further discussion about migrants. In this way, although there were multiple ways in which participants could have engaged with the photo, the study’s focus, research design, and the interviewer’s questions and reactions framed their attention in a manner that emphasized race and ethnicity. This racialized framing influenced the participants’ perception of migrants and reinforced a sense of otherness.

Consequently, as the conversation progressed, participants were more inclined to discuss the race and ethnicity of non-ethnic Koreans in the photos when presented with subsequent images, compared to the initial photos. This tendency is demonstrated in the following conversation.

[Vignette 3] Three boys in Pyeongnae, talking about photo #4

Interviewer: Okay. [showing photo #4] So, what do you think they’re doing?

Jae-Jin: It looks like they’re causing a commotion in the school office, holding a fan. They seem happy receiving the fan.

Si-Kyung: This is definitely an exchange student. First of all, the school itself...

Duk-Soo: Actually, it’s not very common for foreigners to gather like this, right? It’s not even an exchange student, but more like an experiential activity...

Si-Kyung: Might be international school?

Different from the initial conversation, right after being presented with the photo, participants immediately tended to discuss the foreignness of the non-ethnic Koreans in the photo and speculate about the reasons for their presence in Korea. This occurred even without the interviewer asking any redirecting questions. This indicates that participants are in the process of becoming with the interview, learning what aspects to focus on and how to discuss the topic. As a result, some participants displayed a tendency to interrupt others’ contributions if they felt it deviated from the study’s focus, redirecting the conversation similar to how the interviewer did in the earlier conversation.

[Vignette 4] Three boys in Seoul, talking about discrimination against Blacks in Korea

Interviewer: Yeongphil, do you have any thoughts? Do you think there is discrimination against races other than Black?

Yeongphil: No, I think Koreans face discrimination.

Interviewer: Huh? By whom?

Yeongphil: By other Koreans.

Interviewer: Koreans discriminate against fellow Koreans?

Yeongphil: When Korean guys encounter someone who is Korean and has a Black sister or a White sister...

Wonbin: But there are also instances of (gestures with money).

Yeongphil: That’s true. (Laughs) There is also a lot of discrimination based on women’s bodies or faces.

Wonbin: (talking to Yeongphil) The question was about racial discrimination...

Interviewer: Right. But isn’t discrimination based on women’s bodies and such also a form of racial discrimination?

Yeongphil: It disregards Koreans. Koreans disregard other Koreans.

Interviewer: Okay. The last question is … (jumping to the next question)

In this conversation, when Yeongphil began discussing discrimination based on gender and appearance, Wonbin interrupted him and restated the focus of the question, followed by the interviewer reiterating the focus as well. As Barad (2007) highlighted, in the study, participants’ conversation was not simply a reflection of their individual thoughts, but rather a co-constitution of entangled agencies including the researcher, participants, questions, reactions, etc.

In this way, the above vignettes reveal that not only the interviewer but also the participants gained a deeper understanding of the topic under discussion. Instead of simply waiting to be comprehended by the researchers, participants attentively listened to the interviewer’s questions, responded to their concerns, and actively engaged with the interviewer’s inquiries, reactions, and the interview materials themselves. As such, participants embarked on a learning journey to better address the questions posed and enhance their understanding of the topic.

Intra-acting Photos: “The Other Friends Behind Them Seem Very Close”

In the study, the role of photos extended beyond their traditional function of prompting questions or eliciting reactions from participants. Rather than being passive tools used to extract responses, the photos actively contributed to the interview process, significantly influencing how the interviews unfolded. They served as active agents, framing the participants’ perceptions of the research topic and shaping the direction of the discussions. Thus, the photos were not mere instruments for gathering information but rather agencies that actively shaped and influenced the interview dynamics, as illustrated in Vignette 5.

[Vignette 5] Two girls in Seoul, talking about photo #2

Interviewer: What kind of conversation do you think they’re having right now?

Yumi: They don’t seem to get along well.

Interviewer: How do you know that?

Yumi: The other friends behind them seem very close... They also appear to be distant from each other.

Mina: The girl seems to be explaining something, and the boy seems to be contradicting her. It feels like he’s upset...

Interviewer: What do you think the boy is thinking right now?

Yumi: He seems annoyed. (Laughs)

Interviewer: And what about the girl?

Mina: She seems to be explaining earnestly, but the boy doesn’t seem to understand, which makes her feel bad. He doesn’t seem to grasp what she’s saying.

Interviewer: Hmm...

Mina: In any case, neither of their expressions looks good.

During the conversation, Yumi confidently discussed the inter-racial relationship depicted in the photo when asked to speculate about what the students might be talking about. Interestingly, the interviewer did not explicitly instruct participants who to focus on among the individuals in the photo, yet Yumi instinctively centered her attention on the inter-racial dynamic. This can be attributed to the active role of the photo itself, as it subtly directed the attention towards the peer with a different ethnic background positioned prominently in the foreground, while placing the co-ethnic group in the background. This framing by the photo influenced participants’ recognition of the researched topic, emphasizing the significance of inter-racial relationships within the context being explored. Additionally, this vignette highlights how participants’ perceptions of certain individuals in the photo intra-acted with the presence of other (non)human agents. Yumi perceived a potential lack of harmony between the ethnic Korean girl and the Black boy, as she observed that their physical distance appeared greater compared to “the other friends behind them.”

Furthermore, the intra-action triggered by the photos also actively reshaped participants’ experiences, perceptions, and memories. The photos utilized during the interviews served as powerful reminders, prompting participants to recall specific memories and experiences from their own lives or those of their family and friends. These recollections were then rearranged and reinforced by the interview, aligning with the direction and focus of the study, as exemplified in Vignette 6.

[Vignette 6] Two boys in Iksan, talking about photo #5

Source: https://www.jungle.co.kr/magazine/16271

Interviewer: Okay, the next photo. What do you think they’re doing?

Seong: Isn’t this that thing: foreigners come to elementary schools and teach classes?

Yong: Isn’t this about spreading a message? Like a religious message? “Believe in Christ, everyone.”

Seong: (talking to Yong) “Do you know the truth?”

Interviewer: Ah... Seong, are they teaching something cultural to people from other countries?

Seong: Oh, it’s not someone from a foreign country. It’s, um... multicultural... what do you call it... where one person is Korean and the other is from a different country... what should I say? Anyway, I’ve seen something like this before... My younger sibling had an experience like this. Their friend’s mother was from a foreign country, and she came to their school to teach a class.

The picture intentionally placed a Brown adult male as the focal point, with most of the other Asian-looking students depicted as observing him. This deliberate arrangement guided the participants’ attention towards the adult, who stood out due to his skin color and clothing. The photo conveyed that he was the primary figure and different from the rest, prompting the participants to determine his identity. The picture evoked memories for two participants from their past experiences: one recalled interacting with a “foreigner” who taught “multicultural” lessons, and the other remembered meeting someone who shared religious teachings. Whether “religious” or “multicultural,” the image drew participants’ attention to the adult’s unique cultural and ethnic attributes. The photo also rekindled a memory of his younger sibling’s encounter when a friend’s mother visited their class to teach about her own culture. This memory of his sibling’s experience, previously overlooked, was reanimated and rearranged with the frame of a “multicultural” context. This process is not merely a simple recollection, but rather a dynamic event where new meanings and realities emerge within a specific material arrangement. Latent memories undergo materialization through intra-active entanglement of the interviewer, participants, photos, and interview questions, where both the memory and its material expression are constituted. This materialization engenders the determination of ontological indeterminacies, resulting in a reconfiguration of temporality where past experiences acquire new significance in the present context. In this way, the participants’ memories and experiences were reinvigorated through the intertwined intra-actions among the photographs, the interviewer, and the participants.

Racially Informed With Interviews: “I am Like Such a Prejudiced Person”

At first, during the interviews, participants had a vague perception of migrants. Despite having in/direct experiences with migrants, they were unable to associate these experiences with the concept of ‘migrants.’ Essentially, participants’ initial perceptions approximated a collection of disparate senses and limited ideas.

The interview process, however, introduced various apparatuses that afforded participants opportunities to integrate and articulate their previously diffuse perceptions. After completing the task with the photos that steered the participants toward discussing race/ethnicity, they were given a second task involving five categories of migrants in Korea (migrant workers, marriage migrants, North Korean refugees, Joseonjok, international students), some of which were unfamiliar to the participants. This task entailed arranging these groups in order of perceived difficulty in living in Korea. As these categories, which distinguished migrants based on their visa types, were unfamiliar to the participants, the interviewer had to provide clarifications about their identities. Through engagement with these categories, participants began to specifically differentiate entities they had previously conceived vaguely as a homogeneous category of ‘foreigners.’ In effect, they acquired methods to identify, categorize, and articulate the differences among migrants and how mainstream discourse in South Korean society frames each migrant group.

This phenomenon suggests that participants’ perceptions of migrants are not fixed but are dynamically re/constituted through intra-action with various materials provided in the research context. Participants underwent the process of forming and verbalizing their understanding of migrants through apparatuses such as photos, classification systems, and questions presented by the interviewer. While traditional research paradigms posited that participants already enacted perceptions of migrants and that the interviewer’s role was to uncover these through interviews, this study indicates that participants’ perceptions of migrants are not simply ‘discovered.’ Rather, these perceptions can be viewed as being ‘performatively produced’ within the entanglement of participants’ experiences, memories, research apparatuses, and the researchers’ theoretical framework (Mazzei, 2016).

Concurrently, the exercise of working with migrant categories also led the interviewer to unexpectedly confront her own biases. When discussing different migrant groups, such as the “Joseonjok” and “marriage migrants,” the interviewer’s own racialized perceptions of each group were inadvertently revealed.

[Vignette 7] Two boys in Iksan

Interviewer: Well... okay. I’m going to give you this [the listing of five migrant groups: marriage migrant, migrant workers, North Korean refugee, Joseonjok, and international students] now. It contains information about foreigners who recently come to Korea. They are a group of foreigners... Is there anything you might not know about them?

Yong: What is “Joseonjok”?

Interviewer: “Joseonjok” are people from the same ethnic group as us, who used to live in the border areas of China and Korea. They have lived there for a long time since the Joseon Dynasty and have recently come here...

Yong: Marriage immigrants.

Interviewer: Okay. Marriage immigrants are people who came to Korea to get married. Now, I want the two of you to discuss and arrange them in order of who you think have the most difficult time adapting and living in Korea. Would you like to discuss it together? (Discussion in progress)

Yong: “Joseonjok”... I don’t know much about them...

Interviewer: (interrupting) Well... if you don’t know, you don’t have to include them. Or if both of you don’t know, you can just leave them out.

Seong: I have a question. What about the language of “Joseonjok”? Do they speak our language or the Chinese? Interviewer: They speak our language, but with a slight North Korean accent or dialect... because they come from the border areas... If you don’t know, it’s okay to leave them out. It doesn’t matter.

As committed to reducing racial injustice in South Korea and beyond, the interviewer had never considered herself as harboring prejudices towards racialized communities. However, during the aforementioned interview, she inadvertently revealed her biases when Yong asked her about the language use of Joseonjok. The participant’s question brought the interviewer’s perception of Joseonjok to light, as she characterized them as “speak[ing] our language, but with a slight North Korean accent,” aligning with prevailing societal views in South Korea. Nevertheless, she did not recognize her bias until a participant in another interview challenged her portrayal by recounting a personal experience with a Joseonjok friend whose speech, they argued, was not markedly different.

[Vignette 8] Three boys in Pyeongnae

Interviewer: Now, these are about the foreigner groups you mentioned who come to Korea. Is there anything you might not know about them?

Jae-Jin: Joseonjok.

Deok-su: These are people who went to China... In the past, during the Joseon Dynasty, they moved to the Hwabuk region [Northern part of China], right? So, these people lived in China...

Interviewer: Actually, these people can also be included as migrant workers. They are people who lived elsewhere and came here.

Deok-su: I have a friend who is Joseonjok.

Interviewer: Really? How did you meet?

Deok-su: We were in the same class at our school. (…) What surprised me was that he spoke Chinese when talking on the phone with his mom, when we were together...

Interviewer: Was he good at speaking Korean?

Deok-su: He was constantly studying Chinese. He was studying it... Actually, I think he obtained Chinese citizenship.

Interviewer: Did he adapt well to school life?

Deok-su: It was the same as anyone else.

Interviewer: Usually, the way they speak is different, right? For Joseonjok.

Deok-su: His way of speaking wasn’t that different, especially that friend...

The conversation allowed the interviewer to confront and reconsider her own perception of the Joseonjok community. As the interview progressed, she realized that her well-intentioned explanation inadvertently reinforced stereotypes about the Joseonjok. Consequently, she chose to remove the Joseonjok from the list of migrant groups in subsequent interviews, aiming to prevent the perpetuation of stereotypes about this community. This adjustment can be said to exemplify the enactment of an agential cut within the interview. Given the influential nature of the interviewer’s explanation on the participants’ perceptions, the change in the interviewer’s vocabulary newly delineated the boundaries between what is possible and what will be excluded, thus reconfiguring the interview space (Marn & Wolgemuth, 2023). Furthermore, the interviewer’s evolving understanding and subsequent methodological change demonstrate her response-ability. This indicates that she tried to be accountable for the world-making practices of her research (Barad, 2007; Daelman et al., 2020), while simultaneously performing a ‘becoming-with’ the participants.

The interviews not only facilitated the interviewer to confront her own biases but also prompted participants to recognize and confront both their own prejudices about migrants and those held by others.

[Vignette 9] Two girls in Seoul, talking about photo #5

https://m.siminilbo.co.kr/news/newsview.php?ncode=179561487066946

Interviewer: What do you think the [ethnic Korean-looking] students in this photo are thinking?

Mina: They are curious about who the man [non-ethnic Korean adult] is.

Yumi: I feel like, honestly, students are thinking that why this kind of man is teaching me (laughs). I am like such a prejudiced person (laughs). Yumi’s observation during the interview highlights how participants, through engaging in discussions and sharing their perspectives, started to acknowledge and confront their preconceived notions and biases towards migrants that they had not previously been aware of. In Vignette 10, some participants demonstrated their awareness of migrant issues by identifying a peer’s comment as “ethnocentrism” and urging him to consider the perspective of migrants:

[Vignette 10] Three boys in Pyeongnae, sharing their opinions on the bill enhancing the rights of migrant children

Jae-Jin: I think it would be better not to provide it [the bill]. (…) It’s a different country, so why... why should we provide it?

Si-Kyung: Isn’t this ethnocentrism? Hehe.

Deok-su: (talking to Jae-Jin) Imagine yourself going to another country.

Interviewer: But this reason was one of the major forces of opposition.

Si-Kyung: We are already struggling to make a living...

Jae-Jin: Our country... We are already busy filling our own plates...

Interviewer: This reason was the most prevalent. If we had a lot of money, we would provide it, but we don’t have money, so why... why do it? That’s the reason. What do you think?

Si-Kyung: If there were some regulations and more maintenance... It might be okay. It’s just that right now, it feels like we’re just providing without any control... I know that there is a foreign lawmaker in the National Assembly even now...

Interviewer: Ah, Jasmine Lee, the lawmaker.

Si-Kyung: The bill she proposed... It feels like they’re providing too much to foreigners without any filtering...

In addition, the interviews included questions about participants’ opinions on various current issues pertaining to migrants, such as racism in Korea and the bill for undocumented children. By engaging in conversation about these topics with their peers and the interviewer, participants had the opportunity to develop a more informed understanding of migrants and the challenges they face, as demonstrated:

[Vignette 11] Two boys in Ansan

Interviewer: This is the final question. Recently, there was a proposal to provide free healthcare and education for foreign students of your age, regardless of their nationality or even if they are undocumented. But it faced strong opposition, and it couldn’t go through. Do you think this legislation is necessary? Or...

Hyun: I think it’s absolutely necessary.

Siwoo: I think it’s necessary too.

Interviewer: Why?

Siwoo: They are the same people. Why do we need to treat them differently just because they are foreigners?

Interviewer: Even if they are undocumented?

Siwoo: I don’t think they are undocumented... I believe that if they entered the country legally, they should receive such benefits.

Interviewer: Why don’t you think the same for undocumented individuals?

Siwoo: Undocumented individuals... well, they have violated the law, so... since they have already violated the law, there's no need to provide them with free education or such. Undocumented individuals...

Interviewer: But should it be provided to others?

Siwoo: Yes.

Interviewer: And what about Hyun?

Hyun: I think it should be provided to everyone.

Interviewer: Why?

Hyun: Whether they are undocumented or not, they might have their circumstances... I saw it in a movie, (inscrutable). While watching movies... Oh... It was shocking... Those people who were labeled as undocumented had their wages cut and were disregarded... It was quite shocking... Do well-off people really engage in undocumented activities? It's the impoverished and struggling people who have no choice but to do so. Do the well-off people really engage in undocumented activities? In the United States, for example, they don’t provide healthcare... My mom saw it in the news... My parents saw it... They said a child died because of a tooth cavity... What would happen to those people if they weren't provided with healthcare? It’s just... In our country, no one dies from a tooth cavity. It was baffling. So, I think it should be provided to everyone.

Interviewer: But the reason people opposed it was that if our country were wealthy, we would provide it. But we are also financially struggling. We can’t even support our own impoverished children, so why should we do it for foreigners? What do you think about this?

Hyun: That’s something the well-off people should consider. In our country, the rich live well, and the poor struggle. That seems to be the issue. If we look at the companies in our country... When they are told to pay more taxes, they find ways to avoid it. It’s the same with politicians... They are all the same...

The interview seemed to provide participants with a platform to develop their own perspectives on migrant-related issues in navigating different viewpoints. Through the interview, by collectively discussing racial issues in their lives and society, both participants and the interviewer had the chance to reframe the conceptual boundaries of “migrant” and gain a more nuanced understanding of the current challenges faced by migrants, compared to their understanding prior to participating in the interviews. Marn and Wolgemuth (2017) have described interviews as “purposeful entanglements” with the potential to transform participants by making explicit and challenging their perceptions and orientations. This interview, too, became a performative practice that reconfigured how participants think and talk about migrants. These changes hold the potential to lead to shifts in how participants approach and interact with migrants in their daily lives, and further, they encompass the possibility of reconstituting societal discourses and practices regarding migrants.

Discussion

A diffractive analysis of the past interviews indicates that the act of interviewing extends beyond just a researcher’s inquiries directed at participants. Instead of waiting passively for interpretations from researchers, participants actively intra-acted with the material-discursive assemblages of the researcher’ questions and responses, the interview settings and materials, and the bodily and verbal reactions of their fellow participants, etc. As Mazzei (2013) notes, a voice “does not emanate from a singular subject but is produced in an enactment among research-data-participants-theory-analysis” (p. 732). Engaging in the interviews altered not only participants’ perceptions of migrants but also their relationality with the topic and the racialized world. In addition, during the interviews, the researcher also constantly had intra-active encounters with the material and non-material agents, which led her to confront previously unrecognized biases about migrants. This process resulted in changes to her interview questions and techniques. Furthermore, this study emphasizes that interview materials were not mere mediations to facilitate participants’ responses but agents who were deeply engaged in constituting interviews. For instance, photographs were more than mere triggers; they significantly influenced the conversation and affected the participants’ views on the researched topic. During this process, all agents, both human and non-human, intertwined, fostering a heightened racial sensitivity and becoming-with.

The interview, as demonstrated, goes beyond simple information gathering; it is an active process of becoming, intertwined with the evolving dynamics of research. Using Barad’s terminology, researchers enact an “agential cut” during intra-actions among the human and non-human agents engaging in the interviews. The result of the interview was not merely the researcher’s enhanced understanding of students’ perspectives on migrants. Instead, it was the complex interplay and diffraction arising from intra-actions among participants, the researcher, the photos, theoretical frameworks, and beyond. This suggests that the act of interviewing is an active engagement in the world, capable of impacting both participants and researchers as well as the broader world. Barad (2007) suggests that “knowing is a matter of one part of the world making itself intelligible to another part of the world” (p. 185). Knowledge is never achieved in isolation but is always intertwined with the different forces coming together (Mazzei, 2013, p. 743). As this study illustrates, by engaging all participating agents with a process of becoming-with, interviews create new material-discursive realities, potentially leading to transformative effects for all agents involved (Lenz Taguchi, 2012).

This raises the ethical question of how researchers should engage with both human and non-human agents in intra-actions, and what constitutes a more accountable and responsive approach to research. Considering that interviews as intra-actions not only co-constitute knowledge about the world but also influence the becoming of components, researchers need to be sensitive to how their agential cuts inscribe on the bodies within the intra-action. This requires researchers to carefully observe how the boundaries of participants’ perceptions of the researched topic are reconfigured and made visible. Furthermore, the researcher should be able to account for what the interview process made possible and what possibilities it excluded. The issue extends beyond simply obtaining approval from the IRB, which mandates seeking consent from participants, ensuring they refrain from sharing unwanted information, and pseudonymizing their data. Instead, it involves being attuned to how all involved agents are discursively and materially transformed through the intra-actions during the research process, while continuously exploring other possibilities that might help their becoming-with.

Barad’s (2007) insight of “ethico-onto-epistemology” suggests that our involvement in intra-actions and our knowledge-seeking decisions are inherently laced with ethical implications. This perspective compels qualitative researchers to recognize that their approach to studying and interpreting the world has ramifications on how the world is conceptualized and formed, a process intrinsically linked with ethical responsibility. This underscores the “response-ability” of researchers, which “entails ongoing responsiveness to the entanglements of self and other, here and there, now and then” (Barad, 2007, p. 394). Therefore, qualitative researchers need to acknowledge that ethnics is always present in every research moment and respond justly in each intra-active encounter (Barad, 2007). For instance, in the study, the researcher removed the category of Joseonjok from future interviews, after realizing that it racialized participants’ thinking of the group, particularly when they did not have prior knowledge about them. This adjustment exemplifies her agential cut that redefined the boundaries of the migrant groups, demonstrating her accountability and response-ability to the (non)human participants and the racialized world. Therefore, even when interviews deviate from initial expectations, it is important for researchers to have sensitivity and openness in navigating this diffraction in intra-actions, instead of disregarding them.

Conclusion

In this article, we employed diffractive analysis to highlight the entanglements of all agents involved in the interviews by examining data from previous interviews through a Baradian lens, personal experiences, and other texts with a focus on identifying patterns of difference (Barad, 2011, p. 445). This approach allowed us to uncover the multiple layers within the research data and analysis, demonstrating the methodological possibilities within qualitative research (Daelman et al., 2020, p. 487). By “cutting together apart” (Barad, 2011)—interweaving multiple theories with data to interpret them in relation to each other (Mazzei, 2013, p. 744)—diffractive analysis can add complexities to qualitative research, thereby enriching our understanding of the phenomena being studied (Fox & Alldred, 2023; Ulmer, 2016).

Specifically, diffractive analytic approach can help enhance multidimensionality in qualitative research involving integrating diverse methodologies and theories within a study to gain a comprehensive understanding of complex social phenomena (Ayrton, 2020; Frost et al., 2010). This methodological pluralism highlights the advantages of using various qualitative methods and theoretical frameworks together, as this combination addresses the limitations of single-method studies and captures multiple aspects of the research data (Frost, 2011; Frost & Nolas, 2011). In this case, by applying new-materialist insights from Karen Barad, we developed new questions and approaches to reanalyze data from a previous study. This allowed us to discover novel insights into interviews as a process of becoming-with, revealing aspects that had not been touched in the original study. This resonates with Palmer’s (2011) argument that “diffractive analysis cause data to change when transiting from one theoretical and methodological arena to another” (p. 3).

Recent research has started using diffractive analysis to enhance various methodological approaches, such as ethnography (Gullion, 2018) and multimodality (Vagg, 2022). For instance, by applying Barad’s concept of “diffraction” to ethnographic methods, Gullion (2018) develops “diffractive ethnography,” which focuses on the productive differences and effects of intra-actions rather than static representations. Similarly, Vagg (2022) demonstrates how diffractive analysis can advance multimodal methodologies. While multimodal research has emphasized incorporating diverse forms of (non)verbal data to capture the richness of human experience (Kara, 2020; Reavey, 2011), it frequently remains centered on human experiences rather than exploring the relational dynamics between human and non-human entities (Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Rieger et al., 2022, p. 3). In contrast, diffractive analysis investigates the intertwined and relational aspects of phenomena, underscoring the interconnectedness of human and non-human agents. Vagg’s (2022) work illustrates that incorporating diffractive analysis into multimodal studies facilitates an exploration beyond linguistic and textual elements, delving into multi-sensory experiences and uncovering the complex effects of (non)human agents.

Thus, diffractive analysis serves as a tool to uncover additional layers of complexity and nuance, thereby enhancing the depth and breadth of insights gained through conventional qualitative methodology. Engaging with new-materialist theories does not require researchers to abandon existing methodological tools, nor does the use of analytical research tools necessitate conducting representational research (Schadler, 2019, p. 220). Methodological syncretism, despite being ontologically and epistemologically challenging, can serve as a strategy for researchers, allowing them to experiment with different methodological knowledge and practices, thereby generating new ways of knowing, being, and conducting research (Smith, 2019). Consequently, by integrating diffractive analysis with established qualitative methods, researchers can uncover deeper insights and complexities that might be missed in single-method studies.