In order to get background information and be introduced before the interviews, I had several so-called “gatekeepers” among the workers in the projects. The main ones were
“Samaritana’s” coordinator, Lourdes, the social trainer Saddi and Marlene, the coordinator of “La Casa Hogar”. Even if I mention only 3, many people helped me throughout my fieldwork and interviews. This involved including me in discussions, explaining the customs and celebrations in Nicaragua, inviting me to their homes to eat and sing, driving me, taking away my louses and nits or even killing the rats in my room.
Lourdes, the “Samaritanas” coordinator, introduced me to the women and family members in an embarrassing moment at a general meeting one Friday morning, in which I had to talk in front of everyone about why and what I was doing there, while everyone was eating cake and celebrating a girl’s anniversary. Lourdes also advised me and revised my interview guide before starting with the process of interviewing the women. On many occasions she also kindly drove me to some of the women’s houses.
Without her help, even if it cost me some embarrassing moments about which I can laugh now, interviewing the women would have been impossible. My second gatekeeper is Saddi, who help me greatly when visiting the families. Thanks to her I could see the women’s homes, interview some of them, and I could share her Friday workshops with the children. From day one, my third main gatekeeper, Marlene gave me freedom to do workshops and interviews with the girls from the “House Home”. She not only allowed me to conduct the interviews, but also encouraged me to do so, thinking that it would be important to include teenagers in the research and hear their life stories.
5.2 METHODS
Although my main methods were participant observation, focus group discussions and life-story interviews, I will start this section by mentioning briefly the ways in which I acquired background information during my time in the field.
I was able to have informal conversations and an interview with the priest coordinator of The CEBS, Arnaldo Zenteno. He was one of the two forerunners of the
“Samaritanas” project and he told me about the history of Nicaragua and how the projects were designed accordingly. I also had a very good relationship with the
“Samaritana’s” workers with whom I had extremely interesting informal conversations about prostitution. Furthermore, I had the opportunity to read and photocopy some documents of both projects and some studies and booklets that were previously made by
“Samaritanas” about sexual exploitation. I was also in touch with a feminist organization in Managua “Puntos de Encuentro” that provided me with feminist’s documents from the country.
Concerning my main methods, I will start by outlining my use of participant observation. Participant observation is not only considered as a way to obtain information, but also a way to produce data thanks to the reflexive process between the researcher and the participants (Ameigeiras 2000 in Vasilachis 2006). In the beginning of my fieldwork, I primarily did participant observation which as I have pointed out before, became more active and interesting as time went by. Since I was dealing with a sensitive topic, I thought observing was a good way to start –and for a while it was the
only thing I could do–. In the end, it helped me to prepare for the interviews by building trust with my informants. Through participant observation, I gathered important background information about the women’s family, their notions of being a woman and about men, marriage and also prostitution.
When using focus group discussion, I applied this technique both with the adults, teenagers and pre-teenagers of the “Samaritanas” project, and with the girls in “La Casa Hogar”. My intention of using focus groups was to gain access to their beliefs about womanhood and manhood. I think this information could be better obtained by using this method than with a private interview, for the reason that one of the main benefits of using focus groups is that people build on each others responses and come up with information that would be less accessible without this group interaction.
Sadly, as this thesis has a maximum number of pages, I do not have enough space to comment the results as thoroughly as I would like to, although I will briefly mention some in the empirical part.
Finally I will describe here my main tool in this thesis which is life story interviews.
Charlotte Linde (1993) describes life stories as the stories and connections that people express when telling about their lives. The use of life stories has the advantage of stressing the point of view of the speaker. Social scientists use life stories not only to look at individual concrete cases but also to express and explore thorough an individual life, issues and problems of society (Gullestad, 1994). Hence, life stories can be used to analyze how people construct their identity as well as how do they construct and experience their world and may give important information about society.
I had several reasons for choosing life stories as my main instrument of work. First of all, using this method was a way of attempting to understand my informants through their own words, especially considering that identity can be perceived as the story we make about ourselves (Sharim, 2005). As identity is something we continually construct and reconstruct throughout our lives, life stories were used in order to gain information about my informants’ lives, which I consider more suitable for my intentions than using a formal structured interview. Second, in dealing with such a sensitive topic, I considered essential to let the informants choose the themes they would like to talk
about or not. To facilitate this, the use of life story was required because of its open character. Third, as my knowledge of this field of work and of Nicaragua was basic before travelling, using life stories prevented me from being prejudicial and of interfering in posing questions with my occidental point of view; whilst letting them play a more active role in the interview. Fourth and finally, the use of life stories can be a way to give voice to silenced groups in society (Ameigeiras, 2000). Women-in-prostitution are one of those silenced groups.
Although I had prepared an interview guide, I usually did not pose many questions but generally let the informant speak freely throughout the interview. As I was recording the whole talk, my attention was directed towards our conversation which made the whole process more personal and intimate.
The interviews with the “Samaritanas” women took place either in the project building, or in their homes, depending on availability. I always tried to hold the interviews in their homes so that they would feel more comfortable and I would get a better perspective of their lives. There were only 3 informants whom I did not know before the interviews. Lourdes, the coordinator and my main gatekeeper, chose them because she had a good relationship with them. In la “Casa Hogar” the coordinator Marlene and I asked the girls to participate and almost all of them wanted to. All of the interviews in
“La Casa Hogar” were conducted there and I knew all my informants in advance.
Although I am mainly referring to six main informants in this thesis, I held 30 life story interviews with the participants who were part of “Samaritanas” and “La Casa Hogar.
Four were woman-who-prostitute, four were ex-prostitutes, eight were family members of the women (sisters and daughters), one was a boy who was not related with prostitution at all –something I discovered later–, eight were girls at risk of being prostitutes from La Casa Hogar, two were girls from “La Casa Hogar” who were not in serious risk –something I also discovered later– and two were teenagers-mothers who were adults and had been considered at risk girls in their past, but had not ended up in prostitution. The reason of choosing six life stories to present in this thesis has to do with the limited page count and my wish to present their life stories in a narrative way and give a fuller picture of their lives. Furthermore, some interviews were not so relevant for my topic, although they helped me to understand better the notions of
manhood and womanhood and gave me some useful background information. The six main informants have been chosen because they spoke about prostitution more thoroughly in their interview or because they are involved to a larger degree within it.
Their invented names are: Venancia, Dulce, Zenobia, Gioconda, Aura and Rosa Argentina28. In order to analyze the material, I have transcribed and translated the whole interviews and divided my 6 key informants into 3 different groups according to age and life situation, that is: at risk teenager girls, women-who-prostitute and ex-prostitutes. I have chosen this way of analysis in order to investigate the cycle of prostitution by seeing it through the experiences and perspectives of different age groups. This division will be the backbone of the empirical part of the thesis.