Crossing Boundaries: Outsider Positionality in Qualitative Research With Female Arab Police Officers

This article examines the intricacies of researcher positionality in a study of Arab women citizens serving in the Israeli Police Force. It highlights the multiple ways in which positionality - the researcher’s relationship with participants, ethno-nationality, gender and other intersecting identities, shapes the research process. Drawing on my own experiences as a secular Jewish woman from a middle-class academic background, I acknowledge the privilege that complicated my engagement in qualitative interviews with minoritized women within police stations. Situated within a feminist and postcolonial framework, the study is based on qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 40 female Arab police officers employed by the Israel Police. The interviews provide the empirical context through which the article reflects on the methodological and ethical dilemmas of researching minoritized women working within a highly contested state institution, highlighting my position as an outsider researcher who navigated both institutional access and personal unease, while entering and conducting research within police stations. The article explores the advantages and challenges of outsider research through the lens of boundary-crossing processes experienced by both the participants and myself as the researcher. It highlights how positionality shapes access to the field, the interview encounter, and the interpretation of participants’ experiences within politically sensitive institutional settings. In line with the aims of this Special Collection, the article contributes to advancing the discussion of Qualitative Methodologies of the South. By situating the research within the divided and conflictual context of Israeli society, it demonstrates how knowledge emerging from context which shares dynamics often associated with the Global South, rooted in complex cultural, historical and socio-political conditions, challenges dominant Western paradigms and enriches methodological diversity.